Mark Geller

Ding! You are now free to keep your points to yourself

Mark Geller — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:41:16 +0000

Yesterday, after returning from my trip to the Bay Area this weekend, I qualified for a free Rapid Rewards trip on Southwest airlines and received a confirmation email with the award codes. Yet the email did not include a link to post an announcement to Facebook or any other element of social interaction or social [...]

BP did not plan to fail… and that was the problem

Mark Geller — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:39:46 +0000

It has been over 40 days since the BP oil rig explosion and blow-out that has been spewing 15K-20K barrels per day into the Gulf and there is still no end in sight. Aside from the media coverage of the potential devastating impact on the environment and way of life of the people in the [...]

KlickFu invite list is open

Mark Geller — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:46:32 +0000

This week we are starting the KlickFu private beta. For those who don’t deal with the details of making software every day, a private beta means we are starting to distribute KlickFu to a small group of users to have them try it out and give us feedback, such as: do you like it, did [...]

Improving the Windows desktop is so… 2010

Mark Geller — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:38:43 +0000

For a lot of the time my co-founder Rod and I have been working on KlickFu, we have often had the feeling the area of the business we have been focusing on–enhancing the experience working with the Windows desktop–is maybe not the coolest part of the industry. Yes, Windows 7 is an excellent product and [...]

Which way to HealthVille?

Mark Geller — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:00:50 +0000

The drug company, Bayer, recently introduced a glucose meter that attaches to the Nintendo DS called the Didget, “to help kids manage their diabetes by positively reinforcing consistent blood glucose testing habits and awarding points that kids can use to unlock new game levels and customize their gaming experience.” On the one hand, it is great Bayer [...]

The need for speed

Mark Geller — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:38:53 +0000

Erick Schonfeld wrote an article in TechCrunch today called Google’s Need For Speed, in which he argues Google is obsessed with speed because it leads users to do more searches, which results in more ad clicks. He notes Google research that shows delays of a few hundred milliseconds returning results translated to 0.6% fewer searches by [...]

What I learned at Google

Mark Geller — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:36:29 +0000

It has been almost a year since I left Google, yet I am struck how often I refer to lessons I learned there as I make daily decisions for KlickFu. I thought it might be helpful to summarize some of the most important things I learned at Google, some of which may be fairly obvious, [...]

KlickFu, Bruin edition

Mark Geller — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:06:13 +0000

Last week, we filed the provisional patent for the technology in KlickFu, so now we can gradually start coming out of stealth mode (finally!). One of the ways we are doing that is by running a KlickFu development contest with the UCLA ACM computer science student group. Last night was the kick-off meeting for the [...]

Founder Institute coming to Los Angeles!

Mark Geller — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:55:19 +0000

Last Thursday night I went to the info meeting for the upcoming Founder Institute session in Los Angeles. Founder Institute (FII) is the entrepreneur training and mentoring program started and run by Adeo Ressi, in which I participated last fall. After the initial session in Silicon Valley, FII started additional sessions in NYC, Seattle, Washington [...]

Will you Blippy?

Mark Geller — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:18:45 +0000

Blippy.com is the new social media site where users can automatically publish feeds of everything they buy. Unlike Beacon, the unsuccessful shopping news feed launched by Facebook and then scuttled due to negative user feedback, Blippy is entirely opt-in, and purchase notifications can be limited to specific vendors (Amazon, iTunes) or credit cards. After using the [...]