Showing posts with label Microsoft Office. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft Office. Show all posts

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Larry Wants To Become A Household Name

Larry Elllison on stage.Image via WikipediaLarry Ellison for a brief period became the richest person in the world, and he very much continues to be one of the richest. But he never became a household name like Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg, for that matter. If it is any solace to him, the two Google founders or Eric Schmidt did not become household names either.

The thing about Oracle is the largest database company in the world does background work. Windows is in your face. But the software that processes your credit card transactions stays out of sight.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Allen Paltrow: A Most Promising Princeton Freshman


Fast Company: Allen Paltrow: The First Time I Met Steve Jobs

So Marty Monaco got a room at General Assembly for my mock pitch to Brad Hargreaves yesterday. 11:30-12:30 Room 1. I sent a text to Rachel. "Top Guy, running late, 15 minutes."

I had five slides prepared on Google Docs. My machine does not have Microsoft Office, never has had one. The five slides were barebones. White background, ugly black letters.

"You did not talk about the market at all!" Marty later said. How could I have forgotten to mention the market!

Friday, October 15, 2010

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Image representing Etsy as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase

I am in my 30s. Isn't it a little too late to be asking that question? I take solace in the fact that we live in an era when people will have a few different careers before they retire and go ahead and die. That would be fine except I seem to be having a few different careers at the same time, in parallel: no complaints. I have tried to learn positivity from my man Obama.

Finally I might have found it: a for profit micro finance startup with IPO ambitions. (Microfinance: The Next Big Thing?) And the fact that I am about a year away from my green card feels like no hindrance at all. I will just get someone else to incorporate the company. The conversation is in full swing, the work is on.

Google Car, Google Monorail
Physically Aware Internet
Solar Panels To Roll Out
To Natural User Interface
Offshoring The Wind Harvesting: Google Wind
Etsy, GroupOn, Zynga
Becoming Whole With The Mobile Web
NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 26:  Microfinance pioneer...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Before this I have been emailing my 12 line resume - in text format, my machine does not have Microsoft Office on it - to all sorts of people on Craig's List. For the longest time I did not even send cover letters. What is that? The thing is I have never had a job. Don't ask how that came to be, but that is the fact. Then I started sending cover letters, the same standard, half hearted cover letters where I was calling all sorts of jobs my "dream job." The truth is there is no dream job out there. My dream job necessarily has to be self created.

Then I have thought of tech consulting and social media consulting. (An Online Social Media Instructor, Not Your Usual Yoga Guru)
NASDAQImage via WikipediaThere are more than a dozen coders in India on stand by for me as we speak. I find them projects, they get working, I pay them their hourly rate, take my cut, and we all end up happy: that has been the idea. (Becoming Whole With The Mobile Web)

I just talked to the guy in Kerala last night, and to the dude in Pittsburgh today.

I was going to doodle along for a year like that, doing a few things, but not really doing much, learn some Scala along the way, (Al Wenger Wants To Learn Scala) and get into the mobile web upon getting my green card. I have a mobile app in mind that would grow from the small screen to the big screen.


I have had people ask me if I might have run for president if I had been born in the US. First of all, people, I am utmost flattered. But that question is too theoretical. That is like asking what would life be like if earth had moon's kind of gravity. The mental exercise is not worth it. Microfinance fascinates me, the affordable housing issue in NYC does not.
Groupon logo.Image via WikipediaThere are a few things I wanted to do in tech, but then I will keep my serial entrepreneur options open, and perhaps I will get to invest in ideas that I might not get to bring to fruition myself.

Large scale group dynamics is my thing. I am really, really good at it. (Iran) Even when I have expressed Nasdaq headed tech company ambitions, I have thought more in terms having money to pour into microfinance, and less in terms of private jets. But why take that long route? Why not go straight into microfinance? There is no limit to how much money you can raise if you do it right. This is potentially a market in the trillions of dollars.

But make no mistake, the tech part of this startup is central to what it is going to be. This is first and foremost a tech startup. The concept feels like having your cake and eating it too.

This is one brave new century.

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

News: July 27

Zoho's Raju VegesnaImage by Thomas Hawk via Flickr
Digits

Q&A: WikiLeaks and the Future of Whistleblowing
Smartphone Help for Typhoon Alerts
Going for Cheap: India's $35 Computer
Hong Kong Goes 'Crazy' as iPad Launches
AT&T on Its Network, iPad Usage and the End of Unlimited Data
Baidu Advances on China Mobile Search
Digits Live Show: Welcome to the Age of WikiLeaks
Q&A: Upstart Takes on Google, Microsoft in the Cloud
App Watch: A Photo Tour of Your Favorite Foods
New TV Tech Could Be Boon for Venture-Backed Chip Companies
If You Tweet, Japan Will Come
Tech Tweets of the Week: Facebook, Flipboard and Phones
Ten Things We Learned From Tech Earnings Season

Bits

What We’re Reading: Technology Obsession
Meet Google’s Space Commander
Ask.com Reverts to Its Q.& A. Origins
Citi Discovers Security Flaw in iPhone Application
Bringing Data Mining Into the Mainstream
What’s for Sale on the Bug Market?
Part I: Answers to Questions About Internet Privacy
What We’re Reading: Femme Fatales
Dell’s Trouble Kicking the Intel Habit
What’s Behind the White iPhone 4 Delays?
Microsoft Grabs Hold of ARM
Diane Sawyer Interviews Mark Zuckerberg
What We’re Reading: Flipboard
Apple’s Web Browser Allows Sites to Collect Personal Information

TechCrunch

Apple’s Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era
Not Only Is Google Places Going After Yelp, They're Doing So With Yelp's Content
Apple's Innovative New... Battery Charger?
37signals Buys Campfire iPhone App Ember
Dude-Centric Video Network Break Media Moves Into 3D Programming
Stieg Larsson Is The First Author To Reach One Million Books Sold On The Amazon Kindle Store
Yahoo: comScore Underreported Our U.S. Page Views By 1 Billion Last June
Apple On The Defensive: Jailbreaking Your iPhone May Be legal But It’ll Still Void Your Warranty
Apple Outs A 27-inch, 16:9 Cinema Display
VoilĂ ! Apple’s Magic Trackpad Appears. Multi-Touch On Any Mac For $69
LearnVest Launches Financial Bootcamp Programs To Keep Women Fiscally Fit
Yahoo Japan To Use Google Search (And Not Bing) In The Future
Seesmic Web Adds Desktop App-Like Abilities, Facebook And LinkedIn Support
Listiki Offers A Smart Way Of Gathering Opinion Through Crowdsourced Lists
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Bill Gates, Chrome OS, Natal, Wave

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase

Blog Carnival: Google Wave
Bill Gates: Behind The Curve On Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Bill Gates, Chrome OS
Bill Gates On The Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Google (2)
Blog Carnival: Google
Bing ---> Chrome OS ---> Office 2010
Google Chrome Operating System: Pinging Bing
Blog Carnival: Cheap Laptops
Blog Carnival: Wimax
Blog Carnival: Internet For The Billions

Bill Gates talks about Natal the way the Google people talk about Wave. Natal is Microsoft's next big thing, Wave is Google's. I get the impression the two pushes go on to further reinforce the image that Microsoft is a PC company, and Google is a web company. In Microsoft's world vision, the web is one of the many features your PC has, in Google's vision, the PC gets in the way o

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase

f the web sometimes, and all the action that matters is on the web.

In Chrome OS the two visions collide. The naysayers have come out saying it is not easy to build an operating system. But I think a company that can give us Android can give us an operating system, on schedule. It is not to be completely Google's undertaking anyway. Google might be leading the effort, but it is to be open source.

So far the PC's selling point has been that there are some things you just can't do in a browser. HTML 5 and beyond will hollow out that argument, I think. Just a few more innovation cycles and the desktop is going to start to look poor in terms of all the features and functionalities it can't offer.

If the PC can do 3D, so can the browser, if the PC can do voice recognition, so can the browser, down the line.

The PC will not disappear. The ecosystem will evolve in a way that the PC will still be around, it is just it will no longer be the center of the universe.
Google Wave Sandbox Update
Google Wave API Presentations: Now Online
Google Wave Hackathon and Federation Day: July 20, 21 in Mountain View
Share Your Work in the Wave Samples Gallery

Google ChromeImage via Wikipedia


TwilioBot: Bringing Phone Conversations into Waves
1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?
(Please subscribe to this blog.)

Bill Gates, Chrome OS, Natal, Wave
Bill Gates: Behind The Curve On Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Bill Gates, Chrome OS
Bill Gates On The Chrome OS
Bing ---> Chrome OS ---> Office 2010
Google Chrome Operating System: Pinging Bing



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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Bing ---> Chrome OS ---> Office 2010

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase

Google Chrome Operating System: Pinging Bing
Google took over with Search. Microsoft responded with Bing. Google countered with the Chrome Operating System. Microsoft answered with Office 2010. It is called Capitalism 101.

Bing

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase


Bing Delivers Credibility to Microsoft New York Times
Bing manages to hold onto its initial explosion of growth DVICE
Op-Ed Contributor Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me New York Times
Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS: Still Early On The Hype Curve ChannelWeb
Dell May Test Google's Chrome OS PC World
The Google OS surfaced in March--or did it? CNET News
Google's Chrome OS: Reaching for the Cloud New York Times
Big Winner in Office Web App Announcement: Google Chrome OS? jkOnTheRun
Microsoft counterpunches with free Web-based version of Office Los Angeles
Dual Boot Android Netbook Paves the Way for Chrome OS Mashable

Office 2010

Microsoft Reveals Office 2010 Timing, Technical Preview PC World
CNET News Daily Podcast: Opening the door on Office 2010 CNET News
Windows 7, Office 2010, Google Chrome OS: Never a Dull Tech Moment PC World

Bill Gates, Chrome OS, Natal, Wave
Bill Gates: Behind The Curve On Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Bill Gates, Chrome OS
Bill Gates On The Chrome OS
Bing ---> Chrome OS ---> Office 2010
Google Chrome Operating System: Pinging Bing
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Tens Of Billions Of Hours Available

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase

Say there are seven billion people on the planet. Of those one billion are online. Each human being has only 24 hours in each day. So there are 24 billion hours available on any one day. But maybe not. People also like to sleep, eat, work, do other offline things. Considering Microsoft continues to make a ton of money through Windows and Office, we might have to lump screen time with online time.

24 billion hours - (eight billion hours for sleeping + eight billion hours for working + four billion hours for other) = four billion hours

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase


But then there are hundreds of millions who partly or fully work in front of a computer. And there are other things that compete: TV, movie theaters, walks in the park.

But even with the screen time space, you are probably going for your niche. You are not competing with Microsoft for word processing probably, or Google for search, or CNN for news, or Facebook for social networking, or Twitter for, well, twittering.

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase



There are only so many human beings with only so much time for your particular niche.

How to stretch what is available?

The most obvious are two. One, get more people online. A billion times 24 hours is a billion hours. Seven billion times 24 hours is 168 billion hours. And you try and turn more and more of those people into part or full knowledge workers.

Those two would be an ongoing process.

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase


There is far saturation. What if everybody possible is already online, and most are knowlegdge workers already? You would have hit a finity. There is a near saturation. What if it will take too long to bring everyone online, too long to eradicate poverty and turn most people into being knowledge workers? Then for all practical purposes you have hit a finity already in the immediate term.

People will gravitate to services that better organize their information for less time and money, preferably little time and no money.

The way we serve ads will evolve with such shifts in attention. Attention is p

Cnn.Image via Wikipedia

rime currency.

The number of hours might be finite, but there is a certain infinity to the human mind and its possibilities. There will be a constant churn of content creation, search and organization, presentation. We will keep finding ever more new ways to perform those basic functions.

The web will keep trying to approach the human mind.

From The Google Blogs

Introducing the Google Chrome OS
Google Chrome OS - FAQ

Special Site for President Obama's visit to Ghana
Language: a lens for experiencing culture & technology
Google SMS to serve needs of poor in Uganda
University Outreach in Kenya
New in Gmail: Inbox preview
New African countries live on Google Maps
Launching Google Suggest in Swahili
Launching Google in the Benin and Central African Republic
Making Google Map Maker more Accessible and Useful
Google University Research Awards for Africa
Google Maps launches in Kenya
Launching Google in Madagascar
New Maps for Senegal, Zimbabwe, Mauritius and Seychelles
Making information more accessible in Kenya
The Literacy Project speaks French too!
Local Search for Maps of Nairobi
Search in new African languages
Trophy giving time!
Ethiopic Transliteration in Google suggest
Mapping Barack Obama's hometown of Kogelo
Making information more accessible in Ghana and Nigeria
Power to the People or Power from the People?
Technical Internship Opportunities at Google EMEA
Learn more about Google's Education Resources
Working towards "One Africa, One Health"
Launching Google in Sierra Leone
Introducing Google.org Geo Challenge Grants
YouTube Users Responds to Crisis in the DR Congo
Why Local Content Matters
One Water Africa trip
Running the Nairobi Marathon
Personalized gadgets for South Africa
Information Poverty
BarCamp Africa
Let's Map Africa!
South Africa's rubik's cube comes together
New Mozambique page live
Congratulations to the gadget competition winners!
Goog - al - Jazaer!
Google invests in O3b Networks
Looking for a few good men and women
New Google homepage for Tanzania in Swahili
A conversation in Kisii
Google News launches in 9 African countries
Announcing a new investment in Kenya
Bravo Vega! Winners of Global Online Marketing Challenge
Teaching iGoogle at East African universities
Partnership with the Zawadi Africa Education Fund
South African student wins open source prize, visits Googleplex
Google Johannesburg celebrates World Environment Week
Programmers, get ready, get set
East Africa gadget competition
Covering all things Google in Sub-Saharan Africa

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