Over the last 5 years, have been focusing on building Viddler out of Bethlehem, PA. One thing that has taught me, if you are going to take the remote path, you need work extra hard to stay on top of your game. Going to conferences is an option but, expensive and takes time away from your business.
Luckily, online tools make it possible to continue sharpening your skills, even from afar. Problem with long podcasts like these, is you can easily waste your time if you aren’t picky with your podcast. If used wisely they are the perfect tools for in-between time (driving, flying, doing laundry, etc).
These are my 3 must-listen to podcast resources:
This Week In Tech – For the essential tech news, rockstar Leo Laporte is an incredible host and always brings super intelligent guests.
This Week In Startups - Jason Calacanus does great job of bringing in incredible entrepreneurs and providing a mix of education/entertainment.
This Week In Venture Capital - The venture space is changing every other month. Mark Suster does a great job bringing in the top VCs and Angel investors.
Have been asking myself business scaling questions (mostly on how it pertains to Viddler) as I have been listening to Jeff Jarvis’s new book,What Would Google Do. Jeff has a huge point in the book where he points out that to scale like Google/Facebook/etc, you price based on what the customer can pay not on what the company needs to meet it’s margins.
I never really thought this concept applied to “physical businesses”. Ones that make things physical for people to buy (Google t-shirts do not count).
Well, while obsessing over my favorite new upcoming car, Chevy Volt, ran into a livechat with GM retiring executive Larry Burns.
Toyota recently announced they will not go down GM route as it’s doesn’t make business sense for typical margins. Larry responded very “google-like” to one of my questions with regard to cost of the new lithium-ion batteries.
It’s great to see GM act as Google would. One more reason to get the Volt!
As a product guy, it’s been very apparent Myspace has been on it’s way out for many years, mainly due to it’s inability to innovate, and putting advertising efforts clearly ahead of it’s users.
When Jay Leno, a mainstream comedian, uses Myspace as center of a joke, it really questions the mainstream perspective on them.
Myspace is far from over though, and still has a chance to come back.
If I were over at myspace I would do two things to combat this before it’s too late:
What: Make it clear Myspace is going to change attitude on advertising, putting users first. Scrap all ad units and start over with more engaging campaigns. Reinvent itself.
How: Become socially transparent in this effort. Get feedback from users. Turn it into a conversation as apposed to a one way battle.
Update: NBC has pulled the commercial from it’s site. It used to be here and when you still google “Jay Leno new material” you will find it once existed on the site. NBC and Myspace have a relationship on many levels, wouldn’t be suprised if someone asked for it to come down due to it hurting the relationship.
I am in love with my IBM Thinkpad keyboard and how much it saves your fingers. When your on your computer 10+ hours a day, efficiency is everything with the mac red nipple, saving moving hands on mac from keyboard to mouse 1000+ times a day.
There is one thing that is missing though when using it with OSX which is very annoying. What I am trying to get to work is the middle scroll key that you press and when pressing it it allows you to scroll up and down a website page or document. This is very important function for keyboard to work for me.
Alternatively a shortcut for scrolling (Ctrl-J) would be acceptable as well.
Apple OSX’s default keyboard mapping function is pretty simple and isn’t apparent howto get this to work.
If you have any ideas on howto get this to work, please let me know in comments below or @sandieman me on Twitter!
Thanks!
UPDATE: Smart Scroll fixed this problem for me. It’s a payed shareware application but worth it.
Recent Mac commercials (which I always love) share Windows guy freezing 2150 many years into the future. It’s making fun of the Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates commercial where Bill hints at next version of Windows. That being said, all this poking and competition has got me thinking on where it will be in 2040 (2150 being too far away).
What are pretty much guarantees:
Dropping prices in hardware
Culture changes at Apple and Windows
Opensource movement to continue to grow
Steve Jobs will die. (sorry folks, everyone does)
Rating past, present, future
Without using any formal metric (market share, revenue generated, etc), I would like to post my prediction of how the market will evolve based on a Wine Spectator point scale. Have made a few notes on why each of the trends.
Geoff DiMassi (godfather of Philly) did a great job helping put together the Ignite Philly event and shot some great video. I really need to get his camera as not only did he shoot amazing videos (in vidget below) but great photo’s.
Make sure to watch the Josh Kopelman’s amazing intro in the IgnitePhilly Vidget:
Hello and welcome to my personal blog. My name is Robert Sandie, a digital entrepreneur, co-founder and President of Viddler. Join me as I update this blog on the daily challenges of startup.
