I love reading Seth Goldin’s blog for tips and interesting reading material. He posted a list of interesting books that he recently read, of which the first book on the list – The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau looked really interesting. When I go to the Kindle app and look to buy the book, I get the message that the book is not available in my geographical area. Now the moment is lost and I may never buy this book. Those copyright restrictions just cost the author and publisher a sale.
Tech
Ballmer’s Microsoft Transformation
Software, Tech, Thought ProvokingInsightful article from Dustin Custis about the transformation of Microsoft under Steve Ballmer.
Here’s operating income by business unit from Microsoft’s last quarter:
3,770 M Business Division
2,952 M Windows
1,738 M Server & Tools Division
(229) M Entertainment and Devices
(479) M Online Services6,374 M Total income
If you compare Microsoft’s earnings history to these recent numbers, the trend is clear: solving problems for companies that have a lot of money is very lucrative. Microsoft’s strategy, smartly, has been to focus on them. Most new consumer-focused initiatives lose money, and those failings are disproportionately public, hence the negative sentiment toward Microsoft as a company.
How Flickr was murdered
CRM, Photography, Tech, Thought Provoking, WebGizmodo has a fascinating article about what went wrong at Flickr and Yahoo’s failure in general to enhance all of those cool startups they bought in the late 2000’s.
This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.
The lesson is clear – if you want your acquisition to continue to grow, concentrate on continued innovation first and corporate integration second. I see parallels with Oracle and all of the industry-leading companies (Siebel, Peoplesoft, etc) they bought. For corporate integration in Yahoo’s case read Fusion in Oracle’s.
The site that once had the best social tools, the most vibrant userbase, and toppest-notch storage is rapidly passing into the irrelevance of abandonment. Its once bustling community now feels like an exurban neighborhood rocked by a housing crisis. Yards gone to seed. Rusting bikes in the front yard. Tattered flags. At address, after address, after address, no one is home.
It is a case study of what can go wrong when a nimble, innovative startup gets gobbled up by a behemoth that doesn’t share its values. What happened to Flickr? The same thing that happened to so many other nimble, innovative startups who sold out for dollars and bandwidth: Yahoo.
Here’s how it all went bad.
I used to be quite active but I haven’t posted in months and visited in weeks. Interestingly, the last image I posted was an Instagram shot.
Read the full article here
What is Finnish for arrogance?
Finland, Tech, WebGot sent this website today as an aid for learning Finnish. Clicked through and what is the first line?
Sorry, foreigners, this page contains only writing instructions for people conversant with Finnish.
Perhaps the author should realise that some foreigners are more than conversant with Finnish.
By the way, 1996 called and it wants its webdesign back.
Fix Your Photo’s Exposure Problems in Seconds With This Simple Trick
Photography, TechI love those posts that show little tricks that I can use fixing up photographs.
Lifehacker has this neat tip and some commenters have added a couple more under the article.
You can perform this trick with just about any image editor you like (so
long as it supports layers, is able to invert the image, and offers the
Overlay blending mode).
An interesting take on cottage software development trends
Tech, Thought ProvokingThe Guardian features a fascinating article on where developers should focus their freetime development over the next year and half or so. It goes on about the options between building for iOS, Android and Windows 8.
And then Windows 8. If you learn how to build apps for Windows 8 you’ll emerge with skills that are bang up-to-date and are readily transferable into your day job. But again, you might make some small amount of money shifting applications. But things get more interesting after next Christmas…
Flexslider
Tech, WebFlexslider looks really cool! I need to add it to one of my sites on the welcome page.
Smashing Magazine gives the lowdown.
The plugin includes fade and slide animations, customizable options as well as all the navigation options you would expect in such a plugin — touch gestures inclusive! It uses simple, semantic markup to create the slider and is lightweight, weighing only 5 Kb (minified). The plugin has been tested in Safari 4+, Chrome 4+, Firefox 3.6+, Opera 10+, and IE7+. iOS and Android devices are supported as well. In three simple steps, you can have a fully responsive slider for your responsive design.
Tracking down your stolen camera
Photography, Thought Provoking, WebPopPhoto reports about a new site GadgetTrack that tracks if your stolen camera has uploaded images to flickr or 500px
John Heller was on assignment for Getty Images at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, when his Nikon D3 and lenses were stolen, but it wasn’t until a substantial amount of time later that he searched for the camera’s serial number on GadgetTrak’s service, which has indexed all the serials embedded on images from 500px and Flickr from 2006 onwards. With a positive hit on a couple of photos on Flickr, the police were able to track the camera down to a photographer, who bought it not knowing its origins — and even had a receipt for the transaction.
How secure is your password?
TechTech Stocks Tanking
TechAll Things Digital describe the effects of the market meltdown on tech stocks, especially the profitable ones.
Apple, down 5.5 percent today and 11 percent in the last five days.
Google, down 5.7 percent today and 10 percent in the last five days.
Microsoft, down 4.7 percent today and 10.2 percent in the last five days.
EBay, down eight percent today and 18.4 percent in the last five days.
Amazon, down 4.4 percent today and 12.9 percent in the last five days.
Yahoo, down 5.5 percent today and 15.3 percent in the last five days. (Special note: Yahoo’s shares dove below $11 a share in after-hours trading, closing in on its late 2008 low of $9.39 and making it an even tastier takeover bait.)
AOL, down 6.5 percent today and 11 percent in the last five days. (These are also historic lows for the Internet company, which reports its second-quarter earnings tomorrow.)
Demand Media, down 9.7 percent and 17.6 percent in the last five days. (The online content company will also be reporting its Q2 results tomorrow — Demand’s stock is off 63.1 percent since its January IPO.)
Pandora, down 7.6 percent today and 17.2 percent in the last five days.
And, worst of all, LinkedIn, down 17.4 percent today and 27.5 percent in the last five days.