technology
The Dawn of the Enterprise Nomadic Workforce - Work from wherever, whenever
"The leaner you are, the easier it is to change. The more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. It's as true in the business world as it is in the physical world." - 37 Signals
“Competitive Advantage will shift to companies that can master the art of breaking down and recomposing tasks” – McKinsey Quarterly, 8 Business Trends to Watch, Dec 2007
Some buzzwords....
Video conferencing, Telecommuting, Teleconferencing, Virtual Worlds, Social Networking, Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks, Micro blogging, Locational Awareness, Web 2.0, Crowd Sourcing, Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Friend Feed, Content Syndication and RSS Feeds, Visual Application Development, Open Standards Based APIs, Cloud Computing, Facebook Applications. The list goes on.
The list of recently hyped up innovations is long, wide and converging at an increasing rate. But what do they all mean? Where are they taking us?
FINALLY: Amazon Web Services get Service Level Agreements
Previously, I blogged about the Pros & Cons of the Pay Amazon Web services.
Basically, the biggest con was a lack of service level agreement (SLA). "How can a third party seriously build a profitable application or service on top of something that has no uptime guarantee or refund consequence for severe outages?"
I am now happy to have learned, that Amazon (as of October 1st, 2007) does provide service level agreements for their S3 storage service, which was designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
A big pat on the back for Jeff Bezos. Web companies can now leverage Amazon's offerings with piece of mind.
Heck, it feels good to sleep at night.
Exit Strategy: 2 ways to sell your web application without using ebay
Typically, selling a small web 2.0 startup involved using eBay and alot of promotion (And hopeful coverage by techcrunch and mashable). However, there are a few other options to consider before you go the 7-day auction route.
This is a great news for entrepreneurs, who are finding it easier than ever to sell off failed startups. Many, get enough money to get back their original investment (Which in the web 2.0 world, is typically small).
- web2.0forsale.com
This new website, launched by TechCrunch regular Steve Poland, is the place to buy and sell web 2.0 websites.Web 2.0 will likely welcome this new site with open arms, since other marketplaces do not target this niche directly.
YCombinator Startup School: Paul Graham's why to not *not* start a startup.
Today I attended YCombinator’s Startup School event at Stanford University. YCombinator, an innovative (and controversial) Venture Capital firm, works with carefully selected entrepreneurial startups over a summer session in Boston, and injects a small amount of money into these startups in exchange for 5% ownership of the company.
Speaker: Paul Graham, Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb
Title: Why to not not start a startup?
Paul gave an excellent presentation regarding the excuses that people tell themselves (whether valid or invalid) to not try a startup (or join one).
At YCombinator, Paul claims to have a 50% succeed rate with an expected 25% long term success rate. He also states that 100% of YCombinator graduates would not trade their experience for a desk job in a cubicle.
So why don’t people quit their jobs and get going with a startup?
- I’m too young
Social Networking APIs mean opportunity for a better user experience
The trend moving forward is that social networking sites are moving towards opening up their systems to third party developers. Facebook, initially aimed at college students, is currently leading the pack by a long shot. This will provide countless opportunities for entrepreneurs to solve a variety of the social web's existing problems: Non-centralized authentication, and excessive data duplication.
