Musings on the world of business

bit.ly has a major announcement today. I am happy for the team _but_ I have to ask — why are you doing this and more importantly who for?  

You have extended bit.ly to now help with bookmarks. Do I have a bookmarks problem? What exactly is my problem?

Is it information discovery? or Is it filing? or maybe it is retrieval? For me often times it is categorization since I file stuff away because “i know i will need them later” but when i do need them it is not easy to find them. You also focus heavily on “sharing”. I don’t find that a problem but assuming you talked to your users, maybe it is a problem for the majority out there.

Great, you identified problems. Which one are you attacking and how are you making my life better? It is most likely the case that most of your uses use one or more of the following (on a daily basis) to solve the problems above 

Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, twitter, facebook, g+, tumblr, blogger, pinterest, pinboard …… and most of these are integrated with gazillion other networks. By throwing another tool in the mix, you have combinatorially complicated my choices and decision making, not really made it easier :-(

So I ask you again, how is this helping me? What is it helping me with? I am thrilled you raised 20 million dollars. Maybe you need to come out swinging with a big platform play to justify the money raised. I hope you don’t forget about me - the user.

Introducing bitmarks

So, what are bitmarks? It’s a better name for bookmarks. Bitmarks are the interesting links you collect across the web — a hard to find recipe, an article, an awesomely hysterical video. It’s anything that you find and want to save and maybe even want to easily share. You can organize them into bundles based on a theme or share them with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, and email. You decide whether each bitmark gets published to your public profile or saved privately, so that only you can see it.

Bemilo, a £2.95-a-month service (that’s about five bucks), uses a special SIM card that can go in any phone or tablet. Amazingly, and somewhat terrifyingly, parents can log on to a web interface that basically serves as a remote dashboard to their kid’s phone or tablet. There, parents can read all texts, including deleted ones, and can even control who their kid has contact with. Parents can also monitor and restrict browsing of certain websites (read: porn). The BBC has the full story, as does The Telegraph. “It’s a SIM that is just like any other SIM you would buy for any other network, but it enables parents to have full control in the context of safety,”

How about wait till you trust your kid with a cell phone and then give him/her a cell phone. How is this different than giving your kid a car for instance. If technology permits, would we give our kids a car but control what zip codes they can drive to and/or who they will let into the car. Something about this feels more like fear-mongering to parents rather than truly teaching kids responsible behavior.

Earlier today Jason Chen asked for a special kind of birthday gift from his audience. That got me thinking of my daughter. She will be 2 in a month and I figured now is as good a time as any to start iterating on how will I encourage her as she grows older.

My inspiration for today’s post is Neil Gaiman. His advice is for young minds graduating in arts but I think it applies to all of us.

1. When you start, you have no idea what you are doing. This is GREAT!
2. If you know what your zen/passion is - don’t let anything get in your way.
3. Learn to write by writing. Replace write with create/code/fly/run/swim/surf, etc
4. Learn to deal with failure
5. Learn to deal with the problem of success
6. Mistakes can be useful (dare I say, ‘are’)
7. If life gets tough, make good art! (love this). Replace art with create/code/fly/run/swim/surf, etc
8. Your biggest competitive advantage is the fact that you are the only you. If you reach a point where you feel you are walking naked down the street, completely exposed in your work, you are just starting to create honest art.
9. Don’t lie. Acknowledge that you might be chronologically challenged occasionally.
10. 2 of the following 3 is good! {Great Work, People like to be around you, Always on time}. All 3 is fantastic but you just need 2/3 to succeed.
11. Let go and enjoy the ride
12. Go make amazing, interesting, and honest mistakes.

<me> Most important. Feel free to ignore all the above. Know that you serve an amazing God who gives you freedom, courage and a destiny that is filled with hope, love and truth. </me>