ahsonwardak

This is an interesting article. I'm always miffed by numbers as models for cars and computers. In some cases, like BMW, it provides an air of sophistication. But it's lost on me. Once again, it all comes down to branding. Sometimes, branding isn't meant to impress but maintain brand consistency.

The interesting thing with Palm, as a technology innovator, is that their main principle is the principle that's killing them. They went with a simplistic, anti-"feature creep" approach with the Palm Pilot. It's characterized by their simplistic operating system, and they never tried to innovate that personal appliance, such as an iPhone, etc. They released the Treo, and it only had minimal success. Also, remember Handspring released the Treo, and then merged to form PalmOne.

If hindsight is 20/20, then they could have made some riskier moves, and these ideas coincide with the article in some respects.

- Open up the OS. They should have made it a geek toy. Let the Linux master in all of us come out.

- Supported 3rd party software with moral support. They should have had a "killer app".

- Made it into a gaming device. I don't know if the processing power and battery-life were there, but it could have been another direction.

- Better marketing. In line with all these points above, they should made it "cooler". It should have been the province of business people to own a Palm. Everyone should own one, because you'll be cool.

Take these together and you have the iPhone. Congratulations Apple! RIP Palm.

When you say flexibility, what exactly do you mean? I see two types:

1. Mental Flexibility - the ability to see things from different perspectives.

2. Resourcefulness - flexibility in getting things done and how they get done.

Which one are you seeing makes entrepreneurs more successful? Both?

Advertising is one model for web startups and the monetization of Web 2.0 apps., but there indeed others:

subscriptions for premium services subscriptions for access selling to web giant, like Google, etc. advertising through alliances and referrals, beyond simple adsense

I'll ask the community to add more.

Unless it was intentionally stupid, they are trying. I have to disagree with Doostang.com. I've heard a lot of good things, and the other sites are the beginnings to good ideas. Usually, 2 or 3 sites have to start in a certain direction, before another one gets it just right.

For Doostang, LinkedIn is a forerunner to better sites, or it's the successor to Monster, HotJobs, and the like.

If you manage your time and life right, you shouldn't have to be sleep-deprived. Of course, that means you have to schedule your priorities, and some things won't make it as part of your life. I've gotten my Bachelor's and Master's, and I never had to pull an all-nighter beyond my first semester. I don't anticipate any all-nighters in the PhD program either.

One of the founders of the consulting firm that I worked for talked about never working past 6 or 7 PM. He never ate out, and spent that time working. You can always work more in your day without sacrificing your sleep and/or health.

At the same time, if we could all survive on less sleep, it'd be nice.

Don't take it just in the context of a hacker/programmer. Think about all those other professions/occupations/specializations. We tend to zoom in one specific aspect of accomplishing something. I'm simply hypothesizing that comes at the expense of seeing the big picture. The best of us are those that see it from multiple angles and gain multiple specializations. Then again, they become "jack of all trades, master of none". That's another discussion. Is that useful?

To me, this blog post is a "duh!" moment. Of course, it's true, there are a number of factors that influence an apparently revolutionary discovery. It's similar to topics covered in Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop. Let's also not forget luck. That's another determining factor.

The "crazy friend" paragraph reminds of a chapter in Founders at Work. An interviewee comments that if you can't persuade one other friend to take the plunge with you on a startup idea, then the idea may not be worth pursuing. We're all looking for that crazy friend at some point.

None of the motivating factors listed are sustainable feelings. I don't see myself feeling anger for days or weeks needed to accomplish something meaningful. For most, anger motivates to act stupidly. Maybe, we're looking for inspiring factors. Inspiration would be mean that we are genuinely driven to accomplish something.

I agree with this point, and it what I intended. The key to the Pareto rule is that it should drive personal effort. For sites like Facebook, I think that you would just attract the content drivers (the 20%), and then the other 80% follow.

Think about it in terms of the Tipping Point. Go to the mavens/connectors first. They have all the knowledge know everyone. They'll do the buzz marketing for you and persuade others to join. Another term would be early adopter. I know that I have personal done this for Meebo.

I would hope that it would be DC, but it's probably not. If we're talking about web startups. Could it be NYC?

This is the kind of tangible analysis that I was looking for. I must giveaway that I'm my last degree was in systems engineering, so I completely understand this. Thanks!

SwellJoe - To give the argument a different twist, it's hard for most people to hold different perspectives beyond their best core ability. For many hackers, they're so engrossed in it, and for good reason. As you say, they are smarter than average, and programming affords them the opportunity to execute their ideas easily. Once you get so good at anything, including hacking or, more specifically, software development, it becomes hard to think about usability, design, business development, etc. Then, there arises a need for systems thinking or other thinkers with different areas of expertise. Would you agree?

I'm always a fan of the technology solution to any problem, but it's fundamentally a policy problem. Until, the health care system changes in this country for universal coverage, then the system will react in a positive way. Perhaps, this could occur in the next generation. At the same time, there's a market opportunity - more people to serve.

Did anyone not expect this to happen? They got caught, as they should have. But is it bad? At least we know that they care about their image on the Web. It shows Wikipedia's significance as a credible source for information and the Web as a host for that source. Wikipedia is almost meant to be an encyclopedia driven by anarchy.

The most interesting part is this sort politicking between execs and turf battles. Is this worse or better than other corporations or partnerships, like consulting firms?

It's always useful to change it up a little bit. It'll give it some new life.

I think that the answer to the future of social networking websites is somewhere between the two you present. It could still explore a million different niches, and Ning is enabling that (Think the long tail!). On the other hand, social networks should begin to offer more than keeping track of friends, their lives, our own lives, and the overlapping areas like events and blog posts.