Marc Gayle on Startups & Ideas

In a prior post I came out in swinging defense of what I thought was Kevin’s courageous attempt to save Digg and Alexis’s misguided criticisms.

As it turns out, Digg V4 has decided to focus on ‘large publishers’ (like Alexis had thought they would) rather than ‘small publishers’ (whichh I thought they were).

So, given that I quickly (and loudly) appealed to Alexis to be cautious with his critique, I feel it is appropriate to (just as loudly) apologize and admit that I was wrong, and am now disappointed in Digg and Kevin.

I stand corrected Alexis, you were right.

Please note that I am not apologizing just because the community revolted – communities always revolt when change happens, but they often get used to it – but I am acknowledging that Alexis correctly saw what the true changes at Digg were, as I did not.

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I absolutely love this business card design….might be a bit too geeky for some though.

Clever Business Card Design

Seen @ Zee.Me’s Blog.

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Parking Lot via Alex92287 on Flickr

A typical shopping mall parking lot starts off empty, and drivers navigate to the best parking spot of their choosing. If they get there early, they get the spot right in front of the door.

If they don’t, they get the spot all the way at the back and have to walk for miles.

If they are lucky enough to be driving past a sweet spot that someone is coming out of, they got lucky – and can seize it. Continue reading

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I recently had a need for video compression software. I was working on a side project, that involved compressing video and releasing it online.

I tried many different pieces of freeware and they all came up short. They were either too complicated, or didn’t quite do a good job. I settled on Sorenson Squeeze 6. I have had experience with one of the earlier versions and remember it being pretty nice to use and the results were pretty good (i.e. relatively small size for high quality video). Continue reading

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Blizzard uses P2P for downloads

Say it ain’t so? As far as I know, I was never told that Blizzard would be using my bandwidth to serve other clients. I hope I didn’t miss it in the long EULA I skimmed over and agreed to.

As you can see in the image above, I am downloading Starcraft 2 Beta from a number of ‘peers’. I have a unique Peer ID (blacked out for privacy purposes), and each of my peers have the same. The leftmost column is the IP address for all the clients I am connected to, and the rightmost column is their Peer ID. Continue reading

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Poker Chips via Flickr from banspy

Although Kenny Rogers gave us ‘The Gambler‘ (YouTube) where he teaches us about when to ‘hold em, or fold em’ (the hand of life, ostensibly).

Tony Hsieh, of Zappos fame, has given us another wonderful poker metaphor. Know when to change tables. Continue reading

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Very interesting interview of Bill & Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet by Charlie Rose.

I know it’s a bit long, but they discuss their latest challenge to the wealthiest Americans.

Watch it here.

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Google just announced that they have rolled out a new indexing system for their search engine, called Caffeine.

Here are some interesting quotes:

Some background for those of you who don’t build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you’re not searching the live web. Instead you’re searching Google’s index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here’s a good explanation of how it all works.)

What’s even more intriguing is the amount of data they process:

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

I can’t even fathom that amount of data.

To read the official Google announcement, check it out here.

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Fubiz.net has a wonderful post of various murals of the upcoming World Cup 2010.

Here are some that I love:

Lionel Messi - Argentina World Cup 2010

Continue reading

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Many people misunderstand the true meaning behind ‘fail early, fail fast’. The most ‘high-profile’ of which is Jason Fried and our friends at 37Signals.

Fail early, fail fast isn’t encouraging you to fail. It’s encouraging you to act/move/start.

Read the phrase again, with emphasis: fail early, fail fast.

The idea behind the saying is, just do something. It’s easy to get trapped in a ‘secure’ situation. Whether that is a ‘stable/cushy’ job, or using a product that is OK. It’s this inertia that kills innovation. It’s fear of the unknown or fear of the failure that also dis-incentivizes people from striking out and making that killer product they have always envisioned, or recorded that song they have written, or sold that painting they have stashed away in their basement.

People get accustomed to procrastinating and delaying that they don’t attempt to do what they say they want to do.

The phrase ‘fail early, fail fast’ is attempting to take the sting out of the fear of failing – by using the terms ‘early’ & ‘fast’. Makes it sound ‘quick’ and ‘painless’. Ever been to a doctor to get an injection?

‘It will feel like a mosquito bite’ is what I am always told.

It’s kinda like that – especially since creating a new product is so hard, the last thing a creator needs is the fear of failure hanging over their heads (although, to be fair that fear can be a good motivator).

I am not advocating failure, but anything that removes one more psychological barrier for inventors can only be good for society.

So, go ahead and fail as quickly as you can. Pick yourself up, and try again.

Editor’s Note: Please note that I am not encouraging people to strike out in an attempt to fail. Simply to not be afraid of failing – if that wasn’t clear enough in the post.

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