October 2009
45 posts
The Golden Triangle Revisited
Early this month Fred Wilson wrote about the three big megatrends in the web/tech sector: mobile, social and real-time. These, he states, constitute The Golden Triangle.
You can build interesting businesses in each of these three sectors. The iPhone is the poster child of mobile. Facebook is the poster child of social. Twitter is the poster child of real-time.
But it is what happens inside the...
“While it is obvious that this maneuver creates a problem for the multi-billion...”
– Bill Gurley - Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model
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The Kinks - Lola
This one is for Carrie who just...
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Sufjan Stevens - Movement II: Sleeping Invader...
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Service vs. Software
The iPhone is undoubtedly the best phone on the market. Its interface, features, and 90,000+ applications put it in a category all by itself. It’s superior too all other mobile devices in almost every way possible. Sadly, I’ll never own one as long as Apple remains with AT&T as its only service provider.
Working at Tumblr, I’m the only person in the office without an...
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The Avett Brothers - Die Die Die
If Weezer played...
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WatchJoseph Stiglitz on the financial crisis, government and markets, and the future of capitalism. I once asked him (and Jeffrey Sachs) to be my thesis advisor. They both politely declined. C’est la vie. Maybe I’ll get them on Tumblr instead.
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Biz Markie - Just a Friend
Washed Out - Feel It All Around
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Read Books, They're Good For You
It takes me a while to finish a book nowadays. With so much information coming from all directions, it’s hard to stay focused on one source. Everyday I scroll through Tumblr, then I filter through Twitter and Google Reader and queue up my news for the morning. I do all of this on my laptop and phone. On top of that, I subscribe to a handful of magazines which I read religiously. ...
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Michael Jackson - Rock With You
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Passion Pit - To Kingdom Come
I’m on a huge...
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Miike Snow - Animal
(via: fred-wilson)
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Fruit Bats - When U Love Somebody
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Music Video 2.0: Introducing the New Paradigm
The music video seems to be a thing of the past. MTV sensationalized it. Then they killed it. Video used to be such an integral part of a song. For every hit there was a music video behind it. Over the last several years, music video has faded into oblivion. No one really gives a shit anymore. If you give me the option to watch a video of a song or stream it for free, I’d rather just...
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Melody Gardot - Baby I’m a Fool
I listened...
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More on Music (and Web 2.0)
As it stands today, the music industry is fucked. All the old business models will be obsolete within the next two years. The record industry is dying, and all of the businesses leaching onto it are quickly running out of blood to suck. The game is rapidly changing and it’s leaving a lot of people lost and confused.
Right now there are a handful of ways to make money off of music. You...
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Washed Out - New Theory
Find of the week. Washed...
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Why I Left a Life of Live Music
All my life I’ve been a music lover. I learned how to play the piano at 4, picked up the saxophone in 5th grade, and taught myself guitar and bass in high school. I’ve played in too many bands to remember, seen hundreds and hundreds of concerts, and have been lucky enough to meet and even befriend my favorite musicians.
One year in high school I went to a music festival, stood atop...
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Empire of the Sun - Standing on the Shore
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Marx & Social Media
For some crazy reason, I’ve set out on a mission to reread the most important books from a class I took in college called Contemporary Civilization (political and economic philosophy). I wrapped up Marx’s The Communist Manifesto last night. It was shorter than I remember.
At the most basic level, Marx sets out to extol the virtues of a classless society. Communism is often confused...
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Monsters of Folk - The Right Place
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Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
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Political Theory for Startups
There’s a rudimentary theory in Political Science that international relations and foreign policy can be explained through a combination of three major forces: personal actors, nations, and systemic conditions (international climate). In order to understand major policies or an individual nation’s behavior, one must analyze all of these conditions. For instance, if you wanted to know...
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A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It?
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WatchMint CEO Aaron Spatzer lays down a solid rubric for startups. Most of the content revolves around early hires, salaries, allocating resources, and the progression from idea to product. There is no one way to start a startup and Aaron’s presentation is by no means the golden solution, but he does provide a great roadmap for getting off the ground. If you can spare 20 minutes this is worth...
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Blitzen Trapper - Saturday Night
Google’s Very First Press Release →
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AnyClip: It's a Winner
I went to the NY Tech Meetup last night and got to see a demo of AnyClip for the first time. I’ve been psyched about this project since I first heard about it (send me an invite!) and what I saw exceeded my expectations.
AnyClip is a tool that is useful. Hallelujah. We need more useful products being developed. It answers a question that I frequently ask: “Where can I find that...
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Grizzly Bear - All We Ask
“Adam Platt is my bitch.”
– Daniel Boulud to NY Mag, enjoying his third Michelin star (at the expense of the NY Mag critic who one-starred Bar Boulud and DBGB). Nice. (via bbook)
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NYC BigApps Competition →
I’ve been talking a lot lately about the NYC startup community and the disconnects between universities, government (the EDC and SBS in particular), and entrepreneurs. It looks like the gap is beginning to be filled. Today I happily stumbled across the NYC BigApps Competition website. Here’s what they’re doing:
The City of New York is improving the way it provides...
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Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up To Dry
“Perhaps Google’s stiffest competition in the immediate future isn’t Bing and...”
– Is Google a Social Media Company? (via Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet)
I hope not. That sounds awful.
Fortunately, I think this is one of those new-media thought extrapolations where we’re so far into the clouds that we can’t even see reality anymore.
I’m sure products and services (or “brands”, as...
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Outsourcing and Its Discontents
I used to get a kick out of reading books on globalization. I could eat up Bhagwati, Stiglitz, and Friedman for days. (Disclaimer: I can no longer tolerate Friedman, mainly thanks to Matt Taibbi.) All of these writers talked about outsourcing - specifically, the outsourcing of American labor.
In regards to globalization, the notion of outsourcing usually pertains to manual labor, low-income...
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Esser - Headlock
My new pump-up song.
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Companies vs. Products
The other day I asked the following question on Fred Wilson’s blog:
[There is a] disconnect between invention and entrepreneurship in universities. Aside from the obvious bureaucracies inherent in major institutions, how is this not a potentially valuable untapped market?
NYC has a tremendous academic force producing valuable research, a majority of which sits on the shelf and collects...
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My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
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