2013 Jun 28

More Thoughts On Open-Source... and WordPress

I spent the last few days fixing up my WordPress blog. Since I host my own site (i.e. I do not use a hosted WordPress providers such as wordpress.com or wpengine.com), making changes like additional Facebook "like" or Twiitter "follow" buttons, or Facebook "share" and Twitter "tweet" links, requires significant effort, even with the relatively robust WordPress plugin system. All of which led me to thinking more deeply about the entire open-source business model.

2013 Jun 25

Apple vs Google - Integrated vs Modularized Strategies?

Reading the early notes for iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks, I have come to an interesting conclusion. Apple and Google - two fierce competitors in the all-important mobile operating system space - have diametrically opposed strategies for capturing user interest. Apple - on both iOS 7 and OS X - in their interest to make everything as seamless as possible, is becoming ever more integrated. iOS7/OS X 10.

2013 Jun 24

The Tipping Point (or the Point of Tipping)

A few days ago, Esquire magazine ran a short article entitled, "Why Tipping Should Be Outlawed". Besides the highly entertaining clip from "Reservoir Dogs", the author makes several good points as to the downsides of tipping, as well as the history of attempts to ban - by law or social custom - tipping. Read the article for all of her points. The primary issue I have with the article, of course, is that the author does not like the status quo - for the record, neither do I - and recognizes that it does not appear to be changing, so she wishes to use the coercive force of state through law to ban tipping.

2013 Jun 23

Ignore Factual Impossibilities!

This past Friday's Wall Street Journal had a brilliant opinion piece on "Workplace Wellness" programs. Ignore for a moment (or forever, if you prefer) the opinion on whether or not Workplace Wellness programs actually, well, work. My real enjoyment in this piece comes from the absurd statistics pointed out in various Workplace Wellness studies. For the full list, see the article, but some entertaining highlights: US Corporate Wellness participants are "

2013 Jun 19

Twitter cannot kill Facebook that easily!

Business Insider's Alyson Shontell claimed, based on an interview that Fred Wilson (whom I much respect, especially when I disagree), that Twitter almost had what it takes to kill Facebook. In this theory, Facebook is, at its core, "a photo sharing company." This may be true, it may not. Personally, I think Facebook has much more than that. But Twitter will not easily kill Facebook by just adding images, in addition to its native text and Vine video.

2013 Jun 12

Open Source Business Models

Last week, while in California, I had the pleasure of meeting with founders and/or execs from several businesses that are either built on open-source or contribute massively to open-source. While sitting with the last of them, I realized that I had seen several distinct business models for profiting from open-source, and they are worth sharing. Short Introduction (those in the business can skip) What is open-source? Open-source, normally applied to software but can be extended to other items as well, refers to releasing the original source code, the text that creates the program.

2013 May 27

How Better Place Could Have Done a Better Job... Using Blanks

Unfortunately, Better Place is everyone's whipping boy today. After all, the company blew through upwards of $800MM (remember Webvan?) and is going through liquidation after it barely got started. While most commentators will focus on the money lost, and especially the massive hubris of the founders and investors (and which wildly successful world-changing startup didn't start with lots of hubris? It takes chutzpah to believe you will change the world!

2013 May 26

Cheaper Is Not Always So - Costs of an Education

When I went to business school, our economics professor used the various costs of MBA programs as a great example of fully loaded costs. A full-time MBA degree was about half the cost of an executive MBA. Considering how much harder an executive MBA is - try balancing school, family and the type of workload the kind of driven executives who usually take an executive MBA balance - and the higher cost of an EMBA was surprising; one would expect it to be lower.

2013 May 14

Economic Lessons from a Water Faucet... Drip Drip

Yesterday evening, I visited an old friend, who had a bright nephew, around 19 years old, over. During the discussion, which somehow turned to exchange rates, he asked, "what determines the exchange rate between currency X and currency Y anyways?" It was a great educational moment, always made simpler by real-world examples, which I love. After all, the great insight of economics is that it is not high-level theory that really makes up an economy, but just the sum of billions or trillions of decisions in the real world.

2013 May 12

Now I Get Ripple

I have been following, and keenly interested in, Bitcoin and other alternative currencies for some time now; apparently I am in good company. Bitcoin has been getting lots of press, both good and bad, especially the wild swings in the conversion rates and the Mt Gox DDoS attack. But an alternative format (for lack of a better term) has been around for a while, called Ripple. The company behind Ripple's protocol and network, OpenCoin, is the one that received the Andreessen Horowitz backing, and is co-founded by one of the founders of Mt Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange around today.