Category Archives: Tech

Silence of the things

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Evrythng is one of those start-ups that have me torn into pieces. On one hand I like the idea of putting an augmented reality layer on physical objects and bring them to life in ways that are meaningful for the way they are being used. On the other hand it is exactly the thing that have me thinking that there is just too much noise in the world.

Building on the latter point you could start asking yourself, where you are ever going to get some piece and quiet. It’s hard enough to switch off your mobile phone and stay of the internet. But if I also have to switch off a lot of other things in my house to get to that much missed feeling of tranquility, it just starts becoming too much.

Of course it’s all a matter of how it’s being applied, and I don’t have enough fantasy to suggest that it will be pervasive in everything. But I still think it’s valid to take a small step back and think about whether this is actually an inherently good development.

Successful assholes

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Considering how well Apple is doing, it’s just downright amazing that so few other companies try to take cues from what have made Steve Jobs’ company so successful. But I have a feeling why that is.

Because at Apple it’s all about focus and tenacious execution. It seems like it’s about being an ass, because when you’re being an ass and you don’t think too much about how people feel or what consensus want you to do, you stay on course, focus and have the opportunity to do something truly great. I’m not saying that you will, but the opportunity is there.

Apple is a company that screws popular management culture and gets rewarded for it. It’s not playing nice – and it gets rewarded for it. It put products for customers over bureaucracy and process – and gets rewarded for it. Intellectually it’s a fairly simple model – but it dictates that you make room for people to be real genuine assholes.

Most companies don’t operate that way. And they get rewarded for it by not coming anything close to emulating Apple.

The black hole of Big Data

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How big is the risk that we’re busy creating for privacy what the banks created for the economy; a non-transparent black hole just waiting to swallow us all?

If you look at Big Data, the signs are the same: Faith in data as being the driver of value going forward resembles the faith shown in data – and automated treatment of data – we saw in the financial sector, where insights became so complicated that we left if to algorithms to not only sort things out but also to act on the information.

Furthermore, a lot of the same profiles - mathematicians, computer scientists etc – that were previously employed in large numbers by banks (the quants) are now being sought after by Big Data.

Finally, whenever somebody is caught with their hands in the jar with private data, they just apologize, move on – and pretty much do the same thing again just without getting caught. Does that sound familiar too? I thought so.

The likeness to what happened just a few years ago is worrying. And you should really ask yourself whether we haven’t learned anything at all?

While we all attempt to answer that question, I believe more and more in future services that exist to keep your data private and give you the full flexibility to not only decide who you want to share them with, but also what they are getting used for and what outcome you are getting in return. There will be huge opportunity in this space.

Kickstarting business

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I’m a big fan of Kickstarter, the site that help start-ups, organizations and people get crowdfunding for interesting projects. Both because I think it’s always good with alternatives to angels or VC money and because I think it’s a cool way of getting a sense of whether your product or service actually has the potential to fly with customers.

I don’t think companies will get entire rounds of big financing through Kickstarter, because it’s an abstraction level that fits quite poorly with the individuals needed to fork out their savings to support the cause. But for specific products and services it’s an entirely different matter; those are more easily understood – or should at the very least be pitched as such – by people, takes less money than entire companies and have a shorter time to market and thus the feeling that you’re actually seeing something come out of the investment, you’re making.

Add to all this the verification of the product or service, you’re trying to get to market. I mean, if people can see enough value and meaning in what you’re doing to want to support it with their own money, it cannot be all that bad, can it?

 

Naivety

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The reality of business is that you need to produce something others value in order to stay in business. And that’s irrespective of whether you’re a company with decades or even centuries of history or a fresh young start-up; you simply need to show people around you while they should fund you either from purchase of goods and services or from investment.

When thinking about the above the big fuzz about Path and Pinterest and their assumed violations of end users rights seems like it’s blown out of proportion. Look, the offenses are neither big nor especially surprising.

It may be that Path has downloaded all your contacts without asking you based on some claim that it’s good for the experience, and ‘whoops, we forgot to tell’. To me it sounds more like a scheme to make sure that there is enough data in Path to provide real value to users and – more importantly – to the investors, who have pumped millions into the company. And I don’t see the big problem with that.

It may be that Pinterest is putting affiliate links on your content without telling you about it, but so what? It’s not like they are linking to something different or taking away something which you have rights to – after all a link is a link is a link and thus very much a part of the public domain.

Many seem to think that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Well, there still isn’t, and there still never will be. There will always be someone who needs to pay. And if you don’t believe in getting your credit card out, don’t be surprised when services go about monetizing you in different ways; it’s what they do to stay in business.

And you want that, right? You want these services to be able to keep the lights on, don’t you? And you really think that will go on without some kind of business model however subtle it might be? That’s where the naivety comes in. It’s almost unbearable.

Grow up and move on. Please.