Amazon, for meetings, gets into the idea of being considered. Their very high level meetings start with a 6 page properly written talking points memo being handed out and everyone reading it in silence. 30 minutes of silence at the start of a meeting. Jeff Bezos:
“Full sentences are harder to write,” Bezos explained. “They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.”
30 minutes of Jeff Bezos’s time is fairly expensive but there you go.
Posted in business, irishblogs | Comments Off on 30 minutes of Jeff Bezos’ time and he’s silent.
Well that was a bit of a lull. Web Awards stuff got in the way of me posting stuff up here. Good event, hotel will never be used by me for anything again though. Roll on the SME Awards.
Heard Tony Mac Mahon on RTÉ Arena the other night. He has a new album out with Steve Cooney, which is a recording from a good number of uears ago from a gig they never knew was being recorded. That link allows you to listen to it.
The Irish Coffee in Chapter One is a hell of a thing. Good post about how it’s made.
Rhône Wine Week Ireland 2014 is upon us. Full events listing.
With Tim Cook publicly acknowledging that he’s gay, lots are saying that’s great, let’s move on. Eh no, the reason this very private man made that statement is because it helps. A lot of LGBT people both young AND old need role models that suit them and Tim Cook will help people. Just watch this video from Pixar if you think we’ve got that whole “everyone is okay with gay people” bull.
Interesting one from James. Twitter video cards potential, video keeps playing while you scroll through Twitter. Second screening without the TV!
Clarity as a business model. Lovely way of looking at super clear and honest ads. There was a bit of this where ad agencies started making clients make better products so they didn’t then have to lie and confuse to sell shitty things.
The Physical Web. I like this idea. Very very early days. When everything has an IP address (and this is almost a certainty) then do you need an app for it? Use cases:
Any store, no matter how small, can offer an online experience when you walk in.
A ZipCar broadcasts a signup page, allowing you to immediately drive away.
And on the topic of JOMO, one day I’ll get around to talking about my personal trainer, David and the huge progress achieved in the past few months after going to him. I went with back problems but the side effect of fixing them has been the various issues I had with insomnia were kicked away too. It’s so exhilarating to be falling asleep before settling into bed. Another side effect is I’m now a 28 inch waist. I’m 12 again. I want to start a blog, yet another one around sleeping and sleeping issues as I seem to notice more and more people are having them. Definitely a link between this and the always-on life. Anyway, this is almost a public promise to go through this in the future here.
Aidan’s site. Want docs, print outs binded? Binding.ie may be of help.
Fascinating story of two guys building an art tool that hasn’t been made in 100+ years, the very end is very enlightening too.
Tina
Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | Comments Off on Fluffy Links – Monday October 13th 2014
The iPad beats chocolate brands, Nickelodeon, Disney, YouTube and M&Ms as the favourite brand of kids 6-12 year olds. That’s the thing, it seems more a family device these days than anything else. One can do many in one family too which probably stunts their own market. A phone is never and never will be a shared resource though.
The finals for the 2014 Web Awards are out. Some crazy numbers in it this year. We’re going to have to gut it for next year, the size is not sustainable.
David Hieatt is doing some Do Workshops on branding. I traveled all the way to Cardigan in Wales to attend one. Was worth it. Plus I drove a car ON TO A FERRY. Woo. I’m 6.
via Kottke, Emergent calls bullshit on Twitter/Social Media news stories. Shame they’re not real time yet.
Finally a listicle that’s original and interesting. Ben’s 30 at 30.
You need balls to get gender balance. The LadSummit is still the LadSummit.
I like this technique from Amazon, they wrote a “test” press release when considering buying Twitch so they could explain to the world why they were doing it and that helped them explain to themselves why it would be good or bad.
OpenCo. I like this. It’s like Culture Night but for businesses. Open your doors and host a talk or and event.
Shane Parrish has read and summarised Peter Thiel’s new book. Very interesting insights from the billionaire investor.
Charle Munger, investment genius and nice guy. Shares wisdom.
I read this bio on Tony Fadell from Nest and I think he’s going over the top to be like Steve Jobs in the interview with his always wanting to redesign the world. Seriously? Complaining about the CCTV cameras in your house in the interview. Channeling Run Burgundy more than Steve jobs. Kind of a big deal.
12 lines from Munger is worth more than 5 of your business books, Horatio.
There isn’t one novel thought in all of how Berkshire is run. It’s all about what [Mr. Munger’s friend] Peter [Kaufman] calls ‘exploiting unrecognized simplicities.’ We [Messrs. Buffett and Munger, their shareholders and the companies they have acquired] have selected one another. It’s a community of like-minded people, and that makes most decisions into no-brainers. Warren and I aren’t prodigies. We can’t play chess blindfolded or be concert pianists. But the results are prodigious, because we have a temperamental advantage that more than compensates for a lack of IQ points.
Nobody has a zero incidence of bad news coming to them too late, but that’s really low at Berkshire. Warren likes to say, ‘Just tell us the bad news, the good news can wait.’ So people trust us in that, and that helps prevent mistakes from escalating into disasters. When you’re not managing for quarterly earnings and you’re managing only for the long pull, you don’t give a damn what the next quarter’s earnings look like.
Posted in business, irishblogs | Comments Off on The wisdom of Charlie Munger
It’s for charity yeah, you do realise that if you want some business to help your charity, it can cost them a lot? A guide on how best to “pitch” your charity to a business.
How to own it on Instagram, a guide. TLDR; – Go niche, one picture a day, pose, edit, network.
When I read idiotic tech opinions in the Irish Times, I should hold the same standard to the rest of the paper. Why don’t I? The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
Infinity apps. This guy spent a year working with a “distraction free” iPhone. – Removed mail and browser and so used it for calls, texts and music. Maybe he could have bought the original iPhone? Still, it will make your life calmer.
The Late Late Toy Show is on November 28th 2014. Tickets for it can be applied for online from October 10th.
Ben Thompson rightfully asks where the “Why the Apple Watch?” bit never happened at the keynote when previous big launches always had the “Why is this needed?”.
This site tracks utterances of homophobic language on Twitter. There’s a lot of it. Sister services for racist, sexist and anti-traveler tweets would make interesting and saddening projects.
J1 connect. Thursday September 25th. U.S. Embassy doing an event for J1 alumni who are interested in working, studying or setting up business in America.
Go the fuck to sleep, Werner Hertzog edition:
Doesn’t need to be Christmas for unicorns
Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | Comments Off on Fluffy Links – Monday September 15th 2014 – 100 days until Christmas
So yes, I’m now playing around with Christmas.ie and hope to get some content on it soon.
The Maker’s Manual explores how everyone from do-it-yourselfers and artists to inventors and entrepreneurs are leveraging new tools, platforms and services to take their ideas from concepts to reality.
The Bunreacht app by @nathanshox is back and updated Get your copy now legal eagles and freemen of the land .
Teens: “Half the time I don’t really buy any brands. I just bought a pair of fake Doc Martens because I don’t really care.” But high end tech gear like Beats and Iphones, all over them
Disney Drones coming to a key near you. Dumbo will be the first one? Then Buzz Lightyear?
What’s especially interesting about this long-brewing rivalry, is how differently Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks have approached the act of marketing themselves. The two companies own around 60% of the country’s coffee market–with Starbucks controlling an estimated 36% and DD roughly 24%.
An interesting one for the Apple origin story. Seems they didn’t rip off Xerox, Xerox gave them all the stuff they were working on in return for a deeply discounted amount of Apple stock. I wonder when they sold that stock?
Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | Comments Off on Fluffy Links – Monday September 1st 2014
So Buzzfeed gets $50 from Andreessen Horowitz, decides it will create a movie studio.
Post this, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk “software will destroy the world” and more in this podcast.
Meanwhile one of the other Bens talks on a podcast about why Buzzfeed is a very interesting investment. Supporting blog post from him. The way they do “native” advertising could be one future of media. Advertiser picks a topic/area and Buzzfeed does a Buzzfeed on interesting content with the advertiser marked as a sponsor.
Re/Code are now doing it too. What’s interesting there is their journalists DO NOT write this content but do we really look at who write pieces? Well actually, I do as you can easily spot biases depending on the writer. For example you can see who is in bed with what tech company in the broadsheets quite easily. Metaphorically.
And 2013 content and traffic starlet Upworthy are getting hit by traffic decreases which they blame on training their new staff. New one on me that one. How long does it take to train these staff and does not say something about the structure that bringing new staff on board causes dips in traffic for months?
Upworthy, Buzzfeed and even most Irish media websites are over dependent on Facebook right now. And now Facebook at last have said they’re going to combat click bait articles. Interesting to me is they’re using a lot og techniques Google uses to measure if a site is good content or not e.g. how quickly they click back to FB, the faster = less quality.
These few tips on how to increase or sustain reach on Facebook may be of use.
Now look at this switch too. MLB TV streams are moving away from desktops to devices. They’ll also move from traditional TV stations to streams too. Goodbye TV stations maybe, definitely “channels”.
So this is why Twitch which was meant to be bought by YouTube is being bought by Amazon now for nearly $1 Bn in cash. Twitch is 3 years old. 3! Retaining their independence with Amazon seems to be the message. Remaining independent is the hot new thing. Twitch is where gamers stream their games and millions of people watch them every month. It’s huge and it seems nobody in “traditional’ media saw it coming. This is going to happen more and more.
In January, Twitch reported that 58 percent of its viewers spent more than 20 hours per week on the site.