Why Apple is Evil.
July 21, 2010
Apple is “evil”. Why? They believe they know what is best for you and me. And I think that is evil.
Fred Wilson on gigaom.com
Well said. Apple’s growing image problem does not have its root in Antennagate but their tendency to limit the way people can interact with their products. Recent example of this behavior include exclusion of would-be-popular iPhone apps such as Flash and Google Voice.
The Lean Architecture
January 21, 2010
This is the second in a series of articles on building elastic cloud applications. Read the first article here.
Adapting the Lean Startup principles to application architecture produces a few significant requirements. A Lean Architecture has the following properties:
- requires next to none upfront cash investment
- is flexible to changing application requirements
- requires little time investment to scale
- incurs moderate scaling costs
Taking these principles into account, it becomes obvious why some early design decisions may affect your business’ ability to cope with the challenges during the early stage and later growth. Cash is king and any required upfront investment directly affects the risk versus reward perspective. In Lean Startups where the product concept changes to reach a product/market fit, an upfront infrastructure investment may become obsolete quickly.
The Elastic Cloud
January 18, 2010
This is the first in a series of articles on building elastic cloud applications.
This might be the year where enterprises finally adopt cloud computing. Despite all the hype about software as a service (SaaS), few resources focus on how infrastructure as a service (IaaS) helps Lean Startups avoid significant investments.
While IaaS saves monetary investments in hardware and long-term hosting contracts, it also frees up valuable human resources used to set up and manage data center infrastructure. And when your user base finally grows, the elastic cloud absorbs the extra load without creating sleepless nights and requiring urgent visits to the data center.
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
January 5, 2010
Steve Jobs and Apple are known for astonishing product launches. Pictures and an emotionally charged experience effectively communicate the message to the audience.
Behind the scenes, significant efforts and a drive for excellence produce these impressive presentations. The slides below shed some light on how Steve Jobs creates these presentations with the help of his team.
Lessons Learned
- brainstorm, plan and practice over and over again
- create an experience for the audience
- a picture speaks a thousand words
- keep it short and simple
- bullet points are bad, hah
