Found this old newspaper whilst moving out.. ‘the day that changed the world’ (Taken with instagram)
Erich Radstake: Today's Startup: Plan.nr
Today’s internet startup Plan.nr takes the pain out of making group decisions. On the move, or at your desk, plan.nr removes the need for long email threads when planning. Less Chat, More Choice! Invite your friends, ask them questions and make decisions. Where shall we go? Who can drive? Is…
Source: bit.ly
"Stealing" Your Address Book
Dustin Curtis more directly states something I hit on earlier with regard to the Path address book situation:
I did a quick survey of 15 developers of popular iOS apps, and 13 of them told me they have a contacts database with millons of records. One company’s database has Mark Zuckerberg’s cell phone number, Larry Ellison’s home phone number and Bill Gates’ cell phone number. This data is not meant to be public, and people have an expectation of privacy with respect to their contacts.
This really isn’t a secret, ask around. There are a lot of apps you use on a daily basis doing the same thing. Some have for a long time. None (that I know of) are doing it to be evil, they’re doing it because it’s a connection/spreading mechanism that iOS allows for.
And again, from what I hear, Apple is likely to change this soon as well. But I’m with Curtis, I can’t understand why this unrestricted access was in place to begin with. I really can’t think of a good reason.
Source: parislemon
What Asset Are You Building?
This post follows a talk I gave at a Mobile Apps and Beer event a couple of weeks ago (another outcome of that talk is my former post Should we meet pre-traction?). The subject of my talk was financing vehicles for mobile apps, and one of the key messages that I was trying to get across was that as an entrepreneur of a mobile app startup, you need to understand what asset you’re trying to build - in many ways, the type of asset will define the different types of financial vehicles you should use, and the timing/progress you need to achieve before a fund raising pitch should be made.
So I am following that talk up with a post that is trying to dive into the major assets one can build in a mobile app (but in many ways, this is similar in consumer internet). It is important to note that oftentimes, what seems to be the base asset of the company isn’t really what it is trying to achieve. I encourage all entrepreneurs to spend the time and think about the asset that will enable mass scalability for their product and for the company they are trying to build. So without further ado, here are a few assets to think about:
Source: mporat
Many of you have asked, so here’s what’s going on with me.
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE
- 8/1979: Born. Grew up in CT, built a killer eraser collection, fell in love with computers.
- Left college to start a company. Fell hard. Fled to India for 3 months.
- Started 2nd company. Learned to be an adult. Fell in love with NYC.
- Moved to SF, discovered burritos & some of my fave people on Earth.
- 9/2011: Got diagnosed with Leukemia!
- Cried. Went through 3 cycles of chemo. Hurt. Thought hard about what I want out of life. Grew up a second time.
TODAY
… After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs (7000+!), tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I’ve got a 10/10 matched donor!
You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.)
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Tomorrow, I’ll be admitted to Dana Farber in Boston for 4-5 weeks.
First I’ll get a second Hickman line to allow direct access to my heart (for meds and for nutrients if I’m not able to eat). Over the next week, the docs blast my body with a stiff chemo cocktail to try and eradicate all traces of cancer cells. In the process, the immune system I was born with, and my body’s ability to make blood, are destroyed.
Next Friday, I get my donor’s stem cells by IV. I start on immunosuppressants to prevent my body from rejecting them (I’ll be on them for 12-18 months). For these weeks I’ve no immune system, so I’m severely vulnerable to viruses and bacteria. My hospital room and hallway become my world.
Meanwhile, the stem cells make their way to my bone marrow and, with some luck, start producing platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own.
This is science fiction stuff. I can hardly believe it’s even possible, and there’s lots of chances for things to go wrong. It’s frightening.
AFTER THE TRANSPLANT
Recovery to a new state of “normal” takes about a year, but there’s a few storm clouds hovering:
- My immune system is new, like a baby’s. I’m prone to getting sick.
- Just as with any organ transplant, there’s a chance of rejection. Except in this case, it’s my blood that’s the foreign body, and it touches every organ. They call it graft-vs-host-disease and it can cause health issues and organ complications for the rest of my life.
- Successful transplant or not, Leukemia can relapse. Stubborn mofo.
Overall, 75% of AML transplant patients survive year one, 50% make it through year five. My odds are a little better since I’m young.
THE GREAT NEWS
I’ve got a long road ahead. But I’ve got a donor & amazing family & friends. A few months ago I didn’t have many options. Today I have a plan.
I am alive. I start tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Thank you.
Source: superamit
How the social network dynamic is changing
I was recently asked about how ‘limited’ social networks such as path exist alongside facebook and mainstream social networks, are they competitors or do they complement each other?
It got me thinking about how we are currently at an interesting stage in the way we interact online. As social networks are now a big part of the mainstream, users are looking for ways to get back the personal side of sharing with people that matter to them.
The popularity of path and similar networks that encourage sharing within close groups or individuals are the direct product of too much noise on the larger networks. The early facebook adopters fondly remember the excitement of sharing information between a close set of friends, users would happily share thoughts, feelings and photos that were personal to them, as their followers were mainly a direct friends circle or family.
As facebook hit the mainstream it encouraged users to connect with colleagues, old school friends and acquaintances in turn growing their friend networks as wide as possible. This meant that the data users chose to share would be seen by a much larger, less personal audience. A change in the friend dynamic coupled with the way on-site applications and notifications are handled has turned facebook into more of a self promoting platform whose shared data carries far less weight.
Platforms that focus on more personal relationships will co-exist with facebook, users will have both accounts but the bulk of their sharing will be done with the people that matter most.
I think the motivation for people to use smaller groups and networks is purely to have a better experience, if you share data with 2-3 close friends the reaction and engagement this brings means a lot more to you than something open to an entire network.
Bijan Sabet: Hollywood has decided to go nuclear instead of embracing the web and the law
More than a decade ago, we got the DMCA.
Many people hated it but the content community (Hollywood) pushed very hard for it. They wanted to control what content could and couldn’t exist on the Internet.
I’m over simplifying things greatly but the basic DMCA deal was the following
1. Users…
Source: bijan
This week I’ll mostly be…
1. Watching mixpanel like a hawk, it’s fascinating watching users engage with your product. We have learnt so much from monitoring actionable metrics, we tweak the interface based on learning how our users work their way through Plan.nr. Iterate quickly and make sure that your users figure out what you want them to!
2. Writing, writing and more writing… blog posts, emails, slide decks, the list goes on. Another great lesson I’ve learnt recently.. writing about your product teaches you so much, if you can’t explain something how do you expect someone other than you to ever understand.
3. Testing - We are working on a huge overhaul of Plan.nr, between myself and dom ‘exception’ lewis we will do our best to break it!
What are you doing this week?
Source: soundcloud.com
Plan.nr: Lost in a sea of facebook notifications
There once was a time when notifications on facebook meant something, wall posts were exciting, game notifications were few and far between and event invitations were relevant.
We are not the first to comment on facebook becoming a theatre of noise and we certainly won’t be the last….
Source: plannrhq
