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The economics of Christmas lights

The economics of Christmas lights:

Two asides: First, it’s interesting to note that no one (zero) gets paid to put up Christmas lights, but some towns are awash in them.

and second, I think there’s a parallel to the broken windows theory here. Broken Windows asserts that in cities with small acts of vandalism and unrepaired facades, crime goes up. The Christmas Light corollary might be that in towns (or online communities) where there’s a higher rate of profit-free community contribution, happiness and productivity go up as well.

[Nice.]
Source: Seth’s Blog

Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends

Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends:

It might be worthwhile for Google just to keep Microsoft from buying that promotion for Bing. Because if anyone’s willing to throw massive piles of money at gaining marketshare that isn’t worth anywhere near what they spent to gain it, it’s Microsoft. Given the history between Firefox and Internet Explorer, though, it would be pretty entertaining if Microsoft made such a deal, effectively sponsoring Firefox’s continued development.

I’m a bit sad for Firefox. It used to be the fast, powerful, progressive browser that finally broke IE’s era of stagnant dominance and saved web developers’ sanity. Now, it’s a bloated, slow, unstable monster that’s often a pain in this web developer’s ass.

It’s losing marketshare to Chrome for very good reasons. There’s no place for it in mobile, where most of the growth and action is happening in the industry, and most of their other recent attempts at new platforms and products have fizzled out.

I’m not sure Firefox can be saved. It might continue for a long time as a fringe browser choice, like Opera, but I don’t see how its marketshare will ever increase again.

[It certainly lost a lot of ground with my circle of developers. They went from using it as their only browser, to also using it alongside of others. Trust me to know these guys, that’s two miles of bad road. Ya know? Onward!]
Source: Marco.org

McDougall Newsletter: November 2011 – Why Did Steve Jobs Die?

McDougall Newsletter: November 2011 – Why Did Steve Jobs Die?:

Neither Steve Jobs’ vegan lifestyle nor turning down surgery were the acts of an insane man. Rather both decisions demonstrate his rationality, genius, intuitiveness, and internal strength to stand up for what he knew to be right. The truth may now give family and friends some peace of mind. Also those who tied Jobs’ cancer to his vegan diet can now go back to healthy eating. Understanding and publicizing the cause of his cancer should also focus more attention on the serious harms caused by chemicals used in the electronic industries.

Consider the misfortune that happened to Steve Jobs, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men to have ever lived. A little cost-free, harmless, and honest counsel would have greatly improved the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of Jobs—especially during the last 8 years of his life, when he gave so much to us.

[Interesting stuff if only conjecture.]
Source: Dave Winer

What purpose do book publishers serve?

What purpose do book publishers serve?:

Self-publishing often means Amazon is in control

The author also mentions her reluctance to become “Amazon’s bitch,” as she puts it, by making her work only available through the online retailer and its mobile platform. While self-publishers see themselves as fighting the system, she notes that they are really just exchanging one large corporate entity for another:

I don’t mind if someone else chooses to read my work electronically, just as I don’t mind if Amazon is one of the places to purchase my work; I’m simply wary of Amazon monopolizing the reading landscape.

But one of the biggest reasons Lepucki gives for not wanting to self-publish is also one of the best weapons good publishers have in their fight not to be disintermediated by Amazon, and that is the relationship that forms between a publisher — and the editors who handle a book — and an author. As she puts it, even the notes on her rejected manuscript from the sub-editor who handled it showed “these professionals are valuable to the process of book-making.” For every publisher who treats their writers so badly that they switch to Amazon, there are likely others who value that relationship and work hard to improve it.

[The problem is that entering into that relationship is costly so the big publishers have a lot of gatekeepers in place and often won’t even look at a book that doesn’t run through the industry mill. I don’t disagree that trading in one corporate owner for another is problematic. Unfortunately, that is the simple answer if you don’t want to do the work of building an individual relationship with your readers. Maybe do it as part of a plan. For example, it is often suggested that you publish a blog etc. in order to build an audience, and then the potential to earn money rises with the audience. Essentially you get to sell the “second” act, or the second book, etc. But maybe you can use Amazon to build that audience and then do something different with follow-ups so that you don’t lose all control.]

The Paradise That Should Have Been | The Cynical Musician

The Paradise That Should Have Been | The Cynical Musician:

What about a band? Let’s just quickly go over the same calculations for a standard four-piece rock group (vocals, guitar, bass, drums):

Amazon and iTunes, single-track downloads: 7,250 a month; 87,000 a year.
CD Baby full-album downloads: 619 a month; 7,433 a year.
eMusic single-track downloads: 13,567 a month; 162,807 a year.
Rhapsody streams: 509,890 a month; 6,118,681 a year.
Last.fm plays: 30,933,333 a month; 371,200,000 a year.
Aside: Even if you got the entire Chinese web-connected population to listen to your song on Last.fm just once, you still probably wouldn’t meet your annual quota.

[And that’s for minimum wage and assumes no cost in the production of the music. It is to weep. Keep asking me why I no longer try and make a living in music… simple really. I found that I had to do other things to make a living, which was defeating the point. I also never thought the “Internet” was going to improve this situation in terms of sales or royalties directly. I saw it as an opportunity to market to larger audience more easily. And that it is. But that does not convert directly into sales where aggregation and a direct relationship with your audience is important. iTunes sitting between you and your audience doesn’t allow for this… or any other service of that sort. That’s why I think making credit card transactions simple is so key right now.]

No, Michael Arrington, you are not Jack Sparrow

No, Michael Arrington, you are not Jack Sparrow:

“But the real payoff is the pirate life itself!” The argument for doing the insane startup work is the slim potential the team sells for $100M or more, but really, you’re in it because you love risk. You love the lifestyle! You love the sailing around the world and visiting exotic new ports of call and the rum and the wenches and oh wait we’re not actually talking about pirates you idiot.

Real pirates tended to be out-of-work privateers who had nowhere else to go, criminals trying to escape the law, or the desperately poor; their careers at sea rarely lasted more than a few years and usually ended in death. The number who retired comfortably in their mid-30s to start investment funds to back new up-and-coming pirates is roughly zero. But in Arrington’s “fantasy pirate world,” they’re all Jack Sparrow.

There may well be an “entrepreneur lifestyle” which roughly corresponds to the pirate lifestyle. I know a serial entrepreneur who seems to always be traveling to meet with high-power executives and VCs, to make deals over lunch and dinner and wine and bocce, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he puts in 80+ hour weeks or that it isn’t genuinely hard work. But the lifestyle that people are “crying and whining about” is, ultimately, not the entrepreneur lifestyle. It’s the first-hire lifestyle. Arrington may genuinely believe that all hard work is roughly identical, but it isn’t. The hard work he put in building TechCrunch was finding and managing employees, writing, and a lot of meetings with Internet movers and shakers. Surely that is hard work, but it’s no more comparable to an 80+ hour week of sitting at (or under) a desk coding until you have RSI than it is to tomato farming.

What brought on Arrington’s righteous anger was the complaints that people like, well, me had about Zynga reneging on stock options. He thinks that’s just whining. Bullshit. Zynga is whining. And let’s not pretend that Zynga is a Google or Twitter or a JWZ-era Netscape—or even a TechCrunch. They’re a Skinner box. I won’t go so far as to say that Mark Pincus should be first against the wall when the revolution comes, but he should be sleeping under a desk.

Pincus started—started—where Uncle Mike is now: as a venture capitalist. The material wealth both of them enjoy came from work very far removed from first-hire engineering. Arrington may fancy himself a pirate, but he hasn’t ever had to worry about scurvy.

[Too brilliant for me not to quote so heavily. It’s worth reading the entire piece. There’s another confusion taking place as well. The one where someone writes code or has an idea they’re so passionate about that they can’t stop doing it. That happens as well, but it’s only slightly more common than winning the lottery, hitting it big with a startup, or becoming a rock star considering how hard it is to maintain that level of intensity over any length of time.]
Source: Coyote Tracks

John Kenney: “We Are the One Per Cent” : The New Yorker

John Kenney: “We Are the One Per Cent” : The New Yorker: Do you know that feeling, upon waking at 4 A.M., heart racing, your mind looking twenty, thirty years down the road, wondering how you are going to make ends meet? Worrying about what would happen if you lost your job, asking yourself how you’re going to pay for your kids’ college or retire? Well, I don’t. But I read a story about it once and remember thinking, I’m so glad that’s not me.

[Sigh.]

Bitcoin

Bitcoin: So it seems to me and my colleagues at USV that an alternative currency with roots in peer to peer networks and based on an algorithm that is transparent to everyone is an idea whose time has come. The question remains if the Bitcoin algorithm or some other algorithm (possibly a derivative of the Bitcoin algorithm that deals with some of Bitcoin’s weaknesses?) will ultimately win out. That’s an important issue that has a lot to do with when this space becomes investable.

[I’ve been following Bitcoin for a while, no some people who are more involved and still don’t understand how the shift will occur.]
Source: A VC

Adobe Systems holding users hostage?

An Open Letter To Adobe Systems « Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More: While I understand that Adobe needs to make business decisions based on how it sees market conditions, I feel the timing of this new pricing structure is patently unfair to your customers (and our members). Here’s why: You didn’t tell us up front. You didn’t tell us until nearly the end of the product’s life cycle, and now you’re making us buy CS5.5 for just a few months on the chance that we might want to buy CS6 at a discount when it’s released. Otherwise, we have to pay the full price as if we were never Adobe customers at all.

Those users who didn’t upgrade to CS5 or 5.5, either couldn’t afford the upgrade, or couldn’t justify the upgrade, or they would already be on CS5 or 5.5. But now you’re kind of holding us hostage—you’re making us buy something we don’t need now, just so we will still have the option to get something that we may want (CS6) when it is released without buying it all over again from scratch. You’re playing hardball with your customers—either upgrade twice or you’re out.

[Pricing is never easy but it seems clear, that anytime a company does this it annoys customers something fierce.]