PicoBusiness

Neat set of articles this morning:  Timothy King talks about businesses failing, and whether that’s a good thing.  In the process, he cites an interesting article about the myths of entrepreneurship.

In my life experience, there’s a wonderful synchronicity between agile software development and entrepreneurship.  Failing Fast is a key concept in Agile development.  It works because failing isn’t the end of the world - the volume of resources spent to discover the failure is not high.   Entrepreneurship, especially Internet-based entrepreneurship is also an area where you can limit your financial risk, and still learn a lot about the business, what you do well, what you don’t do well, etc.

Failure in business is not an ethical lapse.  It is not a moral stain on your character.  It is a learning experience.

Let’s all hate Steven Levitt together, and make him the number 1 most hated person on the Internet!

Steps:

1. go to http://www.whotohate.com
2. click on the “Hate Who” link
3. Enter Steven Levitt (s-levitt@uchicago.edu) Three Times - Illinois, USA
4. Pay 5 bucks

Now, don’t you feel better? I know I needed a way to express my deep, visceral hatred of Freakonomics, and the bastards who wrote it.

Update:  Steven is now the 3rd most hated person on the Internet.

If you hate him, don’t be anonymous.  Add your name to the comments below!

I missed this the first time around.   This is what I am all about

Hat tip to Carson McComas

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”
–Harold Whitman

Owing to its increasing popularity, the Ruby on Rails application development environment will be included in the release of Apple Computer’s upcoming server offering, code-named Leopard Server.

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I’ve modified my stance on Net Neutrality some since I first wrote about it, although I still think that the people will win.    But there’s an interesting debate between Tom Evslin and Richard Bennett on the topic.

After reading both of them, I am more convinced than ever that Tom is right, and Richard is wrong.  Richard’s examples and thoughts on the topic seem to perpetually work on a “bait and switch” approach - we’ll get the customer to pay for their connectivity to the Internet, then we’ll shaft them by making their favorite websites pay too. To his mind, this is ok, because they can use this money to pay for more fiber in the ground.  But I don’t find that argument compelling.
As I mention in my lengthy comment on Tom’s post, the cable and telco monopolies given them each a huge infrastructure advantage over everyone else.  An advantage that was given to them in the public interest.  If this was truly a free market, I would have no problem - I’d say “If you don’t like dial-up with Mindspring, switch to AOL”.  But the monopoly license gives us much less choice in our broadband network provider.  Why? Because we (us and our ancestors) gave them exclusive access to the soil.  They would have to be much, much more service agnostic before I would accept any such deviation from complete neutrality.

This is definitely different than how I used to feel.  But over time I’ve learned what a fundamental (and market-distorting) advantage this monopoly franchise has been to the telcos and cable cos, and I’m disinclined to give them even more advantage now.  I will reiterate - dial-up service is easily switchable, and I have no problems with dialup providers attempting to shaft their customers, because the customers have many other options available to them.   But broadband access was deliberately distorted by government force, creating a duopoly for a huge chunk of the people in this country.  While I believe that eventually innovators will obsolete the cable and telco monopolies, I am disinclined to give them even more power in the short term.

Ever wonder what your favorite business/marketing/leadership authors are reading themselves?  Suggestica has the scoop.

Check it out - very interesting and insightful.  I found some writers I didn’t know existed, whose work seems very topical.

Too late for me, alas, but I am certainly excited by what the networked world will bring to my younger relatives and friends.

In addition to her very good points, I would like to add:

• Fear is a far more insidious enemy than you might realize.    Like Elvis, fear is everywhere
• It will get harder to do if you settle down and have kids.
• It has never been easier to turn whacky ideas into provable concepts.