miscellany

What Steve Jobs taught me

It's a sad day for many of us in Silicon Valley.

For many of us, our bonds with Apple and Apple's products are deep. Apple products taught us to demand a lot more from our experience with technology. It was a valuable lesson for my peers and I as we entered our professional lives as technologists. Seeing Apple put this into practice, year over year, with their amazing lines of products, really set a high bar for all of us.

While I certainly don't have any personal Steve Jobs stories, I do have a number of Apple memories - the first time my Mac booted up, the first time I saw a Jobs keynote, watching the iPhone keynote (maybe twice), my first Cocoa app, my interviews on-campus and many more. If these experiences were designed in any way (as I'm sure they were) by the man himself, perhaps in a way, they are my Steve stories.

There are so many news reports tonight re-hashing all these old Jobs stories. His great come-back in business. His talent as a leader. His unparalleled skills as a marketer. His focus (and arrogance). They're all true. But when I think about what Steve Jobs taught me, above all else, it is the importance to care enough to be, make or lead something remarkable.

And for that, I'm very grateful.

RIP Steve Jobs.

Getting paid

"The only people who get paid enough, get paid what they're worth, are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map. That option is now available to everyone so take it" - Seth Godin

Google+ and Influence

David Armano's latest post on Google+ got me thinking; once people start actively generating content on Google+, Google will have at its disposal an undiluted signal for measuring the influence and relevance of your message within your social circles. Nice.

Next Gen Xfinity TV service

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts recently demonstrated the next generation xfinity.tv service:

It's a great vision for what the future of TV. Here are some my thoughts:

We finally get a real UI for our TV experience. It looks like Comcast really invested time and effort. I wonder if Google TV is now in serious trouble.
It's interesting that this vision does not address new trends in time-shifting; people like to watch the shows they want, when they want, and that's where Hulu and Netflix have a clear advantage. Comcast wants us us to record shows or wait for them to show up on the right channel. While they clearly have motivations to stick to this model, it isn't clear if customers will necessarily abandon their Hulu or Netflix subscriptions.
It wasn't clear how multiple users would interact with this service. Not having a way to distinguish between users would clearly impact their recommendation engine.
Finally, I wonder how pricing is going to work.

On life & work

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work

Gustave Flaubert

Word & Excel 2010 defaults

Looks like Word & Excel 2010 have different shades of gray for their default windows (when no documents are loaded). Designer oversight?

Google trends vs. S&P 500

I was playing around with the Google Domestic Trends feature on Google Finance today. The feature allows you to overlay Google search volume (US only) in various categories against stocks or major indicies. Here are some rather interesting views:

1. Jobs & Career vs. S&P 500: http://bit.ly/gyNBT7

Nice counter-cyclical pattern.

2. Retail vs. S&P 500: http://bit.ly/dVUDp1

Interesting to see the general downward trend even during the boom years. I wasn't expecting that.

3. Luxury goods vs. S&P 500: http://bit.ly/fwEXOT

Spikes during the holiday season, but nothing else. Would have loved to see this comparison for Chinese search results, especially after reading about the Chinese luxury market.

Start-up equity by position

From "Getting Paid in Equity", an equity estimate by position held (courtesy of Guy Kawasaki; original reference not found):

Senior engineer: 0.3% to 0.7%
Mid-level engineer: 0.2% to 0.4%
Product manager: 0.2% to 0.3%
Head Architect: 1.0% to 1.5%
Vice presidents: 1.5% to 3.0%
Chief Executive Officer: 5.0% – 10%

Now that's some handy information for Silicon Valley!

More infuriating anti-immigrant chatter

This has to be the most ridiculous crap I've seen (they've been running TV ads in SF): http://www.capsweb.org

Not only is it racist, it is devoid of reason and honesty. Here's their take on employment-based visa holders.

"Poorer working conditions"? "Lower salaries"? And what does the US unemployment rate have to do with the number of available, technically qualified candidates in software/IT in California?

Just shameful.

Nifty list of Groupon aggregators

http://www.quora.com/Has-anybody-built-a-deal-of-the-day-aggregator