Link | Netbooks » Wired

The March Wired article on netbooks is very interesting, too. I’ve always been a fan of having a small laptop.

I was a portege guy for a long time. I’ve been wondering about the usefulness of these small unix laptops for a few years. A couple summers ago I loaded xUbuntu on a 1999 vintage portege laptop to see how it would “feel”.

The end result was that it was just fine for all the stuff mentioned in this netbook article – email (thunderbird), websurfing (firefox), and writing text(vi & Abiword), etc. The only issue is that it takes forever to boot and it was pretty bad with for presentations of large pdf files. A 2009 netbook is much more powerful than a ’99 portege, so I’m strongly thinking that my next laptop is gonna be a netbook running Ubuntu

Link | Wired March Cover

Just got my march copy of wired yesterday. I love the cover “The Secret Formula That Destroyed Wall Street”. Now I’ve got to read it.

Link | iPhone App Store Secrets » Fred Wilson

Fred points to a cool presentation on iPhone Apps from Pinch Media. Looks like apps that “stick” are very rare.

• slide 15 – Long term audiences are ~ 1% of total downloads
• slide 15 – paid applications retain users longer than free apps, although drop is is still pretty steep. (
• slide 13- Users returning vs Age Since First Used. Wow and free apps drop off faster!

Link | An Unfair Crisis » Niall Ferguson : reportonbusiness.com

Bullets from Niall Ferguson interview in Globe & Mail.

• “It’s almost paradoxical that an American crisis … reinforces the status of the United States as a safe haven.”
• “It’s tempting to conclude from that … that Canada will be less hard hit in the crisis than the United States. But that is unfortunately wrong. Because this is a very unfair crisis. The epicentre is the United States, but the rest of the world, and particularly America’s trading partners, will get hit harder than the U.S.”
• “As you know, Chimerica – the fusion of China and America – is one of my big ideas.”
• Heather Scoffield: “Is a violent resolution to this crisis inevitable?”
  Niall Ferguson:“There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme.”
• “In the Ascent of Money, I argue that you can’t really have a bubble if you don’t have a monetary authority that has been excessively generous.”

(Tip to Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed for reminding to read my morning paper)

Link | Seth’s Blog « Three things you need if you want more customers

Note to self. Don’t forget to re-read Seth’s Blog: Three things you need if you want more customers often Very simple points that are extremely hard to do in practice. With a few examples of those who dared to skip one

In a nutshell: A market you can identify & reach (ie real names), that has a problem your product can solve, and that prospects will pay for.

Link | 4 Bad Bears » dshort.com

Ouch

tip to Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed

Link | Canada Rocks ( in typical quiet fashion) » Fareed Zakaria

Sometimes it’s cool to be Canadian Here are some bullet points from a glowing review of Canada. Worthwhile Canadian Initiative by Fareed Zakaria — Newsweek

• Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1, and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1.
  • Surprise Surprise
    • No Canadian bank has failed in current crisis
    • TD is now world’s 5th largest bank
• Canadian’s can’t deduct home mortgages
  • I loved this when I lived in the US, but it cost’s US govt > $100B
  • fyi .. Home ownership is same — 68% in US & 68.4% in Canada
• Canada’s health care costs less and we live longer.
  • is 9.7 % GDP in Canada vs 15.2% in USA

  • 81 years in Canada vs 78 years in USA

Tip to my buddy Joe for finding this

Link | Please teach kids programming, Mr. President » Eric Ries’ Blog

Please teach kids programming, Mr. President » Lessons Learned

Of course, what I (Eric) really mean is: let them teach themselves.

Eric’s long post really hit me hard. I’ve got many thoughts popping up. I’ll have to stew on it some more.

My gut says that these “nerd” behaviors that Eric describes, and the lack of support for them, are at the root of why we have big guys like Bill Gates talking strongly about declining Math & Science Enrollment.

Just how does one support the average “nerd” programmer who starts programming at age 13 ( ie many years before it is taught in school )?

Link | Texas Instruments, unafraid to reinvent itself, is doing it again » Dallas Morning News

GigaOm blog links to a lengthy article Texas Instruments, unafraid to reinvent itself, is doing it again » Dallas Morning News which describes TI’s plans to focus on embedded processors and analog, while de-emphasizing devices for wireless handsets.

Interesting choices. The DSP guru’s go analog. It’s like — back to the future.

Link | A. Yes Q. Is marketing evil? » Seth’s Blog

Yikes. Yes is Seth’s response to the question “Is Marketing evil?” He follows up with his view that not all marketers are evil. In the end his answer sounds like the description of a gun — it’s a powerful tool that can be used for good and evil. It’s our choice on how to use it.

Here are the key points extracted verbatim from Seth’s post.

• Marketing works
• Is marketing evil? Based on a long career in the business, I’d have to answer ‘yes.’
• Are marketers evil? Based on a long career in the business, I’d have to answer ‘some of them.’
• Just like every powerful tool, the impact comes from the craftsman, not the tool.