America........................................Horse with No Name
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Chris Dixon offers some advice.........
Full post is here. Excerpts are here:
1. If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your
goals aren’t ambitious enough.
2. Don’t climb the wrong hill
3. The next big thing will start out looking like a toy
Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” their users’ needs. The first telephone could only carry voices a mile or two. The leading incumbent of the time, Western Union, chose not to acquire telephone technology because they didn’t see how it could be useful to businesses and railroads – their best customers. What they failed to anticipate was how rapidly telephone technology and infrastructure would improve. The same was true of how mainframe companies viewed the PC, and how modern telecom companies viewed Skype.
The list of top internet companies in 10 years will look very different than that same list does today. And the new ones on the list will be companies that snuck by the incumbents because people dismissed them as toys.
4. Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t
yet dramatically transformed, it will.
The Internet has gone through fits and starts – a bubble, a crash, and now a revival. Pundits are speculating that another crash is coming. Regardless of what happens in the near term, what we do know is that every year we will continue to see more and more industries succumb to the transformational power of the Internet.
Already transformed: music, news, advertising, telecom. Being transformed: finance, commerce, TV & movies, real estate, politics & government. Soon to be transformed: healthcare, education, and energy, among others.
1. If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your
goals aren’t ambitious enough.
2. Don’t climb the wrong hill
3. The next big thing will start out looking like a toy
Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” their users’ needs. The first telephone could only carry voices a mile or two. The leading incumbent of the time, Western Union, chose not to acquire telephone technology because they didn’t see how it could be useful to businesses and railroads – their best customers. What they failed to anticipate was how rapidly telephone technology and infrastructure would improve. The same was true of how mainframe companies viewed the PC, and how modern telecom companies viewed Skype.
The list of top internet companies in 10 years will look very different than that same list does today. And the new ones on the list will be companies that snuck by the incumbents because people dismissed them as toys.
4. Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t
yet dramatically transformed, it will.
The Internet has gone through fits and starts – a bubble, a crash, and now a revival. Pundits are speculating that another crash is coming. Regardless of what happens in the near term, what we do know is that every year we will continue to see more and more industries succumb to the transformational power of the Internet.
Already transformed: music, news, advertising, telecom. Being transformed: finance, commerce, TV & movies, real estate, politics & government. Soon to be transformed: healthcare, education, and energy, among others.
Turn it on, wind it up, blow it out..............
Ronnie and the Daytonas..........................Little GTO
Friday, October 7, 2011
Fun with old buildings...............
One of the oldest buildings on Newark's Downtown Square sits at 22 North Park Place. The above picture has been dated to around 1859. We know this because on the original photograph (that this is a reduction of) you can see the picture of Stephen Douglas, he of the Lincoln/Douglas debate fame, on the placard in front of the building. The building is thought to have been constructed in the 1830s, originally as a stage coach stop and tavern that evolved into this building as a hotel.
This photo of 22 North Park Place, judging by the cars, was taken sometime in the late 1950's. The fine wrought iron railing is missing from the second floor. The hitching posts are gone from the street and parking meters have appeared.
This photo of 22 North Park Place is about five years old. A careful observer might note that our formerly three story building is now a two story building. Apparently there was a fire on the third floor. Instead of rebuilding it, they just shrank the building. Also, in the early 1960's some extremely successful salesmen of blue ceramic tiles and blue sheet metal rolled through Newark. When we started investing in downtown Newark real estate in the mid-1980s more than a dozen storefronts had been re-surfaced in a manner similar to the above photo. It might have looked good in 1962. There are only two remaining examples in the downtown of this sort of facade design. One of them remains at 22 North Park, just the east half of the building though. The west half was recently "fixed." The blue sheet metal looked tired and dated so we pulled it off, re-opened the old windows that had been blocked in and installed new windows, added an imitation wrought iron railing, added some sandstone block where needed, and reworked the lower storefront. And voila! The results are below. We kind of like it. We had plans to re-do both halves of the building, but budget constraints suggested now was not the right time. Since completion we have received many a comment suggesting the juxtaposition of the new old and the old new is worth leaving alone. We agree.
Messy..............................
"It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than
rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep
questions of the heart, and they will never love you."
-Wm. Paul Young, The Shack
rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep
questions of the heart, and they will never love you."
-Wm. Paul Young, The Shack
Things to avoid....................
"You ask me to say what you should consider it particularly
important to avoid. My answer is this: a mass crowd. It is
something to which you cannot entrust yourself yet without
risk. I at any rate am ready to confess my own frailty in
this respect."
-Seneca, Letter VII, Letters from a Stoic
thanks Hugh
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Your blues will fade away..................
Firefall.......................................Just Remember I Love You
He pushed......................
Think Different.................................The original Apple ad
Opening paragraphs..........
At night was come in-to
that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were
they alle...
So does Geoffrey Chaucer describe the convening - at the Tabard Inn in Southwark on the southern bank of the River Thames - of twenty-nine pilgrims. The next day they would ride southeast from London to Canterbury, "the holy blisful martir for to seke (seek)." For in the year 1170, Canterbury had been the scene of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, the unbending archbishop of Canterbury, slain by four knights in service to King Henry II. The martyr's bones were kept in a jewel-encrusted shrine in the cathedral where he had been murdered, and from them was believed to emanate miraculous healing power. All over England people prayed to Becket, invoking his intercession with God "whan that they were seke (sick)," as Chaucer tells us. Those who were cured of their maladies would then make their promised pilgrimage to Becket's bones.
-Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages
that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were
they alle...
So does Geoffrey Chaucer describe the convening - at the Tabard Inn in Southwark on the southern bank of the River Thames - of twenty-nine pilgrims. The next day they would ride southeast from London to Canterbury, "the holy blisful martir for to seke (seek)." For in the year 1170, Canterbury had been the scene of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, the unbending archbishop of Canterbury, slain by four knights in service to King Henry II. The martyr's bones were kept in a jewel-encrusted shrine in the cathedral where he had been murdered, and from them was believed to emanate miraculous healing power. All over England people prayed to Becket, invoking his intercession with God "whan that they were seke (sick)," as Chaucer tells us. Those who were cured of their maladies would then make their promised pilgrimage to Becket's bones.
-Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages
Is it investing or speculating...........
The headline of the CCIM magazine read "Dirt, Cheap:
Opportunistic Investors Place Their Bets on Land."
Owning some, I thought, "this should be rich."
The opening paragraph to the story reads: "Even at bargain
basement prices, most land investments today are a
gamble."
Hmmmm. Sound like speculation, not investment, to me.
Speculation is not considered investing by this blog. It is also
not for the faint at heart. The confusion between the two has
caused more than a few heartaches.
P.S. We own some development land that is for sale, should
any of you want to place a bet on it.
The inspiration of "potential"......
Being labeled as "having potential" has often been the kiss of death for many an aspiring athelete, or an aspiring youngster (of all ages) for that matter. Hugh MacLeod suggests it doesn't have to be that way.
"What is human potential? More specifically, what is YOUR unique human potential? Or mine? Generally, we are capable of great things—we put a man on the moon, we painted the Sistine Chapel, etc. Yet we forget our own potential when we consider our own small footprint in a lifetime, and it terrifies us.
"But remember…this terror is a good thing. It motivates us to step out of our comfort zones and into worlds of possibility. Then the question arises—why do anything at all? Not because we want to impress someone or become more popular, but because there’s a point to our existence. We just have to define it for ourselves.
"I think it's a good idea to always be thinking about our potential and, like in this cartoon, to always laugh at it. It inspires creativity in ourselves and in others, which is why I share what I do, so you can share inspiration in turn…"
Thanks Hugh
"What is human potential? More specifically, what is YOUR unique human potential? Or mine? Generally, we are capable of great things—we put a man on the moon, we painted the Sistine Chapel, etc. Yet we forget our own potential when we consider our own small footprint in a lifetime, and it terrifies us.
"But remember…this terror is a good thing. It motivates us to step out of our comfort zones and into worlds of possibility. Then the question arises—why do anything at all? Not because we want to impress someone or become more popular, but because there’s a point to our existence. We just have to define it for ourselves.
"I think it's a good idea to always be thinking about our potential and, like in this cartoon, to always laugh at it. It inspires creativity in ourselves and in others, which is why I share what I do, so you can share inspiration in turn…"
Thanks Hugh
Wonder if he is talking about bloggers?
"The power of the one, vast, collective brain found in the
Internet is the greatest development in mankind’s civilization
since the creation of civilization itself."
So says Sean Purcell in a post titled "The Reason for Boundless
Optimism." Here. Personally I like boundless optimism. I lost it
there for a few days, but I can feel it coming back. None too
soon.
Internet is the greatest development in mankind’s civilization
since the creation of civilization itself."
So says Sean Purcell in a post titled "The Reason for Boundless
Optimism." Here. Personally I like boundless optimism. I lost it
there for a few days, but I can feel it coming back. None too
soon.
Happy Talk
Jeff Thredgold, my favorite economic futurist, can't go six months
without posting about all the really neat things we could rightly
be thankful for. Full newsletter here. A sampling here:
During the early 1960s, the five-year survival rate from cancer for Americans was one in three. Today it is two in three…continuing to climb…and the highest in the world
The U.S. accounted for 34% of the funds spent globally on research & development (R&D) during 2010
The country’s net petroleum imports peaked at 60.3% in 2005 and dropped to 49.3% in 2010. Within a year,North Dakota is expected to supply more oil for domestic use than the 1.1 million barrels a day that Saudi Arabia now exports to the U.S.
The number of violent crimes fell by a surprisingly large 12% last year versus the prior year
Conventional thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.06% in recent weeks, the lowest level in 60 year
America produces more steel today than 30 years ago, despite the shuttered plants and slimmed-down work force
Average U.S. life expectancy has reached 78.2 years (men 75, women 80), the highest ever. This compares to 76 years in 1995, 68 years in 1950, and 47 years in 1900
Roughly 30% of trash was recycled or composted in the latest year, versus 16% in 1990
When comparing economic size and population, the average U.S. worker is 10-12 times more productive than the average worker in China. Americans won 30 Nobel prizes in science and economics during the past five years. China?…just one
The upward “mobility” of the typical American remains the greatest in the world. Why? The U.S.economy “rewards” the combination of hard work and educational achievement more than ever before…and more than any other country in the world
U.S. exports to China have risen roughly 24% per year since 2001, making China the fastest growing market for U.S.goods
For every dollar of U.S. economic output generated today, we burn less than half as much oil as 30 years ago
without posting about all the really neat things we could rightly
be thankful for. Full newsletter here. A sampling here:
During the early 1960s, the five-year survival rate from cancer for Americans was one in three. Today it is two in three…continuing to climb…and the highest in the world
The U.S. accounted for 34% of the funds spent globally on research & development (R&D) during 2010
The country’s net petroleum imports peaked at 60.3% in 2005 and dropped to 49.3% in 2010. Within a year,North Dakota is expected to supply more oil for domestic use than the 1.1 million barrels a day that Saudi Arabia now exports to the U.S.
The number of violent crimes fell by a surprisingly large 12% last year versus the prior year
Conventional thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.06% in recent weeks, the lowest level in 60 year
America produces more steel today than 30 years ago, despite the shuttered plants and slimmed-down work force
Average U.S. life expectancy has reached 78.2 years (men 75, women 80), the highest ever. This compares to 76 years in 1995, 68 years in 1950, and 47 years in 1900
Roughly 30% of trash was recycled or composted in the latest year, versus 16% in 1990
When comparing economic size and population, the average U.S. worker is 10-12 times more productive than the average worker in China. Americans won 30 Nobel prizes in science and economics during the past five years. China?…just one
The upward “mobility” of the typical American remains the greatest in the world. Why? The U.S.economy “rewards” the combination of hard work and educational achievement more than ever before…and more than any other country in the world
U.S. exports to China have risen roughly 24% per year since 2001, making China the fastest growing market for U.S.goods
For every dollar of U.S. economic output generated today, we burn less than half as much oil as 30 years ago
...I'll give you three.................
Ronettes.....................Be My Baby
As always, click through to Youtube
As always, click through to Youtube
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
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