Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Why third place might not be the worst place

The Nintendo Wii gaming console sold something like 600,000 units in 8 days at an extremely low price as compared to competing offerings from Sony and Microsoft.  Certainly the Wii has a reduced feature set as compared to the all-in-one home media offerings from Sony and Microsoft, but those that I’ve talked to that have one strictly as a gaming console are very happy with their purchase.  In addition, Nintendo is selling their consoles at a profit while Sony and Microsoft are both losing money on each console sold.

The New Yorker has a great article about the Nintendo Wii being in 3rd place and why that’s not such a bad place to be:

The point is that business is not a sporting event. Victory for one company doesn’t mean defeat for everyone else. Markets today are so big—the global video-game market is now close to thirty billion dollars—that companies can profit even when they’re not on top, as long as they aren’t desperately trying to get there. The key is to play to your strengths while recognizing your limitations. Nintendo knew that it could not compete with Microsoft and Sony in the quest to build the ultimate home-entertainment device. So it decided, with the Wii, to play a different game entirely. Some pundits are now speculating, ironically, that the simplicity of the Wii may make it a huge hit. Nintendo wouldn’t complain if that happened.

In doing some Technorati searching, I found that Ed Sims from BeyondVC had picked up on the same New Yorker story and has some interesting comments about how this can relates to startups:

First, as a startup you have to get away from a feature/function battle because you will always lose against a big boy.  If a customer has already bought a product from an incumbent, they are more often than not willing to stay with that incumbent if they can deliver the extra feature/function soon enough in a good enough way. What I like startups to do is win with the product roadmap and vision.  Show the prospect how you solve their needs today better than the incumbent but more importantly why you are different and how your approach will solve their future needs.  If you can differentiate on this level, it gives you a much better chance to win. 

The moral of the story for every person in business is: Third place is not necessarily a place to avoid especially when competing in a large market and focusing on not being first or second can actually help you focus on core competencies.

Link — New Yorker

Link — BeyondVC

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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Quotiki

Quotiki is a wiki that allows you to collect, share, submit, and tag quotes; like Digg, the most popular quotes are pushed to the front page.  Being the quote collector that I am, I plan on definitely using this site.

For some reason there does not seem to be a way for you to subscribe to my quote feed, but I have to assume that’s coming.

Link

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Germophobia mitigation device

I know some people that actually will use the inside of their pocket or shirttail to open a door because of their level of germaphpobia.  Certainly I will open a bathroom door with a paper towel that I have used to dry my hands, but I don’t really have an extraordinarily high level of germaphobia.  In any case, if you are looking for the perfect holiday gift for the germaphobes in your life, you may wish to consider The Handler:

 

$9.95 buys you the keychain-size, nano technology silver impregnated, door handle hook to feed into your germaphobic lifestyle.

Originally seen at this post on Gizmodo.

Link

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Free security tools

Rob Pergoraro at The Washington Post has a great article about free security tools that you can use to minimize viruses, worms, adware, etc. without paying a thing.

Link

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Generate warning labels

I love the Warning Label Generator, an online tool that allows you to generate custom warning labels free of charge.

Link

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Vox

Six Apart, known for the Movable Type software, has launched a free, hosted blog platform called Vox that likely is designed to compete with Blogger.  If you’re looking to get into blogging, you may want to check out the service.

Link

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My WishList

The American Express WishList promotion went live this morning with the first offering being a 37” Sharp HD Aquos LCD for $900 (original retails of $2999).  As usual, there are lots of cool items in limited quantities for very inexpensive prices.

The interface to the Wishlist is much the same as last year, though they have added some refinements, most notably the “My Mobile WishList,” which allows you to attempt to purchase items from your mobile phone via a SMS gateway.  Note that there are certain restrictions to the mobile service and that not all of the items are available via the mobile service.

Link — WishList main

Link — WishList mobile

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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Light blogging ahead as I’ll be in San Francisco for the holiday.


As a public service to anyone frying a turkey, consider this method from Jalopnik:



Link


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Monday, November 20, 2006

$6,000 Carl's Jr. combo meal

You may not have seen the ad, but Carl’s Jr. is running a television spot with the Maloof Brothers that features a $6,000 combo meal with their $6 Burger, fries, and a bottle of 24–year-old Bordeaux.  The ad is great in that the first time that you see it, you think that it might be a joke or a spoof until they get to the punchline: the $6,000 combo is only available at The Palms.

As usual, the Maloof brothers have created an amazing brand extension for Carl’s Jr. and have integrated one of their main properties, The Palms, into the equation.  Will a massive number of people go The Palms to purchase this combo meal?  Probably not.  Is the advertisement, the concept, etc. new, cool, unique, and extraordinary?  Absolutely!

View the commercial on the Carl’s Jr. site through the link below or via the embedded YouTube.

Link

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$6,000 Carl's Jr. combo meal

You may not have seen the ad, but Carl’s Jr. is running a television spot with the Maloof Brothers that features a $6,000 combo meal with their $6 Burger, fries, and a bottle of 24–year-old Bordeaux.  The ad is great in that the first time that you see it, you think that it might be a joke or a spoof until they get to the punchline: the $6,000 combo is only available at The Palms.

As usual, the Maloof brothers have created an amazing brand extension for Carl’s Jr. and have integrated one of their main properties, The Palms, into the equation.  Will a massive number of people go The Palms to purchase this combo meal?  Probably not.  Is the advertisement, the concept, etc. new, cool, unique, and extraordinary?  Absolutely!

View the commercial on the Carl’s Jr. site through the link below or via the embedded YouTube.

Link

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Thursday, November 09, 2006

Stikkit

I use a lot of yellow sticky notes — traditionally I use them to take phone messages and then toss them out as soon as I return a call, do a task, etc.  Occasionally I find stickies on my desk with random bits of information, no clue as to when I wrote them, and with no idea if the stickies are actionable or very old (sometimes I can tell by whether or not the adhesive still sticks whether they are really old).  Other times I’ll leave something on sticky note on my desk and then need it when I’m somewhere else.

Based on all the stuff above, I was thrilled to start using Stikkit, which is a Web 2.0 version of digital sticky notes.  Here are some of the key features:

  • It’s hosted, so anywhere I can connect to the internet, I can get at my sticky notes.
  • Notes are archived, so I don’t have to worry about losing them.
  • Notes can be shared, which is pretty cool — I want to play around with having my receptionist use Stikkit to take phone messages for me.
  • Notes can be tagged to make it easier to find them.
  • Stikkit is ‘intelligent” and categorizes notes based on the information that is input — if I type in a name and a phone number, it catalogues it as an “individual” and if I type in a date and time, it classifies it as a calendar item.
  • There are nifty keyboard shortcuts that make it easy to navigate categories.
  • There’s a nifty landing page that summarizes calendar events.
  • Bookmarkelt with a clipping function for webpages.
  • RSS feed for my notes.

What’s missing?

  • Outlook/Google Calendar/Gmail contact integration — it would be nice if I could dump information that stikkit has collected into my PIM because all of my PIM information is not going to be in Stikkit.
  • Configuration/preferences — it would be nice to be able to change layouts, colors, etc., but not critical.
  • Time zone configuration — for some reason Stikkit thinks I’m creating and modifying things 18 hours prior to the actual time when I do things, which is strange.

Overall Stikkit is a strong product and will be added to my daily arsenal of web tools.

Link

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Tubular

If you want to be able to easily pull down YouTube videos on your Mac and easily convert them for use on your iPod, you could spend $19.99 when Tubular is released . . . or you could pre-order now for $12.99 . . . or you could click the link below, scroll to the bottom of the blog post that I’m linking to, and pre-order for $9.99.  Even at the full price of $19.99, this software looks well worth it.

Link

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Black Friday sales

Want a jump on those Black Friday sales that will happen the day after Thanksgiving?  Want to know if you need to air out your sleeping bag and get in line immediately following turkey dinner?

BlackFriday.info is collecting and posting all of the leaked 2006 Black Friday ads before they run.

Check it out.

Link

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Monday, November 06, 2006

Sam Walton's 10 rules for Business

Hey, Wal-Mart’s a damn successful company:

  1. Commit to your business.
  2. Share your profits with all your associates, and treat then as partners.
  3. Motivate your partners.
  4. Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners.
  5. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
  6. Celebrate your success.
  7. Listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking.
  8. Exceed your customer’s expectations
  9. Control your expenses better than your competition.
  10. Swim upstream.

Originally seen on the Business Opportunities Weblog.

Link

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My link blog is stealing from other authors?

My link blog is not stealing from blog authors and neither is Scoble’s.  Scoble has a post about how someone has accused him of stealing content in his Google Reader link blog and he has some strong thoughts around it that I agree with.  Neither Scoble nor I are re-publishing every article that a blog author posts on his/her blog — we simply post what we like and presumably if you read my link blog and like the content from a particular author, then you subscribe to the author’s blog feed.

Further, this person accuses Scoble of “stealing RSS,” which is laughable as the whole RSS protocol was designed to make it easy to share information — it’s easy for the end user to opt-in, easy for the end user to opt-out, and easy for the author to syndicate his/her information.  Perhaps RSS is referred to as “Really Simple Syndication” for a reason; if it was protocol designed to make it hard to share information, it might be called “Really Restrictive Syndication.”

Here’s the deal: if you don’t like the fact that I’m putting some of your content into my link blog, then send me an e-mail or drop a comment and I’ll remove all of your posts that currently exist in my link blog and never put one of your posts in my link blog again — it will actually be really easy for me to ensure you never are in my link blog again because I’ll probably unsubscribe from reading your blog on a daily basis.  Note that like Scoble’s, my link blog is totally public and runs no advertising that I have control over; in fact, it appears that the link blog preserves the original feed advertising from the original blog from which the posts are pulled.

Link — Scoble

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Online file conversion

TechCrunch has a post about some online file conversion services.  As with many traditional computer user services, online file conversion services are taking the process off of the user’s desktop and onto their own server.  Unlike the traditional user computer method, you have to take into account the time that it takes to upload and download the files that you want converted — if you don’t have a broadband connection, you probably don’t want to be using these services.  Although free for limited numbers of conversions, these services presumably have a revenue model based on bulk batch conversions at some point in the future.

Link — TechCrunch

Link — Zamzar

Link — Media Convert

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Trademarks

Lots of people don’t know anything about trademarks — some people don’t even know that the little “R” in a circle means that a trademark has been registered.  Seth Godin has a great post that summarizes everything that you need to actually know about trademarks, but as usual, your mileage may vary.

Link

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OpenDNS

OpenDNS is just what is sounds like: an open source DNS project.  If you do not know what DNS stands for, then this is probably not for you though they do have great instructions on how to configure various routers and desktop computers to use their service.

Link

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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Gmail java app available for mobile phones

If you are a Gmail user and have a phone that supports Java applications, this Java app will make it much easier to access Gmail than using WAP.  Note that if you have a phone that supports IMAP or POP3, you might want to consider using that instead of the Java application.

Link

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