Former GoDaddyites Next Adventure: Sourcely

September 7, 2015

The proliferation of smart phones and the one-to-two-year upgrade cycle means there will be an awful lot of discarded phones, and many broken ones. Small businesses have sprung up everywhere to repair cracked screens, water damage, and other defects. The supply chain for the growing “recommerce” industry has, until recently, been business to consumer, as […]

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Facebook and the Big Dream

September 7, 2015

Facebook passed the billion user a day mark recently, prompting some pundits to talk about how it was a walled garden that was focused on owning the internet, and others (in Russia) to talk about it as an evil force. Not for me. Let me tell you why. In 1998 I met an Apple alum […]

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If You Think Zirtual Was a One-Off, Think Again

August 12, 2015

The disingenuousness of the Silicon Valley culture is revealed in the collapse of virtual assistant service Zirtual this week. Read this from the founder and this from Paul Carr for the background. Several common Silicon Valley myths caused this: 1)An inexperienced entrepreneur can make it big in an ecosystem like Silicon Valley without help 2)Users are […]

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Dog at Large

August 9, 2015

I have three rescue dogs. They are all trained as service dogs under the international Public Access and AKC Canine Good Citizen training programs. Training them involves doing the same thing with them day after day so they get the picture of what’s required. So I’ve come up with two awards programs: Dog at Large […]

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Floating

August 7, 2015

One of the unintended consequences of rising health care costs is that consumers have awakened to the fact that they have choices. They can choose to prevent disease, and to pay people who actually make them feel better — hence the proliferation of massage therapy, yoga, physical training, nutrition information, and other preventive health services. This change […]

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ReadWrite Announces Crowdfunding at #WWC15

May 20, 2015

You have to hand it to Redg Snodgrass of Wearable World. First he went out on a limb with Wearable Wednesdays, Now he has taken a huge, cavernous white elephant of a space in San Francisco, the Palace of FIne Arts,  and made it into an accelerator for companies involved in wearables or IOT.I can’t […]

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Roadrunner 1-Apple 0

May 12, 2015

Apple is the quintessential example of superb luxury brand merchandising, right? But I have just been sold $259 worth of athletic shoes (one pair) by Roadrunner Sports. Not your idea of a luxury brand. Better try-on experience than the Apple Watch, and the store actually had what I wanted to buy. In all my years […]

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Apple Customer Service Suffers Along With Everyone’s

May 3, 2015

Remember when the biggest complaint about customer service was the guy in the call center in India whose accent you didn’t understand? I long for those days now. Call centers all over India have been shuttered as brands push their customers to the online FAQ. You now need a Ph.D to wade through the options […]

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We Have the Education System we Deserve

April 27, 2015

This past weekend I spent the morning as a volunteer for SySTEM Schools at a job fair for teachers called the Great Arizona Teach-In. Sponsored by the Arizona Department of Education, the Teach-In is an in-person exchange where new teachers and teachers who wish to change jobs — or have to change jobs because of […]

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The MisMarketing of the Apple Watch

April 15, 2015

By the time I woke up April 14 at 5 AM PDT and logged onto the Apple Store, the delivery date for the Apple Watch Sport was June. My first clue to the mis-marketing of this product was the fact that I could even get into the store. When the phones and the IPad launched, […]

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