Don't Travel

I don't mean to be a hater. But there is another side of the story. The so-called lifestyle gurus and permanent travelers seem convinced that their lifestyle is superior. The you too can do it is the biggest hint that their path is preferred. Certainly they don't literally believe it, but rather it is an ... Read more

Customer Service Policy & Practice

Don't be a legalistic idiot. Business is not about getting money from people who don't want to give it to you or want it back, for good or services that were never provided. Who would come up with this as a definition for business, much less good business? This sounds more like a government taxation ... Read more

Network Effects, Multiplatforms and the Cloud

Apple sees most clearly how integration between devices and the cloud, with the cloud as the memory system between devices, is a competitive advantage. Network effects are not only in terms of more users of a system or platform, but more uses across systems for a single user. This means that the Mac OSX notebook ... Read more

Android Multilingual and Swiping Keyboards

There is a plethora of keyboards available in Android (as opposed to the iPhone), and some have the innovative swiping feature of dragging fingers across the keys instead of individual typing of each key. That is great, and the original Swype is available for free in Beta. However, if there is a need for multilingual ... Read more

Evidence of Competence, and Lack Thereof

This is a point I've been confused about for a long time. For one thing, I fully buy into the idea that you want people to grow, as your organization grows, so they should have a level of incompetence for new and developing challenges which they will encounter. If they are fully competent at everything, ... Read more

Two Hours Per Day to Jackpot in 7 Years

There is an interesting news item on how a Stanford Statistics PhD may have beaten the odds through a systematic approach. Total winnings from four scratcher jackpots beginning in 1993 adds up to $21 million. The Clever Part The clever part was figuring out the seasonality and geographic locations of the winning scratcher cards. Not ... Read more

Agree to Disagree: A thought-terminating cliché

One annoying phrase which tends to be more useless than anything is: > We can agree to disagree Thanks to Wikipedia we know that this phrase may be close to 250 years old. We also know that it implies a kind of tolerance but lack of acceptance of another persons' position. However, there are several ... Read more

The Epiphenomena of Academia

Much of academia and academic research in America is epiphenomenal. This is best illustrated by the common comparison of college with the real world. That is, college, the ivory tower, etc., is its' own world that has different rules, and whose learning doesn't always or even usually apply to the other world, outside of academia. ... Read more

Advantages of the Solo Entrepreneur

The Solo Entrepreneur is considered to be an inferior species, generally shunned by investors, and for whom traction comes many years later, when compared with two or more founding partners. However, there are many advantages to solo entrepreneurship, and while the odds of success are likely less, the odds of success of any entrepreneurial activity ... Read more

Entrepreneurial Migration

As an expat from the USA living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, foreigners are immediately noticeable (unless of asian descent), and stand out. Clearly I am not originally from here, and so this lends itself to the entrepreneurial question: Why would entrepreneurs relocate from one country to another? * Less risk * More opportunity Opportunity and ... Read more