Internet 3.0 and the rise of the gatekeepers

The Internet is in danger and if 1.0 was its dawning, 2.0 was the creation of apps, 3.0 may go down in history as the rise of the gatekeepers. What has made the Internet so amazingly innovative is its opportunity for all. Anyone, yours truly included, can create a presence, draw attention and find journalistic […]

Twitter: you’ve come a long way, Baby

Ah, Twitter. You and I have had an interesting relationship over the years. More than once, I tried to start using you only to find your streams of information hard to follow and distracting at the same time. You’re unfair, too. While some tweet innocuous nonsense to millions of followers, I see my followers come […]

3 reasons I started my own company

The following is a guest blog by Darius Salehipour. In March 2012, I started my first day of user experience and interface design at a company in Palo Alto. That first day on the job I realized how much I needed to learn. After researching the oceans of new “user-centered thinking” articles and books, I […]

There’s no stopping a technology whose time has arrived

About ten years ago, I visited my aunt who’s a famous photographer.  She had a new, top of the line Nikon digital camera with a 8 MP resolution.  I was amazed at the clarity of the photos and how you could manipulate and print the crisp digital images.  I really wanted one, but the $5,000 […]

Paper is process cancer

In a blog today, Theo Priestley asks the question, “Are we that afraid of the customer to create a paperless society?” How is it possible that we’re still talking about that in 2013? As crazy as it seems, paper is stubbornly hanging on across vast swaths of industry, including government, healthcare and even overnight shipping. […]

Innovating around a bureaucracy

What do you do if you’re a leader in a large, successful organization with an entrenched bureaucracy, and you see the need for innovation? Can you change the way a large organization — such as the federal government — does its work, when all the forces are arrayed for stability and conservatism? Consider the story […]

Maybe Dublin is the best place to start a business

I may just have seen the next breakthrough technology company in its infancy. Yesterday, I spent the morning taking a behind the scenes tour of the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus.  The DEC is home to 80 aspiring start-up companies focused in the fields of Technology, Green, and International business. […]

Apple strategy of not caring too much

If there’s one thing that defines Apple’s rise over the past decade, it has been the lack of defensiveness on their relentless march forward. CEO Tim Cook spoke this morning at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference and his words were fascinating for what they say about their attitude: Apple doesn’t care too much. […]

What If ?…Ouya could run your business

What if a box as small as Ouya was all you needed to run your business ? Mainframe is becoming extinct. Software is becoming leaner, faster. Cloud is digitally pervasive. In-Memory data and parallel processing across an Internet of Things will be a reality. Startup businesses are becoming leaner, more agile. And all you’d need […]

There won’t be a ‘next version of the Web’

In an excellent post on Wired, David Gelernter makes the argument that we’re approaching The End of the Web, Search and Computer as We Know It. In what sounds like a science-fiction statement, Gelernter says that,  “The space-based web we currently have will be gradually replaced by a time-based worldstream.” We have evidence of what […]

Old rules on new battlefields

It is easy to think we’re the first to live in such disruptive times. Not even close to true. I recently visited a Civil War battlefield and had a great conversation with one of the reenactment actors who happened to be a history buff.  In our twenty minute conversation, he told me two remarkable, very […]

Dare to be wrong

How many times can you afford to be wrong at work? In life, we are probably wrong everyday. We make wrong decisions, make a wrong bet, or say the wrong things to people. However, life keeps going and we move on pretty quickly, learning something new as we go. In love, we are often wrong […]

Is there a future for innovation ?

Have you noticed how tech savvy children have become but are no longer streetwise ? I read Jaisundar’s thoughts on his own site last week and there was a slight pang of regret in where technology and innovation seems to be leading us all. It was around the time I was trying to figure if […]

Backpacking makes us more creative

As part of life in Southern California, we have the luxury of hiking and backpacking throughout the year. And we don’t just stay near home where it is convenient. The photo is of a recent trip to Nepal where we spent three glorious weeks in the Himalayas (the mountains in the distance). We are those […]

Can disruption really happen this fast?

One process that we all hate performing is expense reports. If you don’t hate them, you’re probably an accountant and nothing can be done for you. For the rest of us, it is a dreaded requirement. In my workplace, the process for expense reports is a pretty standard one. We have to send PDF’s of […]

Fear becomes the only obstacle

If you were born in 1700 Europe, you had very few options. There were many, many things that held you back from being whatever your destiny might have been based on your energy and creativity. Fear was the least of your challenges. Flash forward to now. For anyone with even average drive and creativity, fear […]