Thought Clusters

When Phones and PDAs Merged

November 20, 2011

John Gruber posts a photo of this misleading 2007 presentation for the original iPhone: This is true as far as phones go. But back in 2004, there was the Tungsten T5: The Tungsten T5 cost around $400, less than what the first iPhone debuted for. It was a sophisticated device doing almost everything you needed, […]

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Trello and Siberian Cake Shop Owners

November 17, 2011

I was reading this amusing post on the Fog Creek blog by Rock Hymas illustrating Clayton Christensen’s disruption concept through the story of a cake shop owner in Siberia (!) who has some competition in the form of an ice cream stand. It is a good analogy, but it fails to explain why the cake shop owner makes […]

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The Google Reader Update

November 3, 2011

Many fans of Google Reader (the online RSS client) are up in arms over the recent changes. In my opinion, the outrage is a little overblown. First off, if you are reading this on a desktop, you already have a large monitor and the reduction in reading area is negligible. Plus you can hide the […]

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More on Typography

November 1, 2011

To follow up on my post on typography, I noticed that “This Developer’s Life” had a new podcast on the topic. I liked the interview with Bill Hill, who has done some stellar work with Microsoft on ClearType. The previous podcast episode on “Taste” was also very interesting. There was mention about the documentary “Helvetica”. […]

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No, Steve Jobs Did Not Solve the Innovator’s Dilemma

October 28, 2011

From the Harvard Business Review blog by James Allworth: To disrupt yourself, for example, Professor Christensen’s research would typically prescribe setting up a separate company that eventually goes on to defeat the parent. It’s incredibly hard to do this successfully; Dayton Dry Goods pulled it off with Target. IBM managed to do it with the […]

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Typography and User Interfaces

October 20, 2011

Google’s newest release of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, has a new font called Roboto. There has been a minor controversy as Roboto seems very much like Helvetica which, being copyrighted, Google cannot bundle along with the open source Android. And there has been some criticism of the font itself. For programmers in the past, these discussions […]

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Recommendation Engines: Exploitation and Exploration

October 17, 2011

A topic that I didn’t discuss in my post about recommendation engines was the concept of exploitation versus exploration in terms of providing recommendations. Some unfortunate terminology here, but basically “exploitation” refers to using a person’s activity to recommend products that are similar in nature. Exploration refers to recommending products that is a bit out […]

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The Problems with Steve Yegge’s Rant About Google+

October 15, 2011

Many people are talking about Steve Yegge’s rant that was mistakenly posted publicly on Google+ complaining about the lack of platform thinking at Google. As far as viral content goes, this had it all. It had much insider information (negative and positive) about Amazon, talks about Microsoft and Facebook and then praises much of Google, […]

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Understanding the Innovator’s Dilemma

October 11, 2011

Stephen Forte applies the Innovator’s Dilemma wrongly to Apple: In a nutshell, the Innovator’s Dilemma says the following (I am paraphrasing): when you invent something, first you are trying to penetrate a new market and convince people to buy your invention. At this stage you will do anything to get noticed. After a while, your […]

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