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This blog represents my personal views and is not reflective of the views or opinions held by any company, contractor, client or employer I work for currently or have worked for in the past.
http://vimeo.com/uniformproject When I found out about Sheena Matheiken’s Uniform Project, I was astounded. She decided to wear the exact same dress for an entire year, mixing in only thrifted or donated accessories, in order to raise money for the Akanksha Foundation for less fortunate children. One dress. 365 days. I can’t wear the same thing twice in a row and this girl was going to do it for a whole year! I wondered how in the world would she creatively find new and different outfits for 365 days based on one dress? But she did it, and did it well. Sheena even edited together a little video to show off her style choices throughout the entire year. I promise, you’ll be more than impressed. With a basic black dress, Sheena invented an entire collection of characters—honoring The King of Pop, certain holidays, and the seasons with her style choices while sticking to that same black dress. This girl not only has more style and creative juices than a ton of people, but more importantly, Sheena raised $74,522 for her efforts, meaning that 207 children now have the chance to go to school! There are a few days left—the entire project culminates on May 1—so if you’re inspired make sure to donate.
Gaming can make the world a better place. Just ask Jane McGonigal, a game designer, games researcher, and future forecaster who creates alternative-reality games that solve real-world problems through collaboration. In A World Without Oil, for instance, she envisioned a post-oil world asked players to document their fictional lives through videos, images, and blog entries. The alternative-reality game Evoke encouraged young people to come up with solutions to the world's social problems. The Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future (coolest job title ever!), McGonigal taps the masses through videos and online posts and partners with companies ranging from McDonald's and Kraft to Nike, Microsoft, and AKQA. The response from both sides is massive and some games racking up as many as 5 million participants. --Ariel Schwartz
In my view these two videos about the lean start-up methodology is so important and insightful that you should watch again and again untill it gets stuck in your brain.
Pyra Labs is the company that coined the word Blogger, and made the service a big success.
The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger. The service was made available to the public in August 1999. Much of this coding was done by Paul Bausch and Matthew Haughey. 2000. Initially, Blogger was completely free and there was no revenue model. When the company's seed money dried up, the employees continued without pay for weeks or, in some cases, months; but this could not last, and eventually Williams faced a mass walk-out by everyone including co-founder Hourihan. Williams ran the company virtually alone until he was able to secure an investment by Trellix after its founder Dan Bricklin became aware of Pyra's situation. Eventually advertising-supported blogspot and Blogger Pro emerged. In 2002, Blogger was completely re-written in order to license it to other companies, the first of which was Globo of Brazil. The company was acquired by Google in 2003. The people at Pyra Labs at the time of acquisition were Evan Williams, Jason Shellen, Steve Jenson, Jason Sutter, and Rudy Winnacker and jason goldman. In 2004, Williams left Google, later going on to form obvious corp . In 2006, goldman also left Google. Hourihan was associated with Kinja and some other sites. Obvious became odeo and twitter was created by jack dorsey of odeo. Odeo lost out to itunes and williams dorsey and stone bought obvious and twitter
Tuesday 18 February 2003 Google, the world's most-used internet search engine, yesterday announced the acquisition of Blogger, a web service which has fuelled the rapid rise of the web journals popularly known as weblogs. Pyra Labs, the company behind Blogger, was sold to Google for an undisclosed sum on Saturday after four months of negotiations. Weblogs, once the preserve of a technologically savvy elite, have gained popularity since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. The websites, which mostly serve niche audiences, typically contain frequently updated opinion and links to material around the internet. Blogger is behind more than 1m weblogs, 200,000 of which are active. The sale is being seen by many in the online community as a sign weblogs have become a mainstream medium. Evan Williams, Pyra's chief executive, said last night he was very happy about the deal which has transferred him and Blogger's six staff to Google. He said: "There is not a great deal I can talk about at the moment.We are all still trying to figure it out." Earlier, on his Evhead.com weblog, he described the purchase as "an awesome opportunity". The sale is a dramatic turnaround for San Francisco-based Blogger, which rode the high and subsequent low of the dotcom boom. The company was founded in 1999, and Mr Williams had to lay off the company's entire staff in late 2000. He continued to maintain the service by himself from his home until last year, when he increased revenues by starting a premium version.
A blueprint sketch, circa 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network
Now $160m invested Google and Bing deals $25m …real time news
Twttr is a new mobile service that helps groups of friends bounce random thoughts around with SMS. When we showed it to Jason Goldman (product manager of Blogger) he called it "present tense blogging." That's a great way to describe it. It's fun to use because it strips social blogging down to it's essence and makes it immediate.
Jack Dorsey is one of Odeo's brightest stars so when he told us about this idea that has been haunting him for six years we had to listen. It's not even remotely related to audio but it's an awesome idea so we told him to go for it. Jack put this thing together very quickly but it took a few months to get a short code.
Anywhoo, there are two ways to use twttr: on the phone and on the web. The phone part is entirely text based like an adventure game. In addition to posting to 40404 you can "follow biz" "nudge jack" or "get noah" and other stuff. On the web you can browse through your timeline, post, and do lots of other stuff. I find myself switching between the two interfaces when it suits me. It's good stuff.
As pioneer web publishing tool Blogger turns 8 years, I thought it was appropriate to put this thing I did some years ago in YouTube. I recorded this on march 2000, during a brief conference visit to San Francisco. How different things were back then. And how difficult was to realize what was next to come.
Maybe this could be considered a piece of weblogs history and the internet at large, but I'd rather let you decide that.
Don't think of a job as just getting a desk and a job description. Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, points out that landing a job means getting a key to the building. And what that key unlocks is entirely up to you. The endless possibilities of creating work, new projects, and developing ideas that cater to your passions are available to any employee in any office. Seelig urges entrepreneurial thinking in the workplace, and tells students that they should build the ladder below themselves, rather than waiting for someone else to put it before them.
The Do-Band project sets out to create positive social change through self-empowerment. One of the greatest obstacles facing "Causes" is that you often must convince the person to support your cause—but this creates a paralyzing chasm between acknowledgement and action. Signatures and pledges mean very little without true commitment. Do-Bands combine this insight with the realization that everyone has their own causes that they care about. Everyone has something on his/her To-Do list that they want to do, they ought to do, but they just never get to it (calling your mom, registering to vote, or donating blood). These are powerful to-do items that have a lot of potential...if only they were completed. Do-Bands overcome this block. Here is how they work: We labeled and handed out hundreds of Do-Bands. By accepting a Do-Band, you are pledging to wear the Do-Band until you fulfill your promise. Then, you record your success, and pass the Do-Band to someone else! However, each Do-Band has a unique number on it, so the value and journey of the individual band can be tracked online (dobands.blogspot.com). In this way, participants are given the opportunity to see how other stories have branched out from theirs, creating a social web of success stories that empowers people to take action. In addition, we created Virtual Do-Bands that allowed us to reach beyond the Stanford campus and actually go international. Do-Bands were able to capture the spirit of E-Week by promoting creativity, risk taking, and innovation by encouraging individuals to follow through with a commitment to themselves or others.
But this is where it all started......one of the original ideas from the Stanford creativity class
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, reveals that basic research and good ideas are the key components to creating a tremendous opportunity in the tech market. A lot of new knowledge is being created all the time and much of it can be used as the foundation for innovation.
Stanford Technology Ventures Program's Executive Director Tina Seelig shares rich insights in creative thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset. Her talk, based on her 2009 book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, cites numerous classroom successes of applied problem-solving and the lessons of failure.
