Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition

The state of the union

For some reason on a plane ride to Phoenix yesterday I was thinking about how every US President manages to make the same statement each year that the state of the union is strong regardless of the actual state of the union.  Somewhere over the Sierra Nevadas, I concluded that there are a lot of personal factors tied into that decision.   Would you want to be the first President to declare: the state of the union is messed up and we've got so many problems I don't know where to begin.

In Phoenix, I met with a great friend and we stumbled into a conversation on how decisions are often made in business.  He recounted to me a story of observing first hand the study of moving a company's operations to a new city.  Much research was done by lots of people spending lots of money to determine the pros and cons of three great cities.  What did it come down to?  Where the CEO wanted to raise his kids, of course.

I related this kind of thinking to my last company.  We sold the company in 2002 because I thought it was the best option available at the time.  Six months earlier, our CEO was advocating that the company be shut down (dire details can be shared on request).  As a co-founder I argued passionately against it, and to some extent I believed the position held by the CEO came more from the point of view "if I can't run this thing, no one can", than from any sound business judgment.  I might have been wrong about that, but I was very aggressive in taking the position that there was lots of opportunity for the company and it didn't make sense to abandon it.  As a result, I ended up becoming CEO and found the company a home at which I and other employees stayed for the next three years.  But some important words came out when I was having lunch with my friend yesterday.  In the very same sentence that I was suggesting our CEO might not have been exercising sound business judgment, I said "there was no way I was going to be associated with a failed company."  I can still make a case as to why it didn't make sense to shut it down, but I can't kid myself that I'm not guilty of letting personal factors unrelated to the business impact my decisions.

It's often hard to be objective and not let personal factors get in the way.   It's important to seek as many outside, uninterested opinions about a particular issue or topic where personal factors stand a good chance of influencing the outcome.  In a way, the idea stems from a political democracy where objective people called voters often do respond with their own opinion on things.  Objectivity is what really counts, regardless of how certain individuals may declare the state of the union.

Carnival of the Mobilists No. 20

Great to host such an outstanding  group of writers for this week's carnival.

My recommended reading is from Rudy De Waele (from m-trends.org writing at gotomobile blog) for his post about context and the mobile web.  Why?  Because I think context and user behaviour is one of the most important things anyone creating mobile services should be paying attention to.

Justin Oberman at MoPocket tells the tale of how music lovers could TXT for sweet relief at SXSW, and gives us lots of good reasons why  a perfect storm may be brewing to make the mobile phone and cause marketing a perfect couple.

Scott Smith over at Mobile Weblog gives us lots to think about on mobile interface design.  Don't you think more improvement in this area along the lines Scott suggests is kind of important?

Nabeel Hyatt at everypoint stirs up some great discussion on his blog about when to build a mobile brand (or at least when not to).  He says that web properties porting over content or services to mobile will likely win their category.   I'd agree if the mobile company is thinking mobile only, but what if a mobile/web oriented start-up leveraged the phone to beat the web properties at their own game?

Daniel Taylor at the Mobile Enterprise Weblog boldly says that RIM doesn't have a strategy, at least not one that enterprise mobility managers will support.

The exceptionally informative Emily at Smart Mobs posted some research finding that 3G mobiles' change social habits.  We know we're only at the beginning ...

The always inspiring and forward thinking MobHappy crew are still waiting for mobile advertising.  Carlo gives us some great insight into the disconnect betwen the consumers' unwillingness to pay for rich content, and the carriers' hunger for more revenue. 

Darla Mack at the coincidentally named darlamack.com blog reveals to us secrets of the Nokia mobile sites.   Imagine the day we can see and use all great mobile applications from around the world on our own phone?  Darla gives us an excellent glimpse.

Ajit Jaokar at Open Gardens introduces us to bird mimicry.  I have already ordered the "Sparrows that sound like electric can openers" ring tone.

Dennis at Wap Review does his usual fine job of offering developers a great project, this time trying out the Opera Mini on Palm OS 3.5 and 4.   He concludes that it might run reliably on pre Palm OS 5, except for slow load times (there is some irony there right?)

Keeping things technical, Martin Sauter continues a perfect three part series on Wireless VOIP demystified,  helping explain some serious industry shifting tech.

Tomi Ahonen,  from the blog Communites Dominate Brands, points me to his fantastic article on 3G-TV Convergence.   If you're doing anything related to video content on the phone, go read this now and save us all from some mediocre approaches that Tomi writes on how to avoid.

Xen Mendelsohn at Xellular Identity asks  Confused?  Don't be.   She reminds us that we're still figuring out all the social norms of presence and accessibility (and, to me at least, the technology too).

Troy Norcross of Mobile Marketing & Spam does some excellent consumer advocacy with a review of hard or soft boiled opt-in.

I hope I covered all the great links sent my way as editor of the week.  If I didn't, then this 30 second video clip and my week's entry is for you!

Sometimes a blogger comes along...

We are keeping a low profile at Mozes, but we plan to keep track of what people say about us out there in the world.  Our team of six was sure happy to see this post from new company expert Saul Weiner yesterday.  (Ok, he may not be an expert yet, but he sure seems to be putting out a lot of great commentary on new companies).  Thanks Saul!  We've got lots of improvements coming over the next 4 weeks before we start shamelessly promoting Mozes, but getting this kind of review is rewarding.  We'll keep you posted on some interesting note related stuff in the coming weeks.

The personal web and the real world

The personal web is a phrase I'd love to say I coined myself last year, but a quick search proved me wrong.  John Battelle delivered us this term when he introduced readers to Furl - a precursor to delicious - almost two years ago.  It seeems the folks at Furl were fond enough of John's description to adopt it as a tagline.

The concept of a personal web had a big impact on the creation of Mozes.  When I started thinking about building a new business, I wanted to participate in an area that would continue to grow for a very long time and it  seemed obvious that the web would continue to grow not only as a place to find information, but a place to store, manage and share it too.  I explored a lot of ideas in this area, from bookmarking to online storage, and concluded that expanding the concept might be the most fun.

As we launch our beta, Mozes fits within the larger context of the personal web.  As John pointed out, having your personal web is a pretty cool thing because anything you see on the web is saveable,  searchable and shareable.   Wouldn't it be cool if many of the situations we encountered in the real world were saveable, searchable and shareable too?  Mozes will deliver a platform to help make that happen.

Etech

I'm down at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference this week.    The speakers for the most part are really good with two amazing standouts.

I have two pages of notes from Kathy Sierra's presentation titled "Creating Passionate Users".  I'm going to try to post on  what I learned and how it will impact Mozes.  The point I want to make is that Kathy was fantastic.  She made 3 hours feel like 30 minutes and there wasn't a single moment my mind drifted off.   Their blog is here.

The second presentation was Tuesday morning by Jefferson Han from NYU on computer interface and interaction design.  Go watch the streaming movie.  It was amazing and I could have watched it in action all day.

Flickr Blog

Last week I downloaded Steve Jurvetson's interview with Bill Joy at the AlwaysOn Conference to learn more about the latter's view on the here web, and it started with Jurvetson responding to a backchannel comment that he doesn't blog enough.  His response:  I do, it's on Flickr.  I didn't check it then, but Paul Kedrosky happens to point me tonight to one of the best blog stories I've read this year.  Coincidentally enough, it's on Jurvetson' Flickr Blog.