A Mouse and Keyboard Don’t Make a Hardware Company

July 25, 2012
Business, Customer & Product
47 Comments

Microsoft is not, and never will be, a hardware company. Please don’t go off saying “what about Xbox or mice & keyboards?” Microsoft does not really want to build & sell hardware. Surface is akin to Google’s Nexus; a ‘north star’ product intended to lead OEMs in the right direction. “With Surface we wanted to make sure that no stone is left unturned, in terms of really showing Windows 8 in its most innovative form. …Continue reading →

Apps Must Be Cross Platform

July 24, 2012
Customer & Product, Mobile, Platforms
15 Comments

This is a copy of a guest post I wrote for GeekWire. View the original here. Maybe there are a few Robert Scobles out there who still believe that a significant number of successful apps in the future will be unique to any one client platform. Connected experiences across all devices is where the growth is and it would be insane for anyone, from a major brand to an early-stage startup to believe they don’t …Continue reading →

Wanna Compete with Apple? Focus on Experiences.

June 7, 2012
Branding, Customer & Product, Mobile, Platforms
8 Comments

TL;DR Apple’s insane profitability has the other big guys jealous and freaked out. None are stupid enough to try to compete with Apple on Apple’s terms. The way to beat Apple is to redefine the game by making apps irrelevant and by making mobile just a piece of the equation. The “Experience = Stuff / Time” model is a great way break the conversation down to really understand what is going to happen. In 1999 …Continue reading →

Congrats to the Seattle Angel Conference and Illumagear!

June 1, 2012
Startups
3 Comments

Yesterday we held the first ever Seattle Angel Conference. At the event, Illumagear, a scrappy Seattle startup with a vision for radically improving construction worker safety took home a check for $100K. By all measures the conference, as Bob Crimmins told me after the event, goes in the “Win Column”.  We had a terrific turnout, selling out the event. The room was full of energy and buzz. The participating companies all kicked-butt in their presentations. …Continue reading →

Use of Multiple Calendars in Google Calendar

May 25, 2012
Startups
2 Comments

I don’t personally use Google Calendar but for building MileLogr, I needed some information on how others do. I decided to run a quick online survey to see if I could get some data. Tweeting this survey to my ~8500 followers on Twitter (I had to beg a few times) resulted in 120 responses over about 24 hours. This is probably not a great representation of the broad Google Calendar user base, but for my …Continue reading →

Seattle Angel Conference

May 16, 2012
Startups
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The Seattle Angel Conference event will be May 31st. Over the last two months, the investors and the applying companies have been in a due diligence and filtering process. We would like to ask for your help to spread the word about this project and invite you to the event. As I’ve written previously, a primary mission of the Seattle Angel Conference is to help people learn about the Angel investing process by engaging in …Continue reading →

The Job Decision Matrix

April 26, 2012
Career, Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Organization & People
7 Comments

A Job Decision Matrix will help identify what is actually important to you in your career (and life). Gaining clarity on what is important to you, right now, will help you identify new job opportunities, avoid wasting time on job opportunities that are not right for you, and make a job decision with conviction. This blog post is one of my oldest on leadership and by far the one I’ve gotten the most positive feedback …Continue reading →

You Want to Buy my ’78 Toyota FJ40

April 21, 2012
Cars
14 Comments

UPDATE (1/15/2013): SOLD! 1978 Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser ‘Uglina’ One of the nicest, original Land Cruisers you will find on the planet. Rust free. Almost all mechanical components replaced or refurbished. Head to http://www.uglina.com for details.

Don’t Build APIs…

April 18, 2012
Platforms, Technology & Execution
26 Comments

My first job at Microsoft was providing developer support for the early Windows SDKs. To do my job well, I spent hours studying the Windows SDK documentation, the Windows source code, and writing sample applications. I then spent hours poring over customers’ (such as Lotus, WordPerfect, and Computer Associates) code helping them figure out what was not working. This gave me a deep appreciation for API design early in my career. I saw clear examples …Continue reading →

MileLogr is already worth $1674 – Applying Lean Startup

April 17, 2012
Startups
7 Comments

Last Fall while driving to a meeting I was struck with this idea for a service that would help self-employed people and small businesses track automobile mileage in order to get a tax deduction. As I was leaving the Borg I found myself driving all over hell and back meeting with business partners, startups I was advising, and business events such as Lean Startup Seattle meetings. I knew the mileage was deductible but keeping track …Continue reading →

The Five Big Guys

April 15, 2012
Business, Mobile, Platforms
17 Comments

I’m working on writing up my thesis on the future of the consumer technology business and have convinced myself that there are 5 companies that stand to dominate. I call them The Five Big Guys. This post lays the ground work for that thesis by discussing these 5 companies. In 1989 I read the tea-leaves and made the call that Windows was going to dominate and OS/2 was going to fail. I felt I was …Continue reading →

You are Thinking of Your Career Trajectory Wrong

April 8, 2012
Career, Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Organization & People, Startups
15 Comments

Most people think about their career trajectory as being like a bell-curve or that of a cannon ball fired from a cannon. Something like this: For 99% of all successful people, this is completely the wrong way to think about it. For that other 1% (the Bill Gates & Mark Zuckerbergs of the world) it might work. For the rest of us, there’s a mental model that will help keep you sane, help you appreciate …Continue reading →

Experience = Stuff / Time

April 2, 2012
Branding, Customer & Product, Leadership, Mobile, Startups
9 Comments

The real value in creating new businesses is in delivering customer experiences. The ubiquitous nature of the web, devices, and social networks means successful companies in the future will understand this. The question is “what do people mean when they say ‘experience’”? This post provides an answer. Over the years, I’ve developed a mental model that helps me and my teams think about new businesses from a very customer focused perspective. I refer to it …Continue reading →

Brand is a Critical Part of the End-to-End Experience

April 1, 2012
Branding, Business, Customer & Product, Mobile, Startups
4 Comments

A commenter on another of my posts asked me to explain further why I think “brand is as much a part of the end-to-end experience as the user interface, device, OS, apps, and services.” I took it as a challenge to actually get my thoughts on the subject down in writing. So here we go… I use the following mental model when thinking through end-to-end user experiences: Or, since this is not real math, in words: …Continue reading →

MCE Controller 1.5.0 Released–Send Unicode chars

March 27, 2012
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
2 Comments

MCE Controller allows you to remotely control another Windows PC on your network. For example it allows you to simulate a press of any button on the Windows Media Center IR remote control from another computer; if MCE Controller receives the string “mypictures” it will tell Media Center to go to the “My Pictures” page. Today a user asked how to send Unicode characters such £ and € and I added this functionality to the …Continue reading →

Update: Coping with the OSS command line on Windows

March 25, 2012
Coding
4 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote about Coping with the OSS command line on Windows. In that post, I argued that the Mac is far better for dealing with the current crop of OSS development technologies that rely on the command line, such as Git, Node.js, Ruby/Padrino, and so forth. My argument is based around the fact that most of these technologies are developed by Mac/Linux users and both of those OSs are derived from …Continue reading →

Get Off Your Butt and Start Startuping

March 21, 2012
Startups, Uncategorized
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This message is for those of you who are either “Stuck” in a great paying job at BigCo in the Seattle area (Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Starbucks, etc…) Living near Seattle & trying to figure out what to do with your life after “calling in rich”. In either case, I’m guessing, you are: Smart. Love technology. Have an entrepreneurial spirit. Want to get involved in startups, but haven’t figured out how. A group of us in …Continue reading →

Books I read in 2011

February 26, 2012
Books, Uncategorized
8 Comments

Mostly for my own documentary benefit every year I recap the books I read. Below is the 2011 edition. You can find previous editions here: 2009, 2010. If you are like me, I bet you’ll appreciate being exposed to stuff to read. Five stars means YOU MUST READ.  One star means do not waste your time. Other ratings mean you may or may not like it… Title Author My Rating Comments Catching Fire (The Second …Continue reading →

All of these Operating Systems are Fundamentally the Same

February 26, 2012
Mobile
1 Comment

Another video interview I did for GLG Research at CES (another one here). In this one I babble about mobile device OSs and voice a few of my opinions about the current mobile operating system battles. Near the end (3:15) I talk about the point I care about the most: Users will start to care less about device operating systems and more about being able to experience services across all of their devices. I regularly …Continue reading →

Wanting To Be The Other Guy

February 17, 2012
Mobile
4 Comments

Below is a segment from a video interview I did for GLG Research at CES. In it I discuss the friction that exists between OEMs, carriers, and OS providers in the mobile ecosystem, complimenting my previous post “Fragmentation Is Not The End of Android” as well as the one where I explain the challenges Microsoft’s Windows Phone faces. This video is on GLG’s unfortunately named G+ network. I’d love to hear your thoughts & comments …Continue reading →