The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Four Realms of Discipline in a Standing Bow

For the past seven years, I have been a dedicated practitioner of Bikram Yoga.  This particular form of yoga is known as the "sweaty" yoga since the 90 minute class takes place in a 105 degree room.  The classes are physically and mentally demanding AND physically and mentally rewarding.  Opposite sides of the same coin. 

In the process, I have become not only more disciplined in my actions, but more persistently aware of the different realms that need to be managed in a given situation to accomplish my goals.

There are four realms which I am actively managing during every class, which also play out in real life.  They are: concentration, stamina, strength and flexibility.  In any given class, some, all or none of these attributes will working for me, requiring real-time adjustments.

Concentration refers to the ability to focus on the task at hand, casting out distractions and discursive thoughts.  When your heart is pounding a hundred miles an hour and your foot is ready to spasm on the single leg that you are standing, concentration is critical.

Stamina speaks to the ability to maintain a pose or series of poses for the duration without giving up or buckling.  Strength is the ability to provide the essential support needed to carry your weight in the first place.  Finally, flexibility is the wherewithal to extend, bend and/or contort into whatever shapes the pose requires.

Success in life and business are very much a by-product of working these realms in a disciplined fashion, knowing when an individual realm isn't working for you and making adjustments to compensate.

For example, as an entrepreneur there are times when I am surrounded by doubt, distractions and too many choices, and concentration is what provides the grounding to pursue the right path. 

Similarly, stamina is critical, for so much of success is predicated on staying the course and not giving up.  That said, at key points in the business, you must somehow find a way to pull yourself and your cohorts up the mountain, which takes a wellspring of strength.  And is there any question about the inter-linkage of flexibility and success as an entrepreneur?

10 Steps to Successful Web 2.0 Company

Check out the irreverently titled blog post, "10 Steps To a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company," by Charlie (no last name, apparently, ala Cher), an analyst at Union Square Ventures, where Fred Wilson of A VC blog rules the roost.

Snarkiness aside, I think the focal points of the piece are dead on.  Take small bites in terms of the initial problems your product solves.  Play the Tipping Point angle of mavens, connectors and salespeople in terms of engaging the market. Ship the idea quickly, then fix and iterate in rapid succession.  Bake your offering as far and wide as practically possible out on the web (versus behind a walled garden).  Be frugal in terms of burn, operate with humility and addict your users. 

Good and crisp read, putting aside the many "anti buzzword" commenters who can't seem to separate the Web 2.0 cover from the book (not Charlie's fault).

Tawkey Tri-Mode: Reinventing the Cordless Phone

With VTech and Vonage announcing a bundle that incorporates VTech's IP 8100-2 Broadband Cordless Phone System ($100 after a $50 mail-in rebate) with Vonage's Voice Over IP (VOIP) Service, as covered in a Fortune article by Peter Lewis called, "Let (Cordless) Freedom Ring," I thought it timely to offer up a link to a post that I previously wrote on my blog for O'Reilly called, "Tawkey Tri-Mode: reinventing the cordless phone."

The Tawkey post is a good read if the SLOW innovation in the cordless phone market relative to cell phone technology irks you.  A couple of key takeaways from the post include:

1. The need for a "phone book" function that is on a par with the capabilities provided within cell phones.
2. The likely emergence of wi-fi and VOIP based phones, as well as 'tri-mode' phones that can "connection switch" between POTS, VOIP and cellular (i.e., the cell phone that can replace your home phone).
3. The opportunity for a re-envisioned cordless phone to drive demand for value added communication services like push to talk, instant messaging, and enhanced directory services.

Check it out.

VC-think on consumer investments

Dave Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners has an excellent post on VC-think when it comes to investing in consumer deals.  Two key excerpts:

1. Fortunately for us, user adoption is only one of the key milestones reached by a successful consumer venture. Others include a validated revenue model, a validated distribution strategy, and an IPO-quality management team. Those other milestones are ones that we can more reliably predict and control. And so, as Bessemer assesses consumer ventures, we are least interested in funding User Behavior risk, but much more comfortable with risks associated with the revenue model, distribution model, and team.
2. That's why we believe that the formula for any successful consumer venture is to be as scrappy as possible until you see that exponential growth curve. Twist, tweak and test until you find the mark. Only then is it time to raise lots of money, hire expensive VP's, and "monetize" your users.

Netting it out: Nobody can truly say what consumers want and the cost of figuring out the answer to that question and selling the solution to consumers in either direct piecemeal fashion or indirect broadcast fashion is horrifically expensive.  While demographically and psychographically segment-able, consumer buy decisions are a product of alchemy, based on intangible wants, impulse decisions and fuzzy perceptions that only become "obvious" after a market has materialized.  Plus, unlike corporate enterprises there is no clear cut buyer, no defined budget and no large average selling price that offsets the high cost of selling.  Fortunately, in the age of the Internet and web services, the strategy of shipping the idea, fixing it based on user feedback, tweaking, polishing and then iterating some more is a path to success -- if and only if your expense model gives you sufficient runway to live into adolescence.

A good compliment to this article is, "Stealth Start-Ups Suck," by Mark Fletcher of Bloglines, which speaks to the importance of quickly getting new software offerings out into the market.

Reality TV meets train wreck

The above title says it all about E! TV's "Taradise" travel adventure program starring the incomparable (truly) Tara Reid.  Consider her rich analysis on the London Train bombings:

TARA: I wish all the mean people, if you want to be mean to each other, just buy a country together and blow each other up. Then we’d have no terrorists left. Like, don’t kill innocent people for no reason. It’s not fair. We love everybody. We’d even like them if they said they’re sorry. It’s not fair that innocent people are getting hurt. It makes me sad. [pouts]

Captured from Defamer, which had the following hilarious closing line:  She’s going to be a huge hit when the Taradise crew lands in Jerusalem for three days of wild clubbing, fine dining, and high-level peace talks.

How Speculative Markets Crush Amateur Investors

The phone rang, and on the other end of the line was the wife of my friend (let's call him Michael) asking me why I was telling Michael that he should sell the four residential properties him and his wife bought a couple of years back in Phoenix.

After all, she wondered, hadn't the properties roughly doubled in value since they bought?  How would they replace such a terrific investment if they chose to sell?  And what about selling costs and taxes on gains? Was selling really necessary, she struggled to comprehend, given that they are locked into fixed interest loans, and even if the market corrects a bit, they are still way up.

Ah, this is the rub that kills amateur investors whose investing experience is borne in a white hot market.  The logic goes like this.  Prices only go up, and if and when they go down, it is only a temporary dip, possibly even a great buying opportunity.  And if a true correction occurs, a 20-30% loss in value relative to a 100% gain is not so horrific. 

Unhappy, but not sunk.  But the mythical "correction" is just that.  A myth, for it is nothing more than an artificial floor.  When manic markets shift into depression mode, buyers become scarce, panic ensues and suddenly there are a heck of a lot of agitated sellers flooding the market.  Good old supply and demand swinging the pendulum back from the apex of "no ceiling" valuations to the depths of "no floor" equity evaporation.

Add the combustible ingredients resident in speculator-heavy markets like Phoenix – namely, extremely leveraged investors, high percentages of absentee owners, narrow to non existent cash flows, flat rental markets, and a continuing supply of new developments being built in anticipation of uninterrupted demand and enabled by ample open space and willing lenders – and you have a powder keg ready to blast for a valuation reset.

Unfortunately, too few investors play the bubble scenario where 60% of their total portfolio value evaporates, and figure out what that means for them in terms of their equity and cash flow.  Or what happens if many tens of speculators facing unmanageable debt coverage simply default, leading lenders to flood the market with foreclosure properties on the cheap.

The market provides clear examples of how this scenario plays out for investors.  During the S&L crisis in the late 80s, literally thousands of developers and investors defaulted on loans, leading to massive foreclosures and bank failures, in the process crushing both rents and valuations for responsible investors due to the relentless flood of supply (sidebar:  Phoenix was a poster child for the pitfalls of massive speculation during this period). 

Similarly, the end of the dotcom bubble saw entire sectors lose 90% or more of their market caps, and the negative gravity from this contraction led to a credit crunch and evaporation of venture funding.  It also prompted companies to practically stop capital investments in IT, which in turn drove massive failures of startups (in many cases throwing out the baby with the bath water).  Moreover, from all of the failed companies came an excess of supply of computing and networking gear, office furniture and the like, all available for pennies on the dollar, wiping out demand and pricing elasticity for the companies that sold those products.

Finally, to level set on the income producing real estate investment market as it exists right now is that typical market rents account for as little as 45 cents on the dollar of what acquisition values are going for.  Put another way, this means that the market is disproportionately pricing appreciation into the equation.

Hence, if appreciation goes away, then supply sits and then increases in a market where rents are generally fairly soft, and interest rates are on the rise, and…I will let you connect the dots.

…In any event, my little sermon worked, and happily Michael's wife got the message, and the properties are now listed for sale. 

(Disclaimer: I don't pretend to have a crystal ball and I would also assert that not all markets are equal.  Prime real estate in San Francisco's Pacific Heights, where there is a very finite number of buildings that will ever be built is very different than Phoenix, which has massive amounts of somewhat undifferentiated open space).

Just don’t say, "This time it is different."

Streams and Nuggets

I am trying to find the balance between the longer pieces I write and shorter streams of consciousness that I just want to put out there and see if they have any shelf life.  Similarly, there are interesting nuggets that I come across that I have a well formed perspective on. 

The long pieces are great for me personally, and I hope that they are also rewarding for the people who take the time to read them through.  That said, sometimes I just want to enjoy a proverbial slice of pizza versus doing the full sit down meal.  Hence, streams and nuggets.

I think both can be enormously rich in terms of providing pattern recognition and for leveraging the 'Picture in Pocket' metaphor I just wrote a post on. 

In any event, without further arm-waving…

1. The folks at 37signals, who keep up a really good blog on products, delighting customers and design considerations, posed the question of how many people are optimal for a 1.0 product release.  Funky wording, as it wasn't initially clear to me whether the post referred to the optimal number of developers in terms of product scope, members of the product management team or customers that 1.0 requirements are to be based on.  In the end, I concluded that I could easily build a straw man around all three scenarios so let it at that.  Netting it out: Triangulation is a powerful tool for maximizing efficiency, simplicity and design integrity in 1.0 and beyond.
2. The New York Times recently wrote an interesting article about how this generation will turn to the Web to watch TV.  While the knee jerk is to say that people don't want to watch TV on their computers (or cell phones, for that matter), that misses the point.  Traditional shows will be extended by the medium, and this has pretty profound ramifications from a programming, production, and viewer/user engagement perspective.  Note the hybriding of viewers and users, something I blogged about on my O’Reilly blog.  The post was called Middleband Channels, and is focused on one type of application that seems fundamental.
3. Read Businessweek's, "The Birth of Murdoch.com," if for no other reason than to see things from the perspective of the Microsoft of Media, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.  These guys launched and own the Fox Network of The Simpsons, the FX Channel of The Shield, the unapologetically right-wing Fox News, satellite gorilla DirecTV, countless print publications and the list goes on.  The acquisition of MySpace provides some valuable insight into how they view the online land grab.

Hold a Picture in Your Pocket

Cognitive dissonance is a very powerful psychological construct that works as follows: when your perceptions and behaviors are out of sync, either the perception has to change or you need to change your behavior.  Failure to do one or the other leads to angst and literal discomfort. 

As an example, consider the individual who talks about their need to lose weight while continuing to eat prodigious amounts of food.  From the moment the individual chooses to be cognizant that their actions (eating too much food) and perceptions (they are fat and need to loose weight) are dissonant, they will either need to change their diet or decide that maybe they aren’t so fat. 

This may seem paradoxical since we all know people who talk about changes they want to make in their lives, yet never seem to take the actions required to affect the change.  So why does cognitive dissonance not seem to work in these cases? 

The answer lies in maintaining continuous, discriminating awareness, or active cognition, of the changes you are trying to make.  Shining a light in terms of seeing things as they really are and taking a need to know when disconnects occur is the key delta between merely talking the talk and physically needing to walk the walk. 

The metaphor that I have for using cognitive dissonance to catalyze such personal growth and change is called, “Hold a Picture in Your Pocket.”  When you hold a picture in your pocket, you envision a picture that you are literally pulling out of your pocket all throughout the day that lists the primary areas of change that you are focused on working on.  By holding this picture and pulling it in front of you with regularity, your force cognition, which makes you aware of dissonances, which in turn creates discomfort, driving you to change the behavior.  Or, it forces you to acknowledge that you don’t really want to change.

I have used this approach for years and find it intuitive, easy to implement and very effective.  Give it a try with an area of your life where your desires and actions are out of whack.

The "user generated" trend

I think that a key moral of the story behind the emergence of online communities like Flickr and MySpace, and the larger stampede that is the blogosphere of posts, feeds and tags is that people really like to create, categorize and filter content items that are a reflection of their unique perspective.  Similarly, they like to connect with like minds.

On some level the above assertion is intuitive to the point of being obvious, but on another level, it really starts to explain the magic of eBay, Craigslist and Google; namely, enabling consumers to cheaply, quickly, easily and flexibly tailor a message, an offering, a target market or even something as fundamental as a query. 

Let's face it, after you have posted a job or classified listing on Craigslist, choosing your own wording, layout and presentation, done it cheaply or even for free, and not been taxed by the word or penalized for re-working the message if ineffective, the thought of going back to the old model of newspapers is pretty unappealing. 

Similarly, cultivating a blog or commenting on another's post is joyful, liberating and instantaneously more rewarding than hoping against hope of securing a spot on the limited shelf space of print media. 

I will go further and argue that the proliferation of "user generated" content and commentary is not merely a fad or flavor of the week, but a mega trend that will play out over the next several years, in the process touching wholesale categories of both online and (traditionally) offline products and services.

Moreover, the low friction, low cost dynamics of replicating and distributing digital goods and services is starting to be augmented by new physical production models that enable, for example, authors of limited print run books to self-publish, (an area where Amazon is well positioned), and an ecosystem where artists can license their designs, no matter how good, bad or nichey, for use on apparel, stamps and print goods, and consumers can essentially create their own branded products in a few clicks, an area that Zazzle is taking a leadership position.

While a concept like The Long Tail has gone a long way towards articulating the structure and magnitude of this trend, and a complimentary Wired article called Remix Planet captures the texture and range of products that this trend will touch, I think that two books (both by the same author) should be trusty bookends for entrepreneurs looking to exploit this opportunity.

The first is called Future Perfect, and beyond being a good 15 years ahead of its time, introduces the concept of mass customization that is the foundation of the trend that I see playing out.  The second is called Blur, and it introduces a three step model for maximizing returns in an environment where each individual offer can be broadcast at a very low cost: Seed, Select and Amplify. 

The premise behind the approach, which direct marketers and (unfortunately) spammers get big time is that when confronted with frictionless economic models, the goal should be to first plant lots of low cost "seeds," or offers.  Then, select the seeds that sprout, or show promise based on qualified user response levels.  And finally, amplify, or market the hell out of the seeds that have proven to garner the best response rates in the market. 

The book gives a great example of a credit card company that uses the approach to launch new credit card offerings by doing an initial direct mail run which tests out literally hundreds of different credit card "offers" segmented across its target customer base.  The results help them narrow their focus to the core, but multiple, product offerings that pass pre-defined response thresholds, and the company has organized their business as a credit platform optimized to be able to deliver and support a multitude of highly customized credit card offerings.

Both are compelling, timely and enjoyable reads.  Check them out.

The Pitchman: Must Read for "Product Nuts"

I want to recommend an article that in my opinion is a must read for anyone that considers themselves a product nut. 

 

By product nut, I mean someone that really lives and breathes the product development process according to the discipline of having a clear sense of what "job" (or jobs) the target customer of the product will hire the product to do for them. 

 

In turn, this mindset translates to codifying a holistic theme of the experience that the product must deliver and all of the niggling details that have to be aligned for the integrity of the product to be realized. 

 

The article is called, "The Pitchman: Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen," and it was written by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker before Gladwell became a cause celebre with The Tipping Point and Blink.

 

The focus of the article is on Ron Popeil, founder of Ronco, maker of quirky gizmos like the Pocket Fisherman, which are typically advertised either at 2AM or presented on an infomercial. 

 

While it is easy to dismiss products like these as sucker's bait (pun intended), one of the focal points of the article is on Popeil's newest project (at the time), the Showtime Rotisserie, a chicken rotisserie oven. 

 

That the product will go on to generate well over $1B of sales suggests that there is more to Popeil's approach than slick (or schlocky) marketing.

 

And here is where Gladwell's approach is just a joy to read.  Part story teller and part sleuth, he gets beyond the simple sound bite to the core of what drives Popeil and his process.  The fundamental takeaway is the inseparability of product design and product marketing in building products designed to be coveted by the customer they are target for. 

 

I net this out on two levels. One is the essentialness of understanding that the "steak" and "sizzle" of a product are part and parcel of the overall experience.  Two is that in thinking in terms of product lifecycle, one is more likely to thrill customers if they take a "theme based" approach to product releases.

 

Or as Gladwell captures, the secret to success is making the product "the star," and making design decisions accordingly.  The following excerpt from the article captures this in practice:

 

Why does this work so well? Because the Showtime--like the Veg-O-Matic before it--was designed to be the star. From the very beginning, Ron insisted that the entire door be a clear pane of glass, and that it slant back to let in the maximum amount of light, so that the chicken or the turkey or the baby-back ribs turning inside would be visible at all times.

 

…But Ron understood that the perfect brown is important for the same reason that the slanted glass door is important: because in every respect the design of the product must support the transparency and effectiveness of its performance during a demonstration--the better it looks onstage, the easier it is for the pitchman to go into the turn and ask for the money.

 

To be clear, one does not get a sense of cynicism or inch-deep veneer, but rather, the utmost sincerity of an entrepreneur who has conceptualized the end experience for the customer through the rigor and tinkering of consistently eating his own dog food, and then working backwards to how it is to be sold and what the product needs to showcase to lubricate the sales process. 

 

It's clear that Gladwell, in covering Popeil, has great appreciation of the ideation process, from the initial "AHA" of opportunity to the building up of a straw man prototype, tearing it down, iterating and building up again from there. 

 

Part of this comes down to the importance of tinkering, as this excerpt captures:

 

S. J. Popeil was a tinkerer. In the middle of the night, he would wake up and make frantic sketches on a pad he kept on his bedside table. He would disappear into his kitchen for hours and make a huge mess, and come out with a faraway look on his face. He loved standing behind his machinists, peering over their shoulders while they were assembling one of his prototypes.

 

But a lot of it really comes down to having a vision, having the courage of your convictions and being willing to pitch and pitch prodigiously, as captured here:

 

The response to it has been such that within the next three years total sales of the Showtime should exceed a billion dollars. Ron Popeil didn't use a single focus group. He had no market researchers, R. & D. teams, public-relations advisers, Madison Avenue advertising companies, or business consultants. He did what the Morrises and the Popeils had been doing for most of the century, and what all the experts said couldn't be done in the modern economy. He dreamed up something new in his kitchen and went out and pitched it himself.

 

…Like most great innovations, it was disruptive. And how do you persuade people to disrupt their lives? Not merely by ingratiation or sincerity, and not by being famous or beautiful. You have to explain the invention to customers-- not once or twice but three or four times, with a different twist each time. You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works, and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them precisely how it fits into their routine, and, finally, sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it's not at all hard to use.

 

A final thought.  As broadband becomes ubiquitous and video ad creation becomes within the reach of non Madison Avenue types, why wouldn't every business that considers themselves as having a differentiated value proposition create an infomercial that pitches their story?

Envisioning RSS as a Web 2.0 platform

Read my latest post from my blog at O'Reilly.  Here is an excerpt:

RSS began its life as a really simple way for content providers to syndicate their content and for content consumers to subscribe to their favorite providers. When the blogosphere emerged, RSS really took off. Now, just as its “simple” technology cousin, HTML, provided the underpinnings of the Web 1.0 technology platform, RSS is emerging as a platform for delivering the broadband and mobile ready applications of a Web 2.0 enabled world. Backed by two application examples, this blog presents a thesis of the key moving parts integral to the RSS platform and how they come together.

How does advertising evolve?

I was reading a recent article about consumer products giant Procter & Gamble's announcement of plans to cut its commitment to TV commercials and re-allocate those dollars to areas like product placement, print media, direct marketing and the Internet.  Particularly interesting is the decision to cut cable advertising by as much as 25% (versus 5% for broadcast networks), which suggests that cable has done a poor job of defining clear, target-able customer segments for advertisers (or at least for horizontally broad ones like P&G).  This got me thinking (always dangerous!), how does advertising morph as we evolve from a one-way broadcast oriented world to a mobile, broadband-enabled world? 

By no means exhaustive, my goal is simply to build a reasonably strong straw man that can picked apart.  So here are my thoughts on how advertising evolves:

1. Narrowcasting and affinity marketing takes hold:  In the language of Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book, "The Tipping Point," new market ideas propagate like viruses through a network of mavens (knowledgeable enthusiasts), connectors (people with large social networks) and salespeople (people who are good at persuading people to take action).  With the emergence of syndication and subscription models (RSS), tagging to enable context setting and amplification, and blogging to provide the message containers about the good, bad and ugly of a particular product/service, all of the key pieces are now in place for advertisers to take an institutional approach to cultivating this form of marketing.
2. Product placement becomes embedded but not invisible:  One of the primary drivers for the dramatic increase in the number of products being placed in TV programs, video games and movies is that with the advent of TiVo, viewers generally fast forward through commercials, rendering the "reach" of an ad meaningless.  Beyond that factor is the simple reality that we live in an age of short attention spans where separating signal from noise is non-trivial.  This suggests that advertisers will not only expand the scope of where they place products but how they connect with and engage consumers.  For example, why every TV program doesn't have a default link at the end of a program that enables consumers to get more information on the products placed in the program is beyond me.  Wasted opportunity but advertisers will get smarter in this regard.  Similarly, there are "out of band" ways that advertisers can connect with viewers of a program, such as contests and content aligned online services (the latter of which I blogged on for O'Reilly).  Finally, advertisers will need to re-think how they connect emotionally with consumers when placing products, as the box of Cheerios sitting in the background of an "The O.C." episode provides no connection, whereas when Trump touts an M-Azing candy bar in an episode of The Apprentice it is novel but perhaps too heavy handed to work over the long haul.  Expect huge experimentation in this area.
3. Video ads: targeted, actionable and measurable:  On some level, this point is kind of a "DUH" but when you peel back the onion a bit, things are a little more nuanced.  TV advertising as it exists today is broadcast in one form with the identical message to all viewers irrespective of whether they are truly prospective customers (e.g., the Pampers ad viewed by seniors -- don't go there!).  As IPTV, Video blogs, video podcasts and more targeted forms of interactive marketing take hold, advertisers have the potential to turn the model on its head.  For example, if I could fill out a form that enabled me to meaningfully list the types of products I am interested in and those that I have NO interest in or could click a button that says "more like this" or "less like this" when viewing a commercial,  I would actually pay attention during commercials!  Similarly, if advertisers applied a formal discipline to the type of actions that the consumer can take (preferably in a single click) when viewing the ad, such as "send coupon or free sample," "add to my product catalog," "tell me where I can buy in my area" or "research this product further," advertisers could begin developing direct relationships with customers and turn customers into mavens, connectors and/or salespeople.  Minimally, through this process, they would enable the customer to self serve by deciding what level of engagement they are ready for.  And guess what, each of these actions is measurable and mine-able.
4. Ads get longer:  There is an irony in this statement inasmuch as many people believe that as alternative forms of delivering video take hold, the traditional 30 minute or one hour format of TV programming will go away, or minimally be augmented by shorter (3-5 minute) programming segments.  The logic is that who wants to stare into a handheld device to watch an hour of Desperate Housewives, whereas a fan of the show might very well spend five minutes viewing a short segment on their favorite character's travails over the past season.  In any event, just as 30-60 minutes is too long for the attention starved to sit and watch a program, 30-60 seconds is too short to adequately deliver an advertising message that connects with the viewer, asserts a clear value proposition, espouses how the offering is differentiated, who it was designed for and the advertiser's proposed relationship with the consumer.  Needless to say, the success of the infomercial industry and shopping channels like QVC validate this premise big time.  As broadband takes hold, the potential for advertisers to embrace a long form advertising model just makes sense. 

A fantastic book on the topic of advertising that I heartily recommend is Ogilvy on Advertising. Despite being written 20 years ago its core themes are incredibly timely.  Stands the proverbial test of time.

What's your take? How does the model evolve in your mind, and are their obvious innovations that will transform the industry?

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech

Read the full text of a truly excellent speech (by clicking HERE) on trusting karma, doing what you love and listening to your inner voice.  Three key excerpts (in his words -- not mine):

1. You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

2. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

3. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Who's the Manny: ESPN Page 2

Bill Simmon's has a pretty funny analysis of the trade that never was of Manny Ramirez last week.  I scratched my head when the rumors popped up for the reasons touched in the article but also remember the other times the "Manny to..." rumors have popped up so nothing would have surprised.  Here's the excerpt:

Which raises the second point …

2. Manny is completely nuts
Completely. Totally. After his agent agreed to contract terms with Boston five years ago, Manny threw out one final condition -- the Sox also needed to hire the guy who set up the pitching machine for him in Cleveland (trivia answer: Frankie Mancini). So his agent had to go back to Boston GM Dan Duquette, who said, "Yes, we'll hire the pitching machine guy if that makes him happy." Only the pitching machine guy didn't want to leave Cleveland. Manny decided to come, anyway.

Here's the point: He's a lunatic, but in a functional way. Two or three times a year, something sets him off, and it could be anything -- someone borrowed his Aqua Velva without asking, Louisville Slugger forgot to send him a new box of bats, his wife accidentally erased a movie from their TiVo, and so on. And that's it. He's a mess for two weeks. Unlike someone like Bonzi Wells or Terrell Owens, he doesn't antagonize reporters, blast other teammates or swear at his coach. He's not a negative presence.

Muslims feel strain of global terrorism's grip on their faith

This article in today's SF Chronicle is a good compliment to the Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Piece, "If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution."

Here is an excerpt from the Chronicle article: Muslims across the world are struggling to deal with an escalating campaign of violence waged in the name of Islam. At the core of the debate is a growing realization that religious leaders, and the governments that often support them, have not done enough to discourage the extremism that is plaguing Muslim society across the globe.

My personal bias is that silence is compliance so this is an encouraging trend.