Random thoughts and scattered nuggets before heading into the weekend...
Sonic Lighter and the Viral Impulse Buy: Daring Fireball comments on a TechCrunch item about Sonic Lighter, a $1 “virtual lighter” iPhone app
that is spreading quickly thanks to being location-aware. When you
light it up, it registers on a global map:
"Impressive when you consider that every dot on the map is a dollar. Update: My mistake, apparently every dot is just an “ignition”, so each dot doesn’t correlate to a unique user. Still, though, the thing looks crazy popular."
- Hmm...a social, (quasi) real time data-driven app that is priced to be an impulse buy, and which plays off of both viral and locative elements. That's a concept that I think has some legs.
Carl Bernstein (co-author of 'All the President's Men') writes about John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his VP in 'The Palin Pick -- The Devolution of McCain'. Pretty compelling, I think.
My take: The Palin choice is so anti everything that McCain once stood for that, when factored against the flip-flops on the state of the economy, the sudden suspension of his campaign and the intellectually dishonest whack-a-mole strategy of keeping Palin away from the press, should say to past supporters of McCain (myself included) that THAT GUY IS NO MORE. Vote ideologically if you must but at least be honest about it.
Jack Cafferty of CNN clearly has a left-leaning bias on the topic, but watch this video excerpt from Katie Couric's interview with Palin on the financial bail-out and try to make sense of Palin's answer.
To Splurge or Not to Splurge: solid back and forth on the financial crisis and whether bailout makes sense. The real value is in reading the comments. Read it at Fred Wilson's A VC.
Steve Jobs had a really bad week with his droogs (er, I mean Apple iPhone developers). I have written way too much on this topic, between all of the blog posts I've authored on Apple's relations with its developer community, and the many, many comments I've made to other bloggers' posts. 
Netting it out: perception has a way of becoming reality, and the perception among the people I know and respect in the iPhone developer community is pretty uniform; namely, that Apple is acting like a land baron, and treating developers as sharecroppers versus essential, respected partners; and to compound that sense, it's using gag orders, deafening silence and exhibiting capricious behavior when clear, reasoned communication would (arguably) solve 99% of the issues associated with them blocking certain third-party apps from the App Store (and, effectively, the iPhone/iPod touch). Somewhat perversely, the image that echoes through my head on this topic is the scene when Alex, the protagonist in A Clockwork Orange brutalizes his gang mates, the droogs, to keep order and quash signs of dissent. Alex thinks he's won the battle, only to get his comeuppance at the worst possible time later in the story.
“B Teamers” take note. Some of us weren’t natural-born quarterbacks, don’t have silver spoons in our mouths or can’t conjure up magic on demand. Does that mean we have to give up our dreams or that we are destined to mediocrity? Hell no! But being intellectually honest, there is only one fathomable answer if you want to realize your dreams. Hire people that are better than you.
You must make it your number one priority to dedicate yourself to creating an environment where people who are better than you — whatever that means in your realm — want to be part of what you are building.
This is more important than the brilliant idea, more critical than working hard. It’s the meat of the enchilada, and I can assert this one with lots of experience both good and bad.
He/she who has the best players usually wins.
As a matter of contrast, there is an axiom about the difference between “A” Players and “B” Players. A players hire people that are better than them and they culturally indoctrinate that mindset into the company so that the company is good now and even better in the future.
B players, by contrast, generally hire people that are less intelligent and hard working than them. This is of course a gross generalization, but it frames the argument that — irrespective of what the endeavor is — part of the reason that B players are B players is that they don’t want the extra intensity of truly going for it.
Hence, you can aspire to be better, but if you fail to hire people better than you, you are planting the seeds of your own demise/mediocrity.
Keep this truth front and center.
Have a great weekend. :-)
