OverMatter

The Lesser of Two Evils?

Many people going into this election have resigned themselves that the choice is between two rather undesirable alternatives. Why not instead send a cannon shot across the bow of both of the large political parties by casting a vote for the Libertarian candidate for President? He is already right there on your ballot. This could be a great wake-up call for both the Democans and Republicrats - and by far the best way to use your right to vote... Badnarik/Campagna '04 for President

Top-Earning Fictional Characters

"The characters on this Forbes (list) may be make-believe, but the dollar signs are real." (Slideshow with details.)
The Top Ten:
1. Mickey Mouse & Friends
2. Winnie the Pooh & Friends
3. Frodo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings
4. Harry Potter
5. Nemo, Finding Nemo
6. Yu-Gi-Oh
7. SpongeBob SquarePants
8. Spider-Man
9. Wolverine, X-Men
10. Pikachu, Pokémon

Disneyland with the Death Penalty

"The sensation of trying to connect psychically with the old Singapore is rather painful, as though Disneyland's New Orleans Square had been erected on the site of the actual French Quarter, obliterating it in the process but leaving in its place a glassy simulacrum." "It's like an entire country run [by Disney] under the motto 'Be happy or I'll kill you.'"(William Gibson in Wired 1.04)

The Sales Learning Curve

Ross Mayfield has a great take on a talk by Mark Leslie (founder of Veritas) on the "The Sales Learning Curve" ("This method of establishing a sales force is called the sales learning curve (SLC). It's a concept adapted from the manufacturing learning curve (MLC), which is widely accepted in the manufacturing sector. The MLC states that the cost to produce the early units of a new product normally is high, but over time, as the production team learns how to optimize manufacturing and wring-out costs, volume increases and per-unit product costs decline sharply. When we apply the MLC to sales, we come to the following conclusion: The time it takes to achieve cash flow breakeven is reasonably independent of sales force staffing. It is, instead, entirely dependent on how well and how quickly the entire organization learns what it takes to sell the product or service while incorporating customer feedback into the product itself. Because the entire organization has to come up to speed, hiring a large initial sales staff does not speed up the time to breakeven, it simply consumes cash more quickly...") Ross starts off with the comment: "What I like about Mark's model is it centers on organizational learning, what I believe to be the real first mover advantage. Its more than just being first, but having lightweight processes the drive iteration with customers. She who iterates early and often wins." Be sure to read the rest here. More good comments at Oliver Thylmann's Blog. All of this is a very insightful take on a sound methodology to start up sales teams and companies. It is not "throw bodies and money at the problem" trench warfare, but rather a system of iteration and feedback that creates a higher probability of success - even with limited resources. Great perspective switch. Thanks Ross and Mark!

Creator of alkaline battery dies

"The man who made possible Walkmans, iPods and more than a thousand other portable devices with his invention of a long-lasting alkaline battery... died Tuesday... Lewis Urry came up with [the batteries] in the 1950s. They sell by the billions and are enshrined near Thomas Edison's light bulb in the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History. Despite the presence of Urry's creation in houses everywhere, he never became a household name... Urry developed the first practical long-life battery... His invention allowed a cordless lifestyle for people around the world. It is a key factor in the widespread use of devices such as electric razors, laptop computers, camcorders and video games." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Fixed propulsion stations for quicker inter-planetary travel

"With a beamed plasma system, spacecrafts can be pushed or pulled to perform orbital transfers around the planet or accelerated to other planets at essentially no cost... in a regular system you have to carry the power and the fuel and payload, so you end up adding a whole lot of mass onto the spacecraft and your top speed is certainly limited... By putting the energy and the fuel on something that is fixed around a planet, when you push the payload you can go at much faster speeds...making it possible to make a round trip to Mars in three months... Using conventional rocket systems, a round trip to Mars takes about 2.6 years... "It would be fearfully expensive to develop, but it could offer a solar-system-wide transportation infrastructure." (Wired News)

They Can Hear You Now

"Cellphones are moving the developing world into the global village... For millions of people living in countries where getting a fixed phone line remains a bureaucratic impossibility, the cellphone revolution has allowed them to leapfrog from archaic forms of communication straight into the digital era — and that is changing the fabric of their daily lives... Rwanda's cellphone boom has followed a pattern typical of many developing countries. It now has more than five times as many cellphones (134,000) as fixed telephone lines (23,000)... Chinese police sometimes use text messages as an anti-crime tool: When they find a cellphone that is being used for illicit purposes, they use a computer to call the phone and flood it with phony text messages, running up such a high bill for the owner that the phone becomes unusable." (Los Angeles Times)

Serial Entrepreneurs vs. Cereal Entrepreneurs

"Venture capitalists want serial entrepreneurs, not cereal entrepreneurs -- guys still young enough to be eating Cap'n Crunch." - Guy Kawasaki (quoted in BusinessWeek article)

Inside the Mind of an Inventor

"A new book explores how better mousetraps and smarter business models go from idea to reality. Steve Wozniak (who designed the Apple II computer), Dean Kamen (who built the Segway personal transporter) and Jay Walker (who devised the name-your-price business model of Priceline.com) are among the inventors profiled in Evan I. Schwartz's new book, "Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors." Schwartz, whose last book was a biography of television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth" (Newsweek Interview)

New Hughes Haven for Science

"In what conditions are scientists most creative? Why are some laboratories so much more successful than others? Sociologists of science may debate the issue, but the leaders of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute believe the answers are clear enough to justify a scientific experiment costing half a billion dollars. On a site here overlooking the Potomac, about 30 miles northwest of Washington, they are building a laboratory [Janelia Farm Research Campus] designed to foster a culture of scientific creativity. Its operations are to be modeled after two research centers with outstanding records of productivity, Bell Labs and the Laboratory of Molecular Biology run by Medical Research Council of Britain. These two labs succeeded for the same set of reasons, in the view of Dr. Gerald M. Rubin, vice president of the Hughes institute. Their scientists worked in small groups, under leaders who did hands-on research. They received ample financial and technical support, with no need to apply for grants or other distractions. Few researchers had tenure, so there was a high turnover. And the only directive was that people should work on an interesting problem, however long it might take. That formula may sound like the scientific ideal, but it is seldom followed, even in universities. Financing agencies demand safe research and predictable results. Young scientists spend very few years working with their own hands before becoming administrators... Biomedical research in the United States is generally regarded as a highly successful enterprise. Yet the rationale of Janelia Farm carries a strong implied criticism because almost every aspect of its operation - long-term goals, no pressure to generate practical results, no grant writing, no administration, hands-on research, interaction across disciplines - is designed to be the opposite of those in the established system." (The New York Times)