I’m fascinated that services like Instacart can command multi-billion dollar valuations. Sure, the sharing economy is in full swing, and making your pitch ‘the Uber of grocery deliveries’ is nice, but I’m intrigued how they are going to make much profit long term. Revenues might have increased 10X over the past year, but I’d love to know how much (if any) is profit...
Really cool to see that the Microsoft Office team are essentially making Office free for everyone to use on iOS (and soon Android). I really like this approach (as I’ve mentioned previously). And this on the back of the earlier announcement this week about adding Dropbox integration. Exciting times for any Microsoft watcher and user. My personal user experience so far is very positive...
When it comes to understanding innovation, it’s easy to fixate on the idea, and neglect the execution. It’s why for example when Apple announced that their new iPhone 6 devices had NFC chips to facilitate their Apple Pay offering they were criticised for not being innovative, and instead just copying something many Android devices have had for years. “That’s not innovation...
Satya Nadella’s staff memo is good reading. Joshua Topolsky’s brief interview on  The Verge is also good. And opinion pieces like this also raise some good questions. If (like me) you’ve been a little disillusioned with Microsoft over the past few years, then it’s heartening to read, since it gives confidence into how Microsoft is improving focus and internal processes...
Read this post by apenwarr on The Curse of Smart People. This resonates with what I’ve seen: Smart people have a problem, especially (although not only) when you put them in large groups. That problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly anything. It’s timely for me, because one of the main things I’m looking for in my life at the moment is interaction with RSPs...
Reading this interview by Business Insider with David Shing was really good – sounds like he’s a super nice guy. And so underserving of the hurtful outpouring from so many back in February (here’s a taste). In his case he’s taken it all in his stride, and hopefully will actually benefit from it (in terms of exposure, which then turns positive). I’ve never really...
The extremes of the web are present in two related articles this week. First let’s hear from Tim Berners-Lee, commenting 25 years after his first proposal for the web (as we know it today) was written: “Unless we have an open, neutral internet we can rely on without worrying about what’s happening at the back door, we can’t have open government, good democracy, good...
Here’s a quick game to play – try to find anyone saying anything positive about Newsweek at the moment. Their recent ‘scoop‘ got tons of coverage, but it turned negative pretty quickly. Check out the comments on their own followup statement about the story. It’s almost as if they’re encouraging the negativity by putting in closing statements like this:...
This could be handy if you like to use images on your site and in blog posts etc. Getty has announced that many (approx 35 Million) of their images can be used for free on sites, as long as they are embedded using the Getty embed code (it’s an iFrame basically, but includes Getty branding and other guff). Look for the embed button on images (if there’s no embed button, then you...
A report from Glassdoor got picked up by the NYT and is getting some attention. Turns out some interns are highly paid, with the top interns getting $7K per month base. That’s pretty good alright. The report itself is pretty thin – the requirements were that the companies analysed had to have at least 20 interns work there (yep, just 20 to qualify) over the 2 year period of the study...