Have we finally reached a point where ebooks are going to have the huge transformational impact some people think it will have..

Wired’s Chris Anderson’s had a good theory in 2004 on how to predict a technology shift and watch for 4 signals (that don’t all have to be present) for the technology shift;

1) The technology price reaches a certain lower point

2) The market share goes above a certain threshold (tech is usually 20% or so)

3) The technology reaches an inflection point where it displaces an existing technology

4) The price of the technology approaches “free”

Watch Chris Anderson’s great video on technology takeoff prediction –  http://nexle.dk/l/d6z

I love that great ebooks (also tech ones that normally cost upwards to AUD$100) now often costs $9.95 and how its just such a fantastic reading experience on the Kindle! (the fact that you can carry stacks of books with you and review your digital book highlightings easily is fantastic)

#wired

My favs in HTML5?….

The top 3 things I love with HTML5 in prioritised order I think are;

1. Geo location API
2. Local storage and offline cache APIs
3. Notification API

Not too excited about the CSS stuff and the crazy web sockets stuff (might change my mind on that) and not too hot on the HTML5 video stuff either (heck we only need that because Apple suck sometimes)

Just read the article “DST’s Yuri Milner: Facebook Is Going To Be The Social Graph That Unifies All Civilization” on TechCrunch..

While the article itself wasn’t that great it was nice to read the thoughts from DST (the Russian company who invested US $200 million in Facebook a year ago and are investors in trending and promising companies like Zynga and Groupon) CEO Yuri Milner which basically were around the profound impacts that social sites will have on the human race.

A comment from Milner that struck me was;

Charlie Rose:

Backstage you told me about an article in the NYT that spoke to you when we think about why social networking has become such a phenomenon.

Yuri Milner:

Story was that human civ. started to develop with first social network. Emerged where population conc. was high. Helped propel to where we are now. Facebook is next step of creating huge human brain to embrace hundreds of million, possibly billions of people. Facilitate exchange of information never seen in hisotry of civilization…

I strongly believe that the rate of progress for the human race from a social and science perspective will continue on its ever accelerating path..

Think about the profound impact the printing press had on the human race. The Web was initially not more than the printed words delievered via a new medium. However, imagine now where the Social and “Understanding” Internet (which is underlined by fast processing, endless space, “everyone connected”, elaborate tools and algorithms and change in culture) allows for unrestricted, real time intelligent collaboration between anyone, Web 3.0 style classification and understanding of content and knowledge…

Technological Singularity may be closer than we think…..

From wikipedia:

Technological singularity refers to a prediction in Futurology that technological progress will become extremely fast, and consequently will make the future (after the technological singularity) unpredictable and qualitatively different from today. It is most often associated with the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil.^{[citation needed]}

Although technological progress has been accelerating, it has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not changed significantly for millennia.^[1] However with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it might eventually be possible to build a machine that is more intelligent than humanity.^{[citation needed]}

Theoretically, if a machine built by humans could bring to bear greater problem-solving and inventive skills than humans, then it could design a yet more capable machine. If built, this more capable machine then could design a machine of even greater capability. These iterations could accelerate, leading to recursive self improvement

My comments are….

I liked the article, the elevator pitch I believe is extremely important (hence why it was fun to digest it fully and have a good reflection on the topic and summarise my thoughts here). Whatever your “world changing idea” is, you must be able to boil it down to a core short and inspiring message.

The list of top 10 great tips for the elevator pitch, according to the article goes something like this;

1. Keep it short and concise
2. Get your prospect “hooked”
3. Pitch yourself, not your ideas
4. Don’t forget the pitch (the “What do you need”)
5. Don’t overwhelm with technical or statistical terminology
6. Practice
7. Use the same tactics for print
8. Revise/improve
9. Be involved in the startup community
10. Listen

Read the full article for all the details behind each point.

My comments, if this was really to be a “top 10″ list of tips (as opposed to just random hints) are;

• I would redo hint number 3 (“Pitch yourself, not your ideas“);
  .. Its not mostly just about you (nor is is about the idea), I believe when talking about you, your skills and the idea, its about your true passion for the “idea” (being the idea, the timings and your ability to succeed). Ideas are everywhere and so are good skilled entrepreneurs. Finding the right combination of these elements and harnessing the “spark” is what can truly convince people of your idea (and I do agree with the article saying the idea might change several times over).
• I would cautiously add to number 5 (“Don’t overwhelm with technical or statistical terminology“);
  Don’t rely on the market size and the “if I only got 1% of the market it would be worth..”. This is used too often and has less and less value and impact when people hear it nowadays. The classic one is “the iPhone App Market” industry which was worth $2.4 billion USD in 2009, predicted to $4.5 billion USD in 2010. Throwing around the numbers only makes you sound non-serious (its like you are telling me “even if my app sucked I could get 0.5% of the market and still make it big”). People would rather hear WHAT you are going to do that is so innovative and how you are going to BEAT the competition (even if there are no actual competitors in this space, how are you going to claim the mindshare of people and compete with other apps/companies for your  time-poor customers).
• On item 7, “Using the same tactics for print“;
  While a great speaker does not always make a great writer (I’ve seen it many times), the tactics, in part, as the article points out, is the same. To summarise;  keep it short, precise, spicy and actionable. Don’t be afraid of TOC’s and sub headings in a mail if its necessary but if you have to do that chances are also that you’ve written too much and have to cut down. I would even make the headline a bit more interesting than in the example, depending on your audience and how likely they are otherwise going to open your mail.

This article that is mentioned was part of a new Channel on ReadWriteWeb called “Start” which is intended for startups and first time entrepreneurs. Seems like a decent blog actually, hopefully another hit for the New Zealander Richard MacManus – gotta give those NZ’ers credit where its due

Originally sourced from Charlie Rose: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10093

Very good example where an underdog beats the big money..

“Connecticut startup Kayak has raised $223 million in venture capital and employs 58 people to build and grow its travel search site. Its chief competitor, San Francisco based Mobissimo, has raised $1 million
and has just 15 employees. Mobissimo also became profitable last year,
and the company doesn’t have to raise more money unless it’s to fuel
faster growth or acquisitions.

It’s also clear even from a cursory comparison of the two sites that
Mobissimo is trying harder than Kayak to help you find exactly the
flight and hotel you are looking for. Kayak is largely similar to other
travel search sites – enter where you want to go and get back results
from a number of providers, sort by price, etc.”

Very good example where an underdog beats the big money..

 www.oracle.com

Despite so-so interest among open-source developers, Sun’s OpenSolaris is getting attention from Google, which is eyeing the operating system as a possible replacement for Linux in its data center, according to sources. ”

This is interesting and would be good for the momentum of OpenSolaris… I think the world could use some more Solaris and less Windows and Linux….

Read the article on ComputerWorld