Checking In, Tweeting, Spotting, Updating

Image by Em.Cee via Flickr

TechCrunch: Begun, The Sticker Wars Have: Right now, many people (probably most people) have no idea what a check-in is. When Gap launched its free jeans deal, people were actually visiting the company’s Facebook Page to write “checking in“, rather than using the Places function on Facebook’s mobile application.

That would be like someone sent you an email that was 140 characters or less, say over Gmail, and claimed they just sent you a tweet. Emails with such discipline would be nice to read, but are they tweets?

TechStars' Geographical Advantage Over Y Combinator

Image via CrunchBase

TechCrunch: TechStars Launches Ten New Startups In Seattle: six of the first twenty companies to go through the program have been acquired by larger companies, and about 70% of its companies have been funded and/or are now profitable.

Y Combinator is in the Valley. Y Combinator has done something remarkable. I think Y Combinator is the reason we have a new species in town: the super angel. But Y Combinator is in the Valley. Being in the Valley, in the Valley alone is a disadvantage. People don't buy servers anymore. They have Amazon web services. Times have changed. Some of the best programmers I know are self taught people. All the material you need to teach yourself programming is available online for free. And so the idea that you have to be in the Valley to be part of the action, well, that is passe.

Ping On Twitter Is A Few Tech StartUp Ideas

Image via Wikipedia

TechCrunch: iTunes Ping Actually Goes Social With Full Twitter Integration; Careful, It Will Auto-Tweet: not only will each tweet contain a link back to the song or album on iTunes, but these links will work in New Twitter’s right-side pane. You’ll be able to listen to iTunes previews right from there — a huge feature that should lead to a lot of music buying, especially when the 90-second previews kick-in.

90 seconds is a lot of music. We live in the era of good enough. Perhaps Apple is lucky the Facebook Connect thing did not quite pan out for them. This is a better deal. And now everybody and their cousin will be tweeting everything they have in their private domains.

A Boxee Browser

Image via CrunchBaseA few days back I wrote about how I was not too excited about the idea of a social browser. It did not feel like a big shift. You can share stuff from your Chrome browser with a few add ons.

But then I was at the Boxee Box launch party last night - and they got a swell product - but then I kept thinking, what Boxee needs to be is a browser on your laptop, not a box that takes you to a big screen.

Paramendra Bhagat: Model

Model Mayhem: Scam

Model Job Offer!
Nov 9 (2 days ago)

CAFE PRESS.It's all about you and your passions. In a nutshell, we're the world's best destination for expressing yourself through merchandise. From your favorite T-shirt and Woodie, to the tote bag over your shoulder and bumper sticker on your car, we're here to let you express your interests. And what makes our products so unique, and so expressive, is that we don't create the designs on them. Our community of designers do - all through millions of shops we help them run. CafePress is the world's biggest destination for self-expression through merchandise. Each month over 11 million shoppers visit CafePress to buy or create T-shirts, mugs, posters and other gifts that reflect their interests, passions, beliefs and affiliations. Today, CafePress is a growing network of over 6.5 million members who have unleashed their creativity to transform their artwork and ideas into an impressive catalog of over 250 million unique gifts. CafePress is where folks from all walks of life gather online to create, sell, and buy “print on-demand” products. Each brings to life whatever people are passionate about. It can be a white-hot political cause? A gorgeous grandchild? An obsessive hobby? A funny (or flirty?) thought?

I Do Want A Wicked Fast Web

Image via CrunchBase

CNet: Chrome could preload pages for 'wicked-fast' Web: Google has begun work on a feature to let Chrome load pages before they're needed, the latest instance of the company's relentless focus on Web performance..... scheduled to arrive in the browser's code base in February .... When a person clicks on a preloaded Web page, the browser could simply activate the page rather than load it..... Google has many other fast-Web projects under way, including a technology called False Start to speed encrypted Web pages, rewiring Web server communications with the SPDY protocol, support for the WebP image format as an alternative to JPEG, and switching to the libjpeg-turbo library for when JPEG images need to be drawn.

Maybe Google is a software company and it is coming from a coding angle, but the road to the wicked fast web I would like to travel is one where competition is introduced into the broadband sector and prices come down, speeds go up, like in some other countries. It is one of those People-People-Rise issues.

Brazil

Brazil And Twitter

Image via CrunchBaseAbout Orkut you could argue perhaps Facebook was late coming, you could look for cultural reasons. But Twitter is the same Twitter in every country. Why is Brazil so much more into Twitter than every other country? How do you explain this?

Brazil: Lula

Lula's great work as president has its roots in when he joined the labor union and rapidly rose up its ranks. But much more attention has been paid instead to his earlier years, like when he quit school after only a few years. This is a man of tremendous people skills, and he spent decades sharpening those skills. He is more labor leader than mechanic.

Brazil 2014

The Guardian: Brazil awarded 2014 World Cup: The Fifa president Sepp Blatter today confirmed that the 2014 World Cup will be staged in Brazil, who will host the tournament for the first time since 1950. .... Brazil were the only country bidding to host the finals .... five times world champions

Brazil's Lula

Brazil's Lula: The Most Popular Politician on Earth - Newsweek: grew up so poor, he didn't find out what bread was until he was 7 ..... made the 1,900-mile journey from the country's northeastern dustbowl for a life in the slums of São Paulo ..... dropped out of school in the fifth grade, shined shoes on the street, and went to work in a factory at 14, losing a finger to a lathe ...... rose through the rank and file to become an internationally respected union leader ..... practically shut down the continent's industrial powerhouse 
Image via Wikipediain the name of the steelworkers. ..... blunt, bearded ..... approval rating above 70 percent. .... "That's my man right there," Obama greeted him at the G20 summit in London in April. "The most popular politician on earth." ...... Brazil has withstood the global crisis better than almost any other nation: not a single bank went under, inflation is low, and the economy is growing ...... outpacing Russia and joining India and China ..... has repeatedly pumped up the minimum wage (up 67 percent since 2003 ...... long hours of practice have refined his shop-floor grammar and vocabulary ..... nothing vexes Lula more than being trapped in his office ..... 'I need to get out and travel, and meet people.' His connection is with the little guy. ...... likes nothing more than to ditch protocol, go off script, and (to the despair of his security detail) wade into an adoring crowd. ...... Starting in 1989, he ran for president three times, surging in early polls only to hit a wall on voting day. By the late '90s he was on the verge of quitting politics. Instead, he did something bolder: he remade himself. He stopped his fist-waving harangues, climbed into a suit, and hired a speech coach and a marketing wizard. ......... a "Letter to the Brazilian People," pledging to honor contracts, pay down the country's debts, abide by the International Monetary Fund's requirements, and generally play by the rules of the market. ....
Image via Wikipedia... To convince lenders Brazil was serious, Lula increased the "primary budget surplus"—the money the government puts aside every year to pay debt and interest—and boosted lending rates to a scorching 26 percent a year, throttling growth in order to kill inflation. He also kept government wages and pensions under control. "The unions and many people in the party hated it ........ was like a piece of blotting paper. ..... putting pragmatism ahead of ideology and, for the most part, fiscal restraint over the quick fix. .....With a web of hydroelectric stations and half its fleet of cars running on clean-burning sugar-cane ethanol, the country has long been the benchmark in renewable energy. ..... , exporting more beef, soybeans, and frozen chickens than any other nation ..... his aggressive diplomacy has rallied poorer nations to demand free trade and a new deal in the international economy. .......... his ability to sell unpalatable reforms to a largely poor population that looked to him as something of a savior ..... He gave the central bank a free hand to control inflation ....... He blamed the subprime market mess on "white-skinned, blue-eyed" bankers and ridiculed the champions of deregulation and the "minimal" state. "In the '80s and '90s it was fashionable to deride the state," he says. "But in the blink of the eye, the [free] market nearly bankrupted the world. And who did they go to for a bailout? The state." ...... He even defends the ham-fisted rule of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. "Give me one example of how Venezuela is not a democracy!" ...... Then he turned the tables: why not hold the next G7 meeting in Brazil, he challenged. "After all, in 20 years maybe only three of you will still be around." Not everyone was amused.

Lula reminds me of my own Laloo. Laloo was also a self described "man of the people." It is India's misfortune that Laloo is no longer Railway Minister. Rahul Gandhi felt Laloo had prime ministerial ambitions, and so Rahul cut him to size in Laloo's home state of Bihar.