Friday, January 21, 2011

Microfinance

No Alzheimer’s For Me
Pinging Hussein Kanji (2)
Pinging Hussein Kanji
Liking Is For Cowards
The Internet And The Emperors
The Music Tag On Tumblr
PayCheckr: Not Dead Yet
Mark Pincus Is Really Something
The Dong Rule
Video Blogging Would Beat Panels And Ignite
Wow Technorati
Southern Hospitality
My 50 Strong Tech Team Ranked 17 Globally On Vworker
Internet Week Fail Whale
Social Concentric Circles
Microfinance: Post Obama Race Talk
Fuck Yeah Africa
My BusiCopy Cofounder Anuj Bikram Thapa
The UN, The US, The Internet
Slow Down The Blogging
The Long March Of Democracy
Born In The USA
Someone From Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Now Followng Me On Tumblr
Live Nation And GroupOn: That Offline Component
Social Media And StartUps: Striking The Right Balance
Mafia Politics In Nepal
Mobile Banking For The Unbanked
Twitter Gangs Of New York (2)
18 Months Ago GroupOn Did Not Exist
Gender And The Wilson Household
Tequila
Patti Smith's Dancing Barefoot: One Powerful Song
Chris Dixon Kind Of Person
Superfluidity
Is Location The Fifth Dimension?
Jazz And Rock Fusion From Nepal
Me In The New York Times
Having Momo: Do Not Disturb
Doing Two Tech Startups
Subscription Business Models For Mindfood
Adaptive Text: The Book Deserves To Come Alive
Apple Does Hardware In Asia
That 10X Return Thing
Jessica Wilson Hearts Mahatma Gandhi
Mike Arrington And I: Close
Teamwork
Swiss Machine
Water Changes Everything
Kristina Hoke
Google Earth Builder
Your Local Library On Kindle
Indian Invasion Comedy
Way To Go Christina
Brooklyn Loves Bollywood
My Non Personhood Of 2009, 2010
SMS Power
Great To Meet Craig Newmark
This Week In Venture Capital: Gotham Gal
The Proverbial White Male
GroupOn's Legacy: Cute Email?
Two Upheavals Already
Having Mango Lassi: Do Not Disturb
Kiva Is In Nepal
Just Became A Cofounder
Tony Tsieh Could Have Been Richard Branson
How Wal-Mart Got Started
A Boulder Invitation From Brad Feld Himself
Played Farmville After Long Months
Getting To Meet Mark Suster In Person
Having Mango Lassi
2,000 Squats
A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected
Mike Yavonditte: An Hour Of Video
Technology And Social Justice
Owning Equity, Owning House
Grameen Miracles
Grameen Under Attack At Home
Is Square A Microfinance Company?
To You I Offer Buddhism And Yoga
To Catch A Dollar
Barack's Positivity
Rudiments Of A Corporate Culture
The Arab Revolutions And My Rethinks On Britain And France
Minority Majority Nation?
New York City
Is It A Bubble?
Gender Talk And Pragmatism
Caroline McCarthy On Gender
Autobiography
How To Pitch: The Rachel Sequoia Way
Jagdish Bhagwati: Misplaced Criticism Of Yunus
Multidisciplinary Approaches
Africa's Internet Strides
Alexis Ohanian: Angel Investor
The Institutions Of Globalization Will Be Built On The Internet
My Chrome Notebook Never Arrived
Happy World Water Day
Yunus Should Launch A Political Party
One Step Behind
Me @ CNN
The Two Poles Of My Social Reality
A Little Bit Of Untidyness, A Little Bit Of Randomness, A Little Bit of Chaos
Immigration Limbo
More Sam Walton Than Bill Gates
Rich Kids
Sean Parker, Billionaire, Was Really Poor Once
Blogging Works Wonders: Here's An Example
GroupOn, Zappos, And The Non Tech Components
GroupOn Did Not Launch At South By South West
A Life Of Poverty
Bundling Investors
Mobile Phone Banking: Major Boon To The Last Mile Of Microfinance
Very Much Would Like To Go Into Bihar
Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media
Walking/Running: Putting One Foot After The Other
Going High Tech: Selfish Reasons
Microfinance Alone Can't Cure Poverty
Focus, Focus, Focus
This Guy Jack Dorsey
The Kiva Story
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn
Me: Author
Carpet Bombing Angels
My Failures
Indian Hurdle
Brooklyn And Santogold/Santigold
Bihar, Darbhanga
Twitter Is Amazing For Networking
In Foley Square A Libya Feeling
Incredible India
A Tweet From Someone Running For Congress
Hackers And Founders MeetUp: Amazing
Not Rich Yet
Like David Noel?
Michael Yavonditte: An Exemplary Entrepreneur/Investor
Just Because My Name Ends With An A
Black Buddhas: The Madhesis Of Nepal: Documentary
Social Media Is For Real
Advantage India, Disadvantage India
Top Discussion At A Top LinkedIn Microfinance Group
Raising Money, Building Teams
Rootlessness And The City
Microfinance: No Substitute For Good Governance
Aggressive Fundraising, Aggressive Recruiting
Microfinance, Not Just Microcredit
Having Kenya And Chinatown Thoughts
Revolutionary Poverty Alleviation
Microfinance: The Basics
When Zuck's Facebook Account Got Hacked
The Google/Facebook Of Microfinance
Leave Yunus Alone
Immigration Mess/Humiliation And Window Shopped Tech Entrepreneurship
Normal People Easy To Get Along With
Validation From Fred Wilson: Froth
Arab Focus, Microfinance Focus
50 Hours Into One Five Minute Pitch
Tweet Pitches To First World Women
2015: A Mobile Tech Company Will Storm The Room
Could You Have Predicted A Google In 1990?
The Entrepreneur Does Have A Boss
Who Owns The Company?
You Have To Be A Little Wild
Mark Zuckerberg Loves Union Square Ventures
Non Profit Microfinance Vs For Profit Microfinance: The Stupid Debate
Three Syllables
10,000 People In 10 Years
Immensely Excited
A Mini Bubble Burst In Three Years
Union Square Ventures: You Love Me, You Love Me Not
A Moment Of Despair
Slumdog Millionaire: A Movie About My People
The Early Stages
Third World Guy
Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp
250K Or 500K: How Much To Raise?
The Stink From The New York Times
My Tech Partners Sunil Madhu, Marty Monaco
Allen Paltrow: A Most Promising Princeton Freshman
So I Had A Shake Shack Burger
The Stink From India
Yunus On Loan Sharks
Nazrul Islam Chunnu: Motherfucker
Not Going Into Any Accelerator Program
My Third World Advantage
Who Hired You?
We Are Not Trying To Solve All The World's Problems
A FinTech StartUp With An Edge
Mock Pitching Brad
The Best Way To Deal With Venture Capitalists
Kiva And My Outfit: Three Major Departure Points
Going For Profit
Catchafire
Intrepid Woman Rachel Cook
Union Square Ventures: A Real Choice
The Gotham Gal
MLK Day Brunch With Jack In Philly
Chris, Come In At 50K
Hola Charlie, A 50K Opportunity
FinTech: I Am Loving The Term
General Assembly: Singing Praises
Fred, How About Some Money?
Microlending Film At Kickstarter
Whining Is Not The Word
Going To Kickstarter For My Microfinance StartUp
Microfinance: Cutting Edge Like Clean Tech, Bio Tech, Nano Tech
Wearing Black
Eric Schmidt's Cloud Computing And My IC Vision
You Don't Need Billions To Take Care Of Your Family
Microfinance: A Zero Trillion Dollar Industry
$160 Smartphone From India: No Contract, No Subsidy
The Day I Got Called Sean Parker
Brazil
Number 52 In New York
Racism Caused Recession
Vinod Khosla's Entry Into New York City
Event At Hunch: Gender Talk (4)
Vinod Khosla: For Profit Poverty Alleviation
Google, Please Don't Be Evil
Leave Costa Rica Alone
The Microfinance Fishing Net
Engineering, Creativity, Sector Reform, Sector Revolution
I Am In Finance, Microfinance
Microfinance: The Next Big Thing?
Blog Carnival: Microfinance
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Seed Money

Armdroid

Android robot logo.Image via Wikipedia
Harvard Business Review: The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid: incumbents find it immensely hard to disrupt themselves..... They tried jamming a PC into a smaller form factor, which entirely missed the point. Their tablet should have been about disrupting the PC market with something light, cheap and simple. Instead, Microsoft tried to make it do everything. ...... the only line of business that is barely growing is the Atom, Intel's mobile processor. ..... Microsoft's point of view: now that Windows 7 has been developed, to sell another copy, they don't have to do a single thing. Because of this, it becomes very hard for any executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets: not only would it cost Microsoft a lot to develop, but it would result in cannibalization of its core product sales ...... ARM processors are perfect for powering these handheld devices. Manufacturers can customize to their heart's content. And Android is on track to dominate the operating system space .... ARM and Android — Armdroid — are providing everything that tablet manufacturers need, and doing it more effectively and at a lower cost than Microsoft and Intel are able to.
I am still betting on the Chrome OS Notebook to kill Windows. Tablets and smartphones are all good, but for the power user there is still a need for a bigger screen and a full fledged keyboard.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

An Eric Schmidt Traffic Spike


The massive spike in traffic was due to this blog post: I Will Not Miss Eric.

12 Digit Global, Mobile Smartphone Numbers

The first smartphone "The Simon" by ...Image via WikipediaJust like every website has a unique web address, every smartphone needs to come with a unique 12 digit number straight from the manufacturer. As soon as it can tap into wifi, that is the number the phone responds to, it rings when you call that number. There is no phone company involved anywhere in the equation. There is no monthly fee.

Because it is web based, it is global. The web is a country on its own. As long as you can come online is all that matters. The phone calls are free.

We would have to agree on industry standards so that numbers don't get duplicated anywhere. If we could do this, voice would overtake video as the fastest growing segment of internet traffic. People want to talk to each other. That would be a contribution to world peace. I thought it was Chatroulette, I was wrong. It's the smartphone, the kind that makes and receives free phone calls globally.

Voice is just data. There is no reason whatsoever why phone calls need to be any different from emails. You send and receive as many as you want. Email addresses don't have area codes, country codes, none of that nonsense.

2011-2015: A Mobile Stretch

A photo of an iPhone 4.Image via WikipediaI have been talking in terms of five broad categories in tech: web tech, clean tech, bio tech, nano tech, fin tech. In web tech, the momentum clearly is with mobile. The next five years belong to mobile. Thanks to the mobile web the rest of the world does not have to wait. It is through the mobile web that the world finally gets to become one. The sizzle is amazing to watch. Like I say, the child is not a mini adult, not that there is anything childish about the mobile web.
ReadWriteWeb: Eric Schmidt: All of Google's Strategic Initiatives in 2011 are Mobile
A $50 Smartphone Running On Free WiFi
Steve Jobs: Android Rant
Fred Wilson On Android And HTML5
Twitter, FourSquare: Mobile Web Thingies
Is The Mobile Web In A Category Of Its Own?

I Will Not Miss Eric

Image representing Larry Page as depicted in C...Image via CrunchBaseI am a big believer in the idea of the Founder CEO, and I will not miss Eric.
New York Times: Shake-Up at Google as Co-Founder Takes Over: Mr. Schmidt said Mr. Page would “merge Google’s technology and business vision,” while he would focus on external issues, like “deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships.” .... “I don’t think he was pushed aside, but he may have been nudged,” he said, adding that between the two founders, Mr. Page always appeared more interested in eventually becoming chief executive. ..... In the unusual management “troika,” Mr. Auletta said, Mr. Page’s voice always carried the most weight.
Also, the cofounder thing is a myth. Larry Page was always the senior among the two founders. I admire Sergey plenty, but credit is where credit is due.

The Chrome OS Could Kill Windows

Google Chrome IconImage via WikipediaIt could. It should. The idea of an operating system being the court clown is so pre-internet. The browser is the new court clown, it's not the operating system. The browser should have been the new operating system, and perhaps would have been if Microsoft had not killed Netscape.

I have watched in pain as Google has dragged its feet on the Chrome Operating System. Google is so obviously not a hardware company. Look at how they "released" their Chrome OS laptop. They released it like it were Gmail. They have released an early beta version to a limited number of users. I think they will give out a million of the machines for free. And based on the feedback they get, they will rework the machine. How lame!