The Musing Mill

Good news - Google hired me and is putting me in the Cairo office.

(Just Kidding - I had to figure out a way to use that picture)

No - Google has declined further interviews, and it’s a good thing since I now have to concentrate on Solo Structures. But I just can’t help it. I’ve been researching Google since February and I keep finding more interesting stuff. For instance, do a Google search on “Marissa Mayer” and then click the Wikipedia link.

One that page you’ll find a link to a presentation she gave at Stanford this May. It’s a great insight into Google. Listening to it rewound me back to working with Leonid and the brilliant Russian (well, mostly Russian) engineers on Revit and the early days of the startup. I agree with their “formula.” Launch it rough around the edges and polish it QUICKLY as your most vocal early-adopter users complain.

Marissa is set to present at Harvard with Carl Bass (CEO of Autodesk) in November. BTW, I hope Marissa has a thick skin, since this article made me split my sides laughing.

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When I first started the second year of my MBA program, it was looking like the most useful class (professionally) would be Financial Statement Analysis (FSA).

Don’t get me wrong, FSA is great. Basically, you can take a company’s financial statements and dissect them in ways that they can’t hide behind - at least as good as any paid stock market analyst could. Very useful.

But now, after a few weeks into it, the CLEAR winner is Modeling and Simulation Using Excel (QM880). Many thanks to Tina Thiarra for suggesting I take this class last Spring. In short, every week, we take 5-6 complex problems in Operations, Marketing or Finance, problems I previously would have thought unbelievably difficult to figure out.

We then solve each of them in 15 minutes using Excel. It’s a mindset. Just wait until I figure out how to apply this stuff to Internet Marketing…

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If you think that MOG.com is as cool as I do, and you hack Ruby code, then you’ll probably understand why Starfish extends Ruby (already cool) into ice-cold cool territory.

http://rufy.com/starfish/doc/

It’s used to make distributed programming ridiculously easy (thanks Rails!) for those of you who need to massively parallel process something. Sounds like what we’re doing for Solo Structures right now.

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Social software in the enterprise,
originally uploaded by Larsz.

Another good one from Larsz. This mindmap is from the Collaborative Technologies Conference held in Boston this past June. It’s a breakdown or structure of how social web-applications are altering enterprise dynamics.

Yes…this is the real geek stuff

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We’ve done a lot of different things this summer;

But I think the thing Steven liked the MOST was crabbing in Delaware. Food that you can hit with a hammer AND eat too? What could be better to a 3 year old boy?

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Standing on the beach the other day, I told Susan that this summer was worth every penny. I think the picture says it all. While I have not had the summer off, I have had significant control over WHEN I do my work versus spending time with the kids and Susan. So, this advice is for whoever might read this someday.

ADVICE: If you ever get the chance to take significant time off to be with your kids when they are little - DO IT! It’s worth whatever savings or income you will give up. There’s more to life than money - it’s an instrument not an end. Family is more important.

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Joshua Schachter: Del.icio.us - Things we’ve learned,
originally uploaded by Larsz.

This is a great overview of all the things that have to be considered when building a company with a Web-hosted application as it’s main interface to the customer.

The guys at Delicious have done a great job and these are their notes.

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Sorry to those who came to look here over the last few weeks. I had too many issues with the domain redirection and I finally moved the Musing Mill from its Mac-based home to a hosted server. It was actually dead easy and I’m surprised I didn’t try it until now! (Many thanks to Matt Mullenweg for good planning!) I did a SQL backup of the database on the Mac, created the same DB on Dreamhost, imported the SQL to the Dreamhost DB and then did their 1-click Wordpress install. Worked like a charm!

I’ll be back-dating some of the missing posts.

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Shaun Inman, Mint: 10 Reasons Why You Need to Build an API,
originally uploaded by Larsz.

Everyone (and by this I mean software-types, MBAs or CAD users) knows APIs are important. I’m trying to work with Vertex in Finland and they apparently do not. Here’s a good summary of why they are that I found on Flickr…

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OK - anybody in marketing? You really have to see this parody of how Microsoft would have re-designed the packaging for the iPod. It’s classic Dilbert-esque tech-geek humor

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