Deserted highways, empty hotel rooms, miles of unsold residential and office space. These were not the images that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Makhtoum, Dubai’s ruler, had in mind when he wrote his book about the emirate, My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence, which was published in April 2006. “Dubai’s proving to be one of the most successful development stories in the world, and is being viewed increasingly in the Arab and Muslim worlds as a source of pride,” a gushing press release issued by the publisher declared. In the book, al-Makhtoum explained how Dubai had been transformed in the course of two generations from a desert backwater into the ultimate global city. He compared Dubai to Córdoba, the medieval capital of Arab Spain, and praised its melting pot of nations and creeds that enhanced, the release proclaimed, “human interaction and understanding.”
(Link: Good-bye to Dubai | The New York Review of Books)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized economics, realestate
If there are millions, it’s trivial to find ten. If you can’t find even ten, then either there’s not millions or those millions aren’t interested in you.
Businesses don’t start with millions of customers, they start with one, then ten, then a hundred, and then a thousand. But most don’t get past ten.
(Link: A Smart Bear – why getting 10 customers is all that matters)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized bd, marketing, startups, tweet
@garrickvanburen: If you have a metaphor for an idea that works, let the metaphor become the idea.
(Link: If you have a metaphor for an idea that works, let the metaphor become the idea)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized for:brettjcooper@gmail.com, startups
Grubwithus Social Dining builds friendships over great meals at Chicago’s best restaurants. Think OpenTable, but instead of booking your own table, you’re booking an individual seat at a table with other social diners. You’ll eat good food, meet new friends, and instantly know more people in Chicago!
(Link: Grubwithus – a groupon for strangers to dine together)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized Chicago, groupon, socialnetworking, tweet
Mention Badgy on Twitter and you’ll unlock your first badge! No sign-up process needed. We’ll @reply to you with your badge
(Link: Badgy – Making Twitter more fun, one badge at a time)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized badges, foursquare, twitter
Java VisualVM is a tool that provides a visual interface for viewing detailed information about Java applications while they are running on a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and for troubleshooting and profiling these applications. Various optional tools, including Java VisualVM, are provided with Sun’s distribution of the Java Development Kit (JDK) for retrieving different types of data about running JVM software instances. For example, most of the previously standalone tools JConsole, jstat, jinfo, jstack, and jmap are part of Java VisualVM. Java VisualVM federates these tools to obtain data from the JVM software, then re-organizes and presents the information graphically, to enable you to view different data about multiple Java applications uniformly, whether they are running locally or on remote machines. Furthermore, developers can extend Java VisualVM to add new functionality by creating and posting plug-ins to the tool’s built-in update center.
(Link: VisualVM – visual interface for viewing detailed information about Java applications while they are running on a Java Virtual Machine (JVM))
BrentSordyl Uncategorized debugging, java, jvm
AirDropper lets Dropbox users securely request a file from anyone.
(Link: AirDropper – Request a file from anyone.)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized dropbox, sharing
Be part of the action at work from home or anywhere. All you need is a web browser and you can interact with the whole office, lab, factory, or warehouse. QB glides around smoothly and quietly, giving you total access and presence. Shipping in Fall 2010.
(Link: Anybots – Your Personal Robot Avatar)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized avatar, communication, tweet, videoconferencing
Step I: Set Your Constraints:
So what makes a good name? There are five main characteristics:
It’s easy to remember
It’s easy to spell and requires no explanation
It describes your business category
It describes your benefit
It describes your difference
Here are three more constraints that I like:
It has to be one or two syllables long – no more
Each syllable starts with a strong consonant (B, C, D, G, K, P, Q, T)
It’s fun to say (”…that just rolls off the tongue”)
(Link: Think Vitamin » How To Name Your Company)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized naming
Greg Gibbs, owner of Chicago Bagel Authority in Lincoln Park, felt this pain firsthand when he signed on with Groupon for a deal-of-the-day in January. His promotion, which cost $3 for an $8 voucher good for any menu item, sold nearly 10,000 Groupons, 10 times more than the top end of Gibbs’ expectations.
“This will end up being the year of the Groupon for us, and that’s not a good thing,” Gibbs said. “We’ll count it as a loss. ”
(Link: Groupon’s growth: Groupon trying to counter growing pains – chicagotribune.com)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized groupon
Another way of looking at this kind of business model is that you are using engineering resources to solve the problem of how to acquire customers.
Conventional thinking places the burden of acquiring customers on the people in marketing and sales. A free strategy requires a different way of thinking that usually has to come from a founder or CEO. In the Free strategy, the company is going to shift the expense of customer acquisition to the product development group.
(Link: The Power of Free | For Entrepreneurs)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized freemium
As Professor Shoup wrote, “Minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars.”
Under a more sensible policy, a parking space that is currently free could cost at least $100 a month — and maybe much more — in many American cities and suburbs.
(Link: Why Free Parking Comes at a Price – NYTimes.com)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized economics, transit
Released earlier today was Nitrode, which aims to be FASTCGI type server for Node.js, this is a server for those who want the power of something like Nginx, but would prefer to write the logic in JavaScript.
(Link: Nitrode: A lightweight HTTP Server on top of Node.js)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized javascript, node.js
Snow Transformation Pack will change the appearance of your whole system, including the login screen, icons, wallpapers, sounds, dock, dialog boxes, and other UI elements. You’ll need to disable User Account Control to install it, so you may have to run the installer twice—once to disable UAC and then again (after restarting) to install the package. On installing, you’ll get a few choices as to whether you want to install a few extra background apps that add extra graphics, which is nice if your computer isn’t necessarily a powerhouse (so you can turn them off to keep performance up).
(Link: Snow Transformation Pack Makes Your Windows Desktop Look Like Mac OS X)
BrentSordyl Uncategorized osx
