Simplicity

Great quote on simplicity from Evan Williams, the guy behind Blogger and Twitter in this week’s Economist.

The irony of trying to plan accidents, and orchestrate their frequent occurrence, is not lost on Mr Williams. So he tries mental tricks. One is to ask “what can we take away to create something new?” A decade ago, you could have started with Yahoo! and taken away all the clutter around the search box to get Google. When he took Blogger and took away everything except one 140-character line, he had Twitter. Radical constraints, he believes, can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things.

Virtual Worlds

GP Bullhound have released a research note (pdf) on Virtual Worlds.

The key findings are:

• Experts predicting that 80% of internet users will become members of virtual worlds by 2011.
• Virtual Worlds increasingly segmented by demographics and hobbies.
• In 2007, 24% of US child and teen internet users will visit virtual worlds. By 2011, an estimated 53% will do so.
• Multiple revenue streams are emerging in the virtual world space. The main business models identified are:
  • The sale of virtual goods.
    • It is key for virtual worlds to have multiple payment methods ranging from credit cards, to Paypal or SMS in order to be able to process micro payments efficiently and to allow users to pay conveniently.
  • Subscription and premium subscription.
  • In-world advertising and product licensing.
    • In June 2007, Parks Associates estimated that US$15m was spent on virtual world advertising in the US in 2006 and projected that it would rise tenfold to US$150m in 2012.
• Given the competitive environment the virtual worlds operate in, they forecast that subscriptions and premium subscriptions for virtual worlds will decrease in prominence by 2010.
• Virtual worlds will instead benefit from the growth of advertising and the purchase of virtual goods.

You can download the full research note (pdf) from their website.

http://bertfresno.tumblr.com

I have set up a tumblelog, this should aggregate all my blog posts and del.icio.us bookmarks.

From Wikipedia: a tumblelog or tlog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video.

Post Your Picks

If you fancy your self as the next Warren Buffett there are a number of places on the web to demonstrate your investing ability.

• Gurufocus - lets you post what you think a company is worth.
• Marketocracy - lets you run your own mutual fund.
• Seeking Alpha - publishing network focused around investing and financial news.
• The Motley Fool CAPS - lets you post what you think a company is worth.
• Value Investors Club - more exclusive, you have to post an idea which may, or may not get you membership (limited to 250 people).
• Sharetrader - NZ based forum for discussing NZX and ASX investments.
• Stockpickr - lets you post about which shares you like and compare your picks to other investors.

People Search

Zoominfo offers a vertical people search engine. Seems to work well for people that hold a lot of board postions. The interface is good at mapping other people that sit on the same or related boards.

For example the profile of Michael Moritz from Sequoia  links to other board members of Google.