As embarrassing as the Galaxy Note 7 debacle has been, and even with the initial slowness with which Samsung responded, I have to say I’m impressed with how high the recall rate has been – up to 93% in the US as of a few weeks ago. And with T-Mobile now rolling out the kill-switch for any remaining Note 7s, the rate will further increase. That’s a good result. An example of...
From Fortune’s article: The Ugly Unethical Underside of Silicon Valley A few quotes tell the story. For starters: “What if Theranos is the canary in the coal mine?†says Roger McNamee, a 40-year VC veteran and managing director at Elevation Partners. “Everyone is looking at Theranos as an outlier. We may discover it’s not an outlier at all.†Because: So inexperienced people are...
Fascinating articles from the NYT about Snopes – ‘the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.’ Snopes is now helping with general fact checking for Facebook, and as a result finds itself under attack, which may or may not be a good thing… It’s easy to laugh at people who get fooled by fake news and...
I’ve been reading a bit around AI lately. It started with this piece in the New York Times which focusses initially on Google (in particular Google Translate) and then the extraordinary speed with which they’ve reorganised the entire company around AI. And then the ‘arms race’ to AI control in the industry: Google’s decision to reorganize itself around A.I. was the...
I love it when reading an article changes my view on things. This article on Bloomberg changed my view on ‘making up jobs’. The author (Noah Smith) writes: I recently wrote that the government should focus on getting people jobs instead of just mailing them money. Ideas for doing that range from government employment guarantees to public-works programs to tax incentives for...
Is it just me, or does it seem as though for every one amazing Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer you receive there’s two that give you buyer’s remorse: you purchased it previously and now you have an email slapping you in the face offering it for up to 80% less than you paid. Case in point: I purchased a HubSpot theme for $1200 earlier in the year. This morning I received an email...
If Gary Vaynerchuk ever releases a fragrance line I think he should call it Hustle.
This comment from Evan Spiegel (mentioned as part of the Snap, Inc Spectacles reveal in WSJ) is useful: “People wonder why their daughter is taking 10,000 photos a day. What they don’t realize is that she isn’t preserving images. She’s talking.†This is a key insight that most of the *older* generations don’t appreciate. Behaviours change, and whilst a snap-happy younger...
This is why I always use Book Depository these days. Book Depository is more expensive for the books themselves, but Amazon totally fucks you over with the shipping. And their shipping timeframes are ridiculous too (4 weeks to ship a book, seriously?) Book Depository total for 3 books: $72.20 Amazon total for 3 books: $127.18 Book Depository: Amazon: btw worth mentioning that buying through these...
One question customers ask semi-regularly is: how do I reduce my contact database cost? That is, they feel that the cost of keeping their contacts database is too expensive – and they want to know how to reduce the cost – ie by removing contacts. This applies (obviously) to contact databases that are priced on a per contact basis (eg MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, etc)...