Steve Woda's blog

links for 2009-04-30

• Google Unveils New Tool To Dig for Public Data
  Google launched a new search tool yesterday designed to help Web users find public data that is often buried in hard-to-navigate government Web sites. The tool, called Google Public Data, is the latest in the company's efforts to make information from federal, state and local governments accessible to citizens. It's a goal that many Washington public interest groups and government watchdogs share with President Obama, whose technology advisers are pushing to open up federal data to the public.
  (tags: google)
• Larry Summers and the Myth of the Tireless Leader
  Larry Summers fell asleep in a big meeting. And the White House press corps snapped a battery of photos to share that news around the world. Like most everyone, I suspect, I giggled at his embarrassing moment and wondered how those in the room felt about the doze. We've all been in meetings when someone has dozed off. It usually means the person is either deeply disengaged, or more likely exhausted. Summers is clearly the latter, presumably driving himself round the clock, sleeping minimally, to unwind this crisis.
  (tags: Leadership)

links for 2009-04-29

• Managing Growth at a Pet-Insurance Business
  The Entrepreneurs: Chris Ashton, 36, and Natasha Ashton, 34 Background: The British-born married couple moved to the U.S. in 2001 to attend the The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Shortly after enrolling, their cat, Bodey, became sick. The ensuing $5,000 vet bill forced the couple to move to a smaller apartment and prompted them to look for pet insurance. Their search did not prove fruitful. Even though the pet products industry was booming, pet insurance was practically nonexistent. The Ashtons thought the few available insurance products were overly complicated and restrictive, so they put their business degrees to use and started their own company to fill the gap. The Company: Following their graduation, in July 2006, the Ashtons launched Petplan Pet Insurance in the U.S. with coverage for all hereditary conditions for the life of an insured pet. Petplan now insures tens of thousands of pets across the country.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-04-28

• Yes, I'm A CEO Who Really Uses Twitter - Forbes.com
  Last fall, when I met Laura Fitton (Twitter name @pistachio) at a conference, I heard that she was the Queen of Twitter. So I asked her, "Do you really have time to get online and find out which of your friends is in the bathroom?" She persuaded me that Twitter was the real deal, so I invited her to come to Communispace, my company (which builds online customer communities), and present to our staff about the Twitter phenomenon. Two weeks later, Laura introduced us all to the world of hashtags (Twitter keywords preceded by a #) and DMs and @s and RTs (you can look them up). I learned that a follower didn't have to be as close as a Facebook friend, that Barack Obama had the most followers of anyone, and that if I wanted to witness a company doing a good job with Twitter, I should check out Starbucks ( SBUX - news - people ).
  (tags: Twitter)
• Pay cuts... A very, very stupid way to run a business and manage your human resources - "Making Pay Cuts Less Painful" by BusinessWeek
  As the recession grinds on and anxiety over mass layoffs mounts, the managerial class is trying something new: the 10% (or so) solution. Executives at such companies as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), New York Times (NYT), and most recently, Best Buy (BBY), are slashing pay. Targeting compensation might seem like a no brainer: No one gets the ax. Bosses don't have to hire like mad when the economy snaps back. But there's little in officeland as psychologically loaded as money.
  (tags: HR)

links for 2009-04-27

• The Daily Start-Up: Putting Terms In Entrepreneurs’ Hands
  Adeo Ressi is turning into a kind of paladin for entrepreneurs. The founder of controversial site TheFunded, which lets entrepreneurs anonymously rate venture capitalists, is drawing attention for releasing legal documents he believes will protect start-up founders from the “atrocities of investors.” In particular, he worked with an attorney at law firm Wilson Sonsini to create a template for a new class of stock, called Class F, that gives founders more rights and control over the venture capitalists who invest in them. As VentureBeat asks, if in this environment “plain-vanilla deal terms are being ignored by investors, why would they agree to terms that are even more in the founder’s interest?”….
  (tags: vc Entrepreneurship)
• 10 Rules for Effective Strategic Planning
  Every company runs into trouble from time to time. It’s a fact of business life. No entity goes straight up and to the right and no business plan, corporate direction, or product strategy is effective in perpetuity. Things change - economy, competition, organization, technology - you name it. When it’s time to take a step back, assess the situation, and change corporate strategy, you need a critical process called strategic planning. Unfortunately, it’s complex and challenging because the experience and ability to develop and manage it is hard to come by. Luckily, you’ve got me and my:
  (tags: strategy Leadership)

links for 2009-04-26

• Pogue’s Top Ten Cocktail-Party Questions
  The other night, I was at a dinner party where I wound up pelted with tech questions. To be totally honest, I love those situations. I get to play the guru for a few minutes—before the talk turns to topics on which I have nothing to contribute, like televised sports. Nonetheless, I can’t help noticing that the same questions tend to come up over and over again. Here they are, then: the Top Ten Pogue Cocktail-Party Questions (and Their Answers).
  (tags: technology)
• How to raise a reader
  It's never too early to steer your child toward books. But for toddlers, the goal is not to make sure they can read the classics before they're out of preschool. "The phrase to remember is 'developmentally appropriate,'" says Roni Leiderman, associate dean of the Family Center at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "Parents often come to me wanting to push academics too much, too fast, too soon. In fact, children learn best through play. Make reading a joyous event for them." There are many developmentally appropriate — and fun — ways to help your little one learn to love books and stories. And, surprisingly, not all of them involve sitting down with an actual book.
  (tags: kids)

links for 2009-04-23

• Sell yourself short
  Recently I returned from doing some speaking work in south-east Asia to an inbox of several hundred e-mails. Many hoped to interest me in their services. Others suggested subjects for this column. All these messages had one major drawback – they were far too long. It takes skill and application to communicate your message in just a few words, which is why good journalists and copywriters are so cherished. The internet is the spiritual home of the verbose and self-obsessed. You can easily write as much as you like about your company’s products and services. It is much harder to drive people to your website and keep them there. The attention span of a potential customer is very short, so you need to convey a simple message with a clear call to action.
  (tags: email marketing)
• The Email Introductions Most Likely to Open Doors
  Introductions from the right people can make all of the difference between getting invited to interview or not. Hiring managers, especially in difficult job markets, are inundated with resumes from qualified people. One way to make sure your candidacy gets considered is to have someone the hiring manager knows and trusts identify you as a good candidate. In many cases, this happens via email. “I met Landon at a recruiting event… I worked with Shelly at my last company…I spent time on the phone with Sam and was impressed by…”
  (tags: career)

links for 2009-04-22

• Some lose a job and become an entrepreneur
  Get ready to see more baked goods, custom-designed clothes, jewelry — and even horse saddle pads — on the market. Those are some of the products that laid-off workers are hawking as they try to grow small businesses. And many more goods and services are likely to come as jobs disappear and the government encourages entrepreneurial ventures.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship)
• Programming newbies make apps for iPhone
  Lauren Bernsen, a 25-year-old Nordstrom jewelry manager, had never written a line of computer code - that is, until the iPhone came along. Now the Palo Alto resident spends many nights bathed in the blue light of her computer screen creating her first iPhone application, a travel organizer program. "I was seduced by my own idea and the iPhone platform, which made it less of an unattainable thing," Bernsen said. The popular iPhone has inspired a wave of creativity among software developers, many of whom have aspirations of making a quick buck from the popular iPhone, 17 million units of which have been sold. But the device is also luring non-programmers, people like Bernsen who had never considered software development until now.
  (tags: iphone)

links for 2009-04-21

• Facebook Widgets: Consider Sproutbuilder.com
  Last year I wrote about the potential of applications – or widgets – on the Facebook platform. At the time Facebook was one of the only social media entities that had an open platform for anyone to build and share applications. Widgets are popular because users can customize their pages to their needs and desires with those widgets. 
Ecommerce sites can use them to brand themselves, drive traffic to their corporate site, and even generate direct sales from the widget. It used to be that a knowledgeable programmer was the most reliable way to go in creating a widget, but secondary services are making it easier to create applications and widgets without deep programming knowledge.
 One such company that is getting very good reviews is Sproutbuilder.com. The company allows users to create “sprouts,” which are multimedia Flash interfaces that can be created without knowing how to program in either Macromedia Flash or HTML.
  (tags: facebook)
• A Word Processor That Keeps Track
  Despite the many tools already available for collaborative word processing, most people would still rather e-mail different versions of a document to each other. TextFlow, a new Web-based word processor from Swedish company Nordic River, hopes to change that by making collaboration easier and letting users benefit from its features even if their collaborators use other word-processing software. TextFlow is just the latest Web-based word processor to arrive on the scene in recent years. Others contenders include Writely (later Google Docs), Adobe's Buzzword, and the Zoho suite from AdventNet. But Tomer Shalit, CEO of Nordic River, hopes that TextFlow's powerful approach to online collaboration will set it apart.

links for 2009-04-19

• Why Do Most Entrepreneurs Fail to Scale?
  One of my recent blogs discussed the DNA of great entrepreneurs as a mix of three simple things: smarts, guts, and luck. But what about the characteristics of entrepreneurs that can hinder success and prevent their companies from getting to the next level? More than 10 years ago a classmate of mine at Harvard Business School said to me, in the thickest of Japanese accents and a slow and forceful voice, "Tony, you are a true entrepreneur...your strengths are your weaknesses and your weaknesses are your strengths." The statement was profound and has resonated with me through the years. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of the following entrepreneurial traits:
  (tags: Entrepreneurship)
• Venture Capital Firm Lets Others Choose Its Start-Ups
  In the latest example of investors trying new approaches during the downturn, a venture-capital firm that was an early backer of Facebook Inc. is devising a plan to outsource early investing decisions to hand-picked entrepreneurs and technology executives. The Silicon Valley firm Founders Fund plans to give at least 12 "fellows" $25,000 to invest in an early-stage company of their choosing. Founders Fund will invest $25,000 alongside those initial investments and request the right to invest an additional $250,000 when the companies raise their next round, according to Sean Parker, managing partner at Founders Fund, which announced it raised a $220 million fund in late 2007. The firm expects to devote roughly $3.6 million to the new program.
  (tags: vc Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-04-17

• Woman killed by laptop in Surrey crash
  Police in Surrey, B.C., are warning people to secure their belongings while driving after a young woman was apparently killed by her laptop last month. Heather Storey, 25, of Delta died after the small car she was driving was hit by a tow truck turning left. When investigators looked into the incident, however, they concluded she would have survived if not for her laptop computer.
• 'Scareware' Epidemic Bilks Cautious Computer Users
  While surfing the Web in December, Keren Brophy got a message on her computer screen telling her to update her antivirus software. The pop-up message looked similar to Windows security warnings she'd routinely received. She paid $49.99 for a program called Antivirus 2009 from a company calling itself Meyrocorp and thought she was safe. A few days after she installed the software, Ms. Brophy's computer wouldn't boot up properly and soon was unusable; she noticed the desktop icon for the software she'd bought had disappeared. She had to wipe her hard drive clean to get the computer working again. Hoping for a refund, she sent an e-mail to Meyrocorp but got only automated replies.
  (tags: Security)

Hot Streaks! How do they happen?

I just arrived home from a terrific, extended, overdue vacation on the beach in Florida with my family.  I really had a great time as I am sure you can imagine.

While there, I was practicing my putting stroke on the beach-side putting green when I suddenly starting knocking in every putt I looked at.  Since I couldn't seem to miss a putt, I grabbed my video camera to see if I could record a bit of my hot streak, and that is when the following video was taped...



Since we are on the subject of hot streaks, I want to recommend a book to you that I read while on vacation.  Rosabeth Moss Kantor's "Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End" is a fabulous read, and it is now one of my personal favorites.  The book digs into the subject of how teams, organizations and people get on winning streaks or losing streaks.  What separates the two?

My favorite observation from the book, because we all know it is true, is that "failure and success are not episodes, they are trajectories."  Doing the little things well, every day, breeds success.  If you think success comes from a lucky lottery ticket, you will be a disappointed person in the long-run.  As my childhood basketball idol, Dr. J, once said, "Inch by inch, life's a cinch.  Yard by yard, life is hard."

"Confidence" is an awesome book, and for every current or aspiring leader, it is a must read.  Enjoy!