that’s great…

thank you, purdue university…

Here’s a great writing tool I found @ Purdue University. I’m going to add this to my helpful links… Simply because it is.

t-mobile g1

Finally, if you were looking for a actual piece of hardware for your Android apps, here it goes: the T-Mobile G1. It’s not too shabby.

first impressions…

OK, it’s been a few solid weeks at Digital River. I have to say, I’m impressed. I love the amenities! I’m not saying it’s Google - but I will say it’s Google-like. The daily catered menus are all subsided. So lunch is about $3. There’s free dry cleaning. Fully equipped fitness rooms in 2 of the 3 sites. In one of them, there’s a full-time personal trainer on staff.

One of the main reasons I came here was simply to learn (within a given context). This place makes it real easy. The development group takes full responsibility of making sure its developers are prepared. Since I’ve arrived, I’ve been enrolled in sessions where a developer explains an existing module, technology, etc. All interactive, so you can ask anything and everything. If that wasn’t enough, they have an in-house university: a department dedicated to knowing everything about the products. If they don’t know, they know how to find out.

The underlying architecture is indicative of serious growth. The number of transactions processed a day require some serious ingenuity. You can’t simply throw a few more server instances out there - that’s short sighted. I love the stories of how these types of problems arise, and someone smart would innovative something unheard.

Anyway, Digital River is way beyond its startup days. There are remnants of that culture, which is nice. Overall, so far, so good.

truly, the best fight scene ever…

Enjoy…

business of innovation

There’s great series on CNBC called the Business of Innovation, hosted by the Maria Bartiromo. In the episode, Innovate of Die, Mel Kamarzin (CEO of Sirius Radio), gives some insight into how he’s been such an innovating forces for so long.

One was simply a fear of failure. I like that, a lot. Both Maria and the panel pressed him on this. But he stuck to his guns. Regardless of the amount of success everyone else thinks he’s achieved, he never thinks to himself, “I’ve arrived”. That’s a simple, yet extremely powerful idea. At CBS he had over 125,000 employees, and now he only has about 1,000. He made it clear that we’d be hard-pressed to find someone who knew him at both times, that would say he’d changed.

Another factor, which I’ve personally seen in older people, is needing less and less sleep. He quipped, “There’s very few advantages to being old; but one of the advantages is while everyone else is sleeping, I’m awake, ‘innovating’.” First off, being 65 just makes you older, not old. However, this does ring true. Regardless of age, the most successful people I’ve met or seen speak, sleep very little. Now having this trait alone will not lead to success. No, quite the opposite: It’ll simply drain you. This should come as a by product of your drive. It should be the result of your innate thirst for success.

Overall, it’s a pretty good series. Full episodes are available at the each episodes main page. You can start here.