that’s great…

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.

moving on…

Donaldson Company has been around since 1915. Although you’ve probably never heard of it, it’s been quietly dominating the filter industry. With over about 14,000 employees worldwide, and hitting the 2 billion dollar revenue mark last month, it’s clearly a force to be reckoned with. It was a great opportunity to work there. Alas, I’m moving on…

Once I settle in, I’ll talk about the new firm. It’s actually about time. My concentration (technical passion) in college was distributed computing, grid and cloud-based solutions. However, after school Akkam’s Razor lead me in another direction - gainful employment. Anyway, years later, it seems like I might get that chance to work on a reasonably large, scalable, truly distributed solution. I’m definitely looking forward to that, and it doesn’t hurt that my commute will stay under 30 minutes a day (with traffic).

new york cares…

If you know me, you know I love NYC. Anyway, there’s this song I keep hearing when I listen to the Radiohead radio station on Yahoo’s music engine: Interpol’s NYC (New York Cares). The lyrics are simple, but like a Beth Orton, it leaves a strong image in your mind. Maybe because I’ve taken the subway for majority of my early youth, who knows. Thought I’d share their video with you.

hey google, what is that?

So, as usual checking my Gmail account waiting on a few responses, and I see this odd thing in the top left corner. I can’t figure it out; it makes no sense. At first I think it’s a phantom, or lazy bit. I refresh a few the page times - look at the page’s source - still nothing jumps out me.

Looks like the bent corner of a page… Anyway, I decided to take a snapshot and simply ask if anyone else has noticed this? Better yet, do you know what it is?

Update: Someone on Digg brought it up, and as it turns out Google is aware of it, and is fixing it. I was under the impression that they purposefully did this. Oh well. Thanks Brian M.

TechCrunhIT speaks on it too. - Thanks Jason C.

cream of the crop…

William C. Taylor gives and interview that talks about Zappos.com. On interesting item is how they find the true cream of the crop… I think I really like it.