Clipmarks | sedelkov's clips

W. Africa Bushmen are denied U.S. visas :)

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:55:15 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

West African bushmen are denied U.S. visas

In a letter to Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., Debra Heien, chief of the consular section for the U.S. in Nigeria, said one applicant "could not articulate anything about the project. . . . The only thing he said was that he built his own house."

A second applicant, she said, "had not filled out his form properly. He was told to correct the errors and return before the morning intake was completed at 10:30 a.m. He did not come back."

She advised: "Should the applicants decide to apply again, they must make appointments using our on-line appointment system."

Tags: visa, state department, bushmen, africa

Amazing Money Machine

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:36:18 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov
clipper's remarks: Look, Obama this year is like new and hot start-up

Clip Source: www.theatlantic.com

To get a better sense of why it has succeeded, I opted to undergo the full tech immersion while reporting this piece, and soon had Obama ring tones on my phone, new networks of online “friends,” text-message updates from the campaign, and regular e-mails from its manager, all gently encouraging me to give money, volunteer time, bring in new friends, and generally reorient my life in ways that were made to seem hip and fun—and inexorably aimed at the greater glory of Barack Obama. How Obama arrived at this new model for campaigning is a tale of foresight and circumstance, his campaign’s enterprise and his opponent’s shortsightedness, and it has as much to do with Silicon Valley as it does with Washington politics.

Tags: obama, election, startup, tech

Advices form failed dotcom startup

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:48:10 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov
clipper's remarks: Good observations. Very coherent with my feeling right now.

Clip Source: diffle-history.blogspot.com

Diary of a Failed Startup

So, here's the collection of lessons learned.

Advice = Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization

If your idea starts with "We're building a platform to..." and you don't have a billion dollars in capital, find a new idea. Now.

It's a marathon, but it's a marathon made of sprints

Initial conditions matter. A lot.

Developing in a vacuum never works.

Beware the chicken and the egg.

Prototype any 3rd-party libraries that you'll be depending upon, before you base your product on them.

If you're doing anything other than building your project and getting users, it's premature.

The product will take longer than you expect. Design for the long-term.

People have an incentive not to crush your dreams. Take everything they say with a grain of salt.

Know your limitations.

Tags: startup, success, business, advice, dotcom, execution, web

Be small, gain big :)

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:45:21 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Mobile Web trends: Q1'08

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:41:59 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov
clipper's remarks: Guess who is #1?

Clip Source: www.opera.com

State of the Mobile Web

Social networking stands supreme
Almost 40% of traffic worldwide is to social networks. In some countries, such as the United States, South Africa and Indonesia, the social Web accounts for more than 60% of the traffic.

Social networking is popular worldwide

Successful sites on the Web find users on mobile phones, further underscoring the emergence of One Web.

Consumers desire a rich Web experience regardless of the device they use

WAP continues to diminish

Nearly a quarter of all traffic is headed to content portals or search engines

Snapshot of the top 10 countries for Opera Mini

Russia

Indonesia

China

United States

India

South Africa

Ukraine

United Kingdom

Germany

Poland

Future of SN

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:57:54 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: www.blahblahtech.com

Open standards and “social networking with a point”

Future Of Social Media Sites

OpenID to pave way for Web 3.0?

Voice 2.0 is all talk .. and data, video and IM, too!

Social media will “make or break brands”

Business websites: SEO versus Social Media, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Stumble It! • Digg This! • Save to del.icio.us (9 saves, tagged: Marketing networking strategy) • Share on Facebook • Discuss on Newsvine

Emerging patterns in social networking applications

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:17:15 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: www.inetinteractive.com

Emerging patterns in social networking applications

Existing patterns

Friend lists and groups

Status frameworks

Open data access

Media sharing

Transparency

Patterns missing in action

Separation of friends and acquaintances

Friend recommendation

Friend discovery

Credibility indicators

Patterns that should go away

Email systems

Page view generators

Site-specific chat rooms and instant messaging

Google friends

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:57:55 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: googleblog.blogspot.com

Enter Google Friend Connect. This new service, announced as a preview release tonight at Campfire One, lets non-technical site owners sprinkle social features throughout their websites, so visitors will easily be able to join with their AOL, Google, OpenID, and Yahoo! credentials. You'll be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web like Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, LinkedIn, orkut, Plaxo, and others. And quite simply, you'll be able to do things together.

Go Mobile?

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:44:43 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: www.techcrunch.com

I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Ot

But it’s coming. A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Tags: mobile, facebook, future

Halflife and SimCity rulezzz

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:24:41 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: technology.newscientist.com

Social networking sites to go 3D

Start-up company Vivaty of Menlo Park, California, is creating a hybrid of conventional social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and virtual worlds like Second Life. Rather than filling a web page with photos, a list of hobbies and their favourite software applications, as users of Facebook do today, Vivaty users will get access to a virtual room. They can adorn the walls with photos, watch a virtual television that plays YouTube or invite friends over to join them.

Looking into 25 years future

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:37:27 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: www.pcworld.com

Seven Technologies That Will Transform Businesses

- Eliminating the need to recharge batteries for wireless devices.

-- Parallel programming.

-- Natural computing interfaces.

-- Automated speech translation.

-- Persistent and reliable long-term storage.

-- Increasing programmer productivity 100-fold.

-- Identifying the financial consequences of IT investments. "One of the most perplexing challenges faced by IT leaders has been to convey the business value of IT in terms readily understandable by business executives," Gartner notes. No standard way of measuring IT value exists today.

Tags: it, future, prognosys

Rewriting? Noway! Re-ininventing!!!

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:25:29 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: twitter.com

Why you should almost never re-write your software

The advice echoes my own experience. Too many of the startups I have seen embark on a software re-write never emerge properly from the experience. It takes too long and the market moves forward whilst you stand still. The five reasons OnStartups gives are:

It Will Take Longer Than You Think

2. Markets Change:

3. Existing Customers Become Frustrated

4. Refactoring Can Cleanup The Code

5. You Don’t Control The Rewrite, It Controls You:

Wealth is rational but poverty is not

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:47:35 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: www.boston.com

The sting of poverty

In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence. Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work.

Google April Fool’s Jokes Galore

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:44:09 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: blogoscoped.com

Google April Fool’s Jokes Galore

Japan started early with the April 1st specialties, but the jokes continue. Thanks to everyone who helps collecting Google’s April Fool’s pranks in the forum (or sent in things via mail)! Here’s the list of Google’s jokes and Google-related pranks from over the web, which I may update during the day (for all items I’ll add the disclaimer that it’s likely it’s a hoax, but some of the items may not be!):

Tags: google, joke, ide

Children flock to social networks

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:21:45 GMT

clipped by: sedelkov

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Children flock to social networks

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

Almost half of children online use social network sites

More than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds who are online in the UK have a profile on a social network, research shows.

Most sites, such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, set a minimum age of between 13 and 14 to create a profile but none actively enforce the age limit.

Ofcom's survey of 5,000 adults and 3,000 children found 49% of those aged between eight and 17 have a profile.

Ofcom says parents need to keep an eye on what their children do online.