Yesterday, John Gruber declared that Google Mobile uses private iPhone APIs. Since he wrote it, it must be true, which is why TechCrunch picked up on the article this morning. Nevermind the fact that the only evidence offered by Gruber was that “there is no public API in the iPhone SDK for using the proximity [...]

Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a...

We’re doing a bit of load testing on an upcoming feature for Socialbrowse and I thought I’d write about two tools I’ve found to be incredibly helpful and easy to use. HTTP_LOAD The first is http_load.  With http_load you can send many requests at a time to load test your server in just a single process [...]

It's not easy being a wrestler. Inside the ring your pounding an opponent's head against the corner post, but outside the ring it's hard to meet people. Nobody really wants to be your friend. Not even on MySpace. They say their your friends, but they are not really your friends. Wrestlers aren't stupid. They know everybody thinks they are just a bunch of clowns. That's why the company that employs all the wrestlers you see on TV, World Wrestling Entertainment, created WWE Universe, a social network just for them and their fans. Okay, it's ...

In other Mozilla news, Firefox hit a major milestone today with the one billionth download of add-on software for the browser. That feat took three and half years. Many of those downloads are never used more than once or twice, of course. But there is no doubt about it that Firefox is major software platform. Just look at StumbleUpon, it was built on top of Firefox.

Today, the (for-now) non-profit Mozilla Foundation released its financial statements for 2007 (embedded below). Revenues for the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser were up 12 percent to $75 million, with search-related royalties from Google accounting for 88 percent of the total, or $66 million. (Another $2 million or so came from other search engines). Those revenues come from Mozilla's portion of the search advertising revenues generated by the default Google search box in the Firefox browser. Google's overall percentage of Mozilla's revenues is even bigger than it was in 2006, when it accounted for 85 percent ...

A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the auto industry needs.

When it comes to building social sites listening to users is a bad idea.    The ones that want something the most are usually fringe users who want something very specific.    For instance on my site there are 900,000 dailly users  of which 2,000 use the forums.    Of those 2000 users who use the forums less than [...]

Sometimes quitting is the best thing you can do. Knowing when to quit and when to stick is what separates the winners from the losers. Seth Godin, in his book The Dip, tells us that we should quit more often than we do. In fact, Godin states that strategic quitting is a secret of success. Hanging on too long to something that is going to fail simply drains you of time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

A team of ex-Googlers, with backing from Y Combinator, the Friendfeed founders and others, have created what might be both the ugliest and most useful group productivity app we've seen. Etherpad, a new product from Appjet, launches this morning, and you must try it out. It's comparable to Google Docs or a wiki, but it's far more useful. You start off by creating a new workspace. You type basic text on numbered lines at will. Then invite someone else in and have them type as well. Each user's edits are highlighted a different color. Changes are ...

YourStreet, the startup I run, has been fortunate to get a good amount of press coverage since we launched last November. TechCrunch, PBS, PC World, Mashable, MIT Technology Review, Presstime magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and even the Kim Komando radio show have all written about YourStreet. I am regularly asked how other [...]

Michiko Kakutani reviews Malcolm Gladwell's latest book in the New York Times: “Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies that are selective in the extreme: the reader has no idea how representative such ...

This story begins in March ‘08. Bored with the project I was working on and overly optimistic because of TechCrunch articles, I decided to create some sort of online business. I hesitate even now to use the word “business” as it implies some sort of organization or planning or something which my endeavor lacked in [...]