This is a nice quote from Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress:
“I smile these days when I see WordPress referred to as an “overnight success,” if only they knew how long an overnight success takes.”
Trade Me is another example.
Founded in 1999 it became an overnight success in 2006. :-)
Is Crowded House an Australian band or a New Zealand band.
It turns out the answer is: wrong question!
This recently from Neil Finn:
“I have never said that Crowded House was an Australian or a New Zealand band. Fact is, we were from both countries, but either way I don’t believe it matters where we we’re from, it’s only the music that counts and you either like it or you don’t. These are trivial matters but I mention them because some in New Zealand spend too much time worrying about Australia. If they take credit for some of our stuff it’s not that big a deal. We should be calmly confident enough not to care. And anyway, they don’t spend any time worrying about us.”
I like the idea of calm confidence.
But I guess it depends: do you want to be great or be seen to be great?
To counterbalance yesterdays optimism about technology …
Here is an excellent article from Kevin Kelly:
Everything that doesn’t work yet
Like Don Tapscott he also quotes Alan Kay but goes onto provide an alternative definition:
“Technology is everything that doesn’t work yet”
– Danny Hillis
So, if you accept that, the question then becomes: is “the internet” finished yet, or is there still work to do?
:-)
Here’s an excellent piece of advice from Warren Buffet. It comes from his latest letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway:
“There is much to be said for just putting one foot in front of the other every day”
(Thanks to Lance for the link.)
PS The title for this post is another quote, from the founder of Fark.com in a panel discussion recently posted on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Enjoy!
We act as though comfort and luxury are the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
– Einstein (from Paul Graham’s quotes page)
Yup!
Chris Andersen, who is the current editor of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail is proposing a new law he calls The Andersen Switch:
In the analog-to-digital conversion things that are paid will become free and vice versa.
This is a modern twist on the Negroponte switch
I have to say, this makes sense to me as I sit here and read the Sunday papers online for free and watch cricket on pay-TV.
There are two ways of constructing software; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.
— C. A. R. Hoare, inventor of the Quicksort algorithim
People often misinterpret complexity as sophistication
— Niklaus Wirth, the father of Pascal
