Business Archives

  1. Reinventing the Airline Industry by Jude Gomila →

    I can’t stop thinking how easy it could potentially be to truly “disrupt” the airline industry. Judge Gomila looks at a number of aspects of flying that don’t make sense:

    It would be silly if you had to recheck all safety tests with an independent agency before driving a car every single time. Having to watch the simple safety instructions every flight is a waste of time and energy for the passenger. No one even watches it anyway. We need to take this online and out of the cabin, making it a test that people hold a license for, rather like a driving license.

    I know the aviation industry is something Horace Deidu has been thinking about recently, too. It encourages me to see smart folks talking about these things in addition to folks like BlackJet creating (admittedly, less accessible) stepping stones in the meantime.

  2. “Having a company “We’ve Been Hacked” announcement” is the new “Having a company “Harlem Shake” video”.

  3. “Having a Company “Harlem Shake” Video” is the new “Having a company “Facebook Page”".

  4. A Manager’s Manifesto — The Year of the Looking Glass →

    I liked this collection of thoughts and lessons from Julie Zhuo, a design director at Facebook, including:

    Sweep up the crumbs. Wipe the tables. Turn off the lights. Plug the holes that need plugging—even if it’s menial, even if nobody will know you did it. Do it in service of the product, the company, and this wondrous, magical thing you are all building together.

    It reminded me of this story from Adii Pienaar, founder at WooThemes:

    As CEO, I don’t necessarily think that washing dishes is part of my “job description” and it doesn’t carry any obvious priority in terms of things I need to get done today … sometimes the best thing I can do in my business is the smallest, simplest thing; especially if that means I can remove obstacles for my team.

    (these were published at medium and svbtle, respectively)

  5. I finally bought two shares of AAPL. Just so the one didn’t get lonely. :\

  6. Simperium joins Automattic →

    I’m quite happy to hear that the folks behind Simplenote will be joining the team at Automattic as I know it means the native iOS mobile blogging experience for WordPress users will improve1.

    I’ve found the official WordPress iOS app to be unusable or very buggy for most of its lifetime (posts appear ‘drafted’ when published and can be accidentally published multiple times, integrations with WP.com Stats not working with multiple JetPack sites on one account, push notifications not ‘clearing’ correctly).

    Back to my thoughts on WordPress as a “product or platform”: it seems that the folks at Automattic are de-facto maintainers and sole contributors to the iOS app. Perhaps maintaining Open Source iOS app projects is less attainable since its (currently) less accessible for folks to contribute to?

    1. Side note: I stop using SimpleNote long ago after a mis-sync on a new device (with no “notes”) unintentionally deleted all of my existing notes on the server. ↩

  7. Citing authors on the web (and off)

    Over a year ago, John Gruber rightfully gave AllThingsD (from the Wall Street Journal) a hard time about properly attributing sources. For the longest time ATD would not use hyperlinks to point to original sources nor even the websites of companies or products mentioned in their articles. Yet, even when an article was updated to…

  9. Is WordPress a development platform or a product?

    I’m not sure if I’m thinking about the WordPress Open Source project and its “competition” the right way… Two years ago, Alex wrote some thoughts about how we discuss WordPress as both a product and a platform with potential clients: Some people view WordPress as a CMS platform to build on. They want us to…

  10. What competition is WordPress up against?

    From Steven Sinofsky, regarding his recent use of an iPhone1: Obviously you should use a competitive product. You should know what you’re up against when a consumer (or business) ultimately faces a buying decision. They will weigh a wide array of factors and you should be aware of those not only for the purposes of…