TV TurnOff Week

This is TV TurnOff Week (April 24 - 30, 2006).

TV Turnoff Week is all about saying no to being inundated with unwelcome commercial messages. Saying no to unfettered media concentration. And challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see every day on the screen.


(video from adbusters)

Kathy Sierra did a truly interesting article on the virtues of TV Turnoff. She showed a few quotes related to the TV dependency (yes like a drug) and how a study showed an example of what can result from watching TV.

“…University of British Columbia studied a mountain community that had no television until cable finally arrived. Over time, both adults and children in the town became less creative in problem solving, less able to persevere at tasks, and less tolerant of unstructured time.”

And I’m also with Kathy on the Kill the television, keep the shows idea. You see what you want when you want. I do love 24 but I can see it when I want it.

Personally, it’s been more than year since we stoped watching TV. TV is now on it’s way to the basement. It has been one of best decisions we ever took. So much time to do so many other interesting things.

April 26, 2006 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Factory mindset vs Entrepreneurship

This is the way Seth Godin explains this difference:

What happens when your inbox is empty?
What happens when all the agenda items and all the incoming emails are cleared?
Time to go home.
A job well done. Congratulations, you earned your paycheck.
This is the factory mindset that has been drilled into us since kindergarten. You get assignments, you do your best, and you finish them.
It is at this point that we draw the line between workers and entrepreneurs, between people who work in marketing and marketers.
The challenge is NOT to empty your inbox. The challenge is not to get your boss to tell you what to do.
The challenge is to ask a two part question:
What next? What now?
Asking is the hard part.

This is why I believe that experimentalism as a philosophy of education should be present in all levels of learning. Assignments are good. Tasks are good. But things like social experiences and problem solving are equally important.

It’s about living it not finishing it.

April 26, 2006 | Tags: , , | 1 Comment 

eCommerce Renaissance

I must have passed over this article when I read it the first time. But now it makes perfect sense to me. Future ecommerce will certainly be driven by applications built on top of some sort of Social Architecture as Stowe Boyd calls it.

Stowe looks at the ecosystem that could be the base of a successful app. Even today ecommerce apps are still being developed based on a collection of functions without any regards to the social context with which each user will use the system.

What Stowe suggests is that by building an application based on a Social Architecture - a set of vital elements: Individuals, Social Networks and Markets- an application might have an better opportunity of becoming successful. These elements interact with each other in a way that brings value to the application:

[…] social networks that pull individuals into communities, and markets, whose dynamics support the buying and selling within those communities.

So I think that the outcome now feels rather natural. People do think like to think and act in a network kind of way. It might change the way people buy stuff now by boosting their trust to levels that simple ecommerce shops cannot ever give. Naturally, I have a much more higher level of trust in any friend (member of the network) that in any store seller.

Stowe’s view on a Social Architecture based applications future is that:

In the near future, all ecommerce will be socialized: where a user’s transaction will feel as if it is taking place in the context of some social interaction — like reading a review at a blog about a camera, or a vacation — rather than the online catalog or classified experience supported by Amazon and eBay.

As it probably makes sense to call it (Thank you Thomas) - it’s the eCommerce Renaissance.

Update: I’m an Etsy fan. It’s really incredible the community and the service that live around Esty. As a Website it’s also a very amazing and creative job. Well done.

April 26, 2006 | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment 

Blue Wine, Wine by-the-glass and BOYB

I’ve been reading some wine related publications lately. So now when I browse Portuguese newspapers or magazines my eye also stop at wine related news. So there were a few important wine related news this week:

blue Wine is a new Wine magazine. It’s beautifully designed and as some really great photography. I’ve enjoyed the articles and variety of subjects that were covered.

blueWineblueWineblueWineblueWine

Wine by the glass: according to a news article on the main weekly Portuguese newspaper one of the main distributors of Wine will start supporting restaurants in serving wine by the glass. This is a growing trend thoughout Europe. It’s good for restaurants that because there are higher margins involved and for drinkers for lowering the barriers ($$$) in wine drinking. For all the times I’ve asked if a restaurant served wine by the glass only once I got a positive answer so this is very good news for the wine lovers out there.

BOYB (Bring Your Own Bottle) is another growing trend in some European countries. BOYB is a service that some restaurants are introducing that let’s people take their own bottle of wine and pay a fee for the uncorking of the bottle (or unscrewing if you prefer). Restaurant wine prices can easily top 30%-60% on the retail price. So some restaurants have started allowing clients to bring their own bottles and decide which wine to drink at what price. Wine is one of the most profitable sells for restaurants so I think this will only be available at selected restaurants for a very long time.

Portugal is one of the World’s top wine producers and wine consumers so we might as well be on the frontline on adopting more friendly and interesting wine drinking habits.

April 23, 2006 | | 6 Comments 

Friendship and a new discovered Wine passion

A few months ago and slowly influenced by a good friend I becamed in love with the passionate world of wine without even noticing. Before that I didn’t even drink wine. I didn’t like it. And now I know why. Because you don’t just drink wine. You have to understand what behind’s each bottle wine and enjoy the moment accordingly.

So for the last 3 months I’ve been reading magazines, books and blogs. Tasting some wines and discovering this new world (for me) of Wine.

I decided to write my first wine related post because a few days ago the same friend (and his wife and another good friend) offered me with a set of wine glasses.


Wine glasses

But they’re not just any wine glass. They’re the Burgundy type wine glasses.
Apparently there are four essential wine glasses and Burgundy is one of them. Here’s the explanation:

A respectable arsenal of stemware includes four glasses: a general-purpose white wine glass, two types of red wine glasses (commonly called Bordeaux and Burgundy) and a champagne flute.

The white wine glass is small, in order to prevent the rapid warming that would occur in a vessel with more surface area.

The Bordeaux glass (which is also appropriate for other hearty red wines, like cabernet and merlot) is larger, which allows for more development of the bouquet.

Intuitively, you’d think a Bordeaux glass would be larger than a Burgundy glass, because Bordeaux is a “bigger” wine, richer and more fully flavored. But the Burgundy glass is the largest in any stemware collection exactly because Burgundy-type wines (such as pinot noir and other delicate varieties) are so subtle that they need a huge area in which to gather their aromas.

The most notable feature of the champagne flute is that it’s tall, to allow the proper development of bubbles.

This glasses will allow me to fully to enjoy Burgundy-type wines in all their taste hopefully in the company of a few friends that will make a very enjoyable momemt.

So now I have six Burgundy wine glasses and a newly discovered wine passion!

April 23, 2006 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

Working with Human Dimension Companies

Fred’s latest article on Things you learn when working on a team, part 1 is a very interesting view on going from a one man operation into a team-based company.

I particularly agree and like with this two parts:

I ran everything by myself. I did a lot of design, a lot of development, and some consulting work. […] However, that doesn’t compare to the possibilities that become available when you’re working with more people - particularly when they’re experts in things of a complementary nature to what you do. Having real-time input to the building process is priceless.

As Thomas points out being ahead can be very lonely activity.

Another interesting part is The realization that people have lives.

Strongly attached to the fact that happy (and passionate) people do far better work is the realization that people have their own private lives to attend to, and that sometimes (more often than not) private life can influence both the teams’ spirit and its productivity. Naturally there’s very little that can be done to avoid these situations, so the key is to understand and work around them.

I completely agree. I just got the book Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (Amazon.co.uk) since it’s a subject I’m interested. Human dimension companies.

April 13, 2006 | | Leave a Comment 

New blog.delaranja.com RSS feed

If you read this blog via the RSS feed (what?!) there are some news.
The feed is now managed via FeedBurner which provides a few nice feed management tools.

RSS feed icon

You can get the new RSS feed of blog.delaranja.com here.

If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about but would like to know what RSS is about check this very helpful BBC page about RSS feeds.

If the word RSS is totally unknow but you would like to keep up with dozens of blogs and other sites everyday check this Bloglines tutorial on how to do just that.

April 13, 2006 | Tags: | 3 Comments 

Wikio and Pierre Chappaz

After reading the book about kelkoo’s success I was curious to hear this podcast with Pierre Chappaz talking (in french) about his new venture Wikio - You are the media.

Wikio

Wikio is a very interesting project that aims to bring information to the people by mixing concepts from Google News, Digg and other Web 2.0 ideas based websites.

On the podcast Pierre Chappaz does an amazing job argumenting towards user managed applications like his new service. There are a few high-points in this interview. Somewhere along the interview the host suggests that it’s fairly easy for a project like Wikio to make money because they spend it producing the contents. So old thinking. Intelligently Pierre calls the Google analogy to the stage and asks if Google is any different in using other people’s contents.

Another high-point is reached when the same host claims that Google can be considered a good thing because is has lots of traffic… He’s probably forgetting that it probably didn’t start that way…and besides that wikio has been doing a closed beta testing with more than 10.000 users.

Trully worth it argumentation on this 15 minute podcast.

I wish Pierre would consider coming to Reboot. Pierre don’t you want to come to Reboot? It’s really about all this interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness. Sounds familiar? Want to join us?

On a side note, Wikio being a very strong European project backups Laurent regarding his view on why Europe is hot and might just be the place to startup now.

April 12, 2006 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

(Not) Thinking about Ruby on Rails

A while ago I’ve spent a few hours playing with Ruby on Rails. Now, a few months later I decided to give it another try and look around for developments in the area. So I tried Google on the ruby on rails problems query.

RubyOnRails

I’ve found 2 interesting posts. Rails’ Ridiculous Restrictions, a Rant is a very interesting rant (and follow-up discussion on the comments list) of the problems you might face while developing with Rails. Another interesting post, by David Heinemeier Hansson (Rails creator) on why It’s boring to scale with Ruby on Rails.

The other option I’ve put forward for Rapid Development is the Catalyst Framework which aims to be for Perl what Ruby on Rails is for Ruby (minus the hype).

Catalyst

Of course you can also try catalyst perl problems and maybe even find a few problems. But the difference is that since I’m in a time constraint schedule no matter how much productive RoR could be I’m already into Perl development (and love it) and can probably solve Catalyst problems much faster than those of Ruby on Rails.

April 11, 2006 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

The perspective of the shrink market business model

In his Shrink a Market! post Josh Kopelman suggests a look into a company business model through how much money it takes from the competition each time it makes money.

He points to several examples: how Britannica ($600 Million market) was defeated by Microsoft Encarta ($100 Million) which was itself defeated by Wikipedia and the internet.

Another example is half.com which relied on users buying a book and then reselling it through the half.com website. Each time a transaction was made half.com would get a percentage. The traditional book sellers wouldn’t make any money and the overall market value was much lower. With this half.com was able to build a leading position on the market.

Tim suggests that CraigsList’s is also an example of a company that was disrupting a market (classified advertising).

Shrinking a market is in fact a cause of applying the principles behind the freemium business model (I too like the name).

Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

Interesting to see how wrong business plans predictions can be, as one of the post comments points out. If a company is entering a new market and plans to use an advantage that will shrink the market, the initial market value projection is going to be totally wrong.

How hard can it be to claim that your company will shrink a market? Just explain how you’re going to be profitable doing it.

April 11, 2006 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Next Page »

  • about

    andre_ribeirinho_t.jpg My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
    More about me. Contact me.

  • my startup

    Adegga - Social Wine Discovery


    Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.