What I hate about Podcasts/Vlogs

I just wanted to list some general observations from the perspective of a consumer (and not a creator).

• Size: Sample this – a 5 min rocketboom show (a new found thing for me, after all that brouhaha) the file size amounts to ~28mb. That’s just insane. Too much of a hassle. My bandwidth is precious. Why doesn’t everyone use divX/xVid compression along with all other formats just for sake of choice? Or flash maybe. Audio formats are little better placed, but still!
• Linking: I have to download/stream the entire piece just to get to the interesting part somebody mentioned/linked. How about the ability to generate a permalink to particular portion of the podcast/vlog content– just like quoting text from a blog?
• Transcripts/Summaries: Availability in alternate formats is usually non-existent. Though I understand that each format is unique and all the subtleties and nuances are impossible to incorporate. *rolls eyes* (Watch Jumanji with subtitles :-))
• Tagging/Commenting: I have been somewhat irregular/occasional subscriber to Geek News Central, TalkCrunch, Morning Coffee Notes and FuzzyBlog over the last year or so, and I use iTunes to manage my podcasts. I can’t tag or comment an episode for later reference and have to depend upon the provided description, which is again – not searchable.

The Top Ten Lies of Engineers by Guy Kawasaki

This another top ten list -‘The Top Ten Lies of Engineers‘ by Guy made me smile and realize that it’s funny because it’s so true.

“This time we got it right.”

Why smart people defend bad ideas

This was an interesting essay written by Scott Berkun. Well…he had plenty to write, few obvious things and many insightful comments.

The obvious – “The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong.”

The insightful – “The primary point is that no amount of intelligence can help an individual who is diligently working at the wrong level of the problem. Someone with wisdom has to tap them on the shoulder and say, “Um, hey. The hole you’re digging is very nice, and it is the right size. But you’re in the wrong yard.â€?”

Overkill of an analogy, but still-
“I was never very good at pool, but this one guy there was, and whenever we’d play, he’d watch me miss easy shots because I tried to force them in with authority. I chose speed and power over control, and I usually lost. So like pool, when it comes to defusing smart people who are defending bad ideas, you have to find ways to slow things down.”

And he says-“If you want your smart people to be as smart as possible, seek a diversity of ideas. Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, weights, heights, races, facial hair styles, colors, past-times, favorite items of clothing, philosophies, and beliefs. Unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use.”

Something about Scott- “He left his comfortable industry job to go after a life goal: filling the bookshelf near his desk with books he’s written“. I’m impressed.

Cool Hand Luke

Paul Graham is one essayist I respect, not only because he says the things I’m most likely to agree to, but also because he says them with lot of conviction. Hell, I want to be able to write like him.
That apart, his latest essay is about hiring being obsolete. The Point being, “The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?”, even though he accepts that “The 1/10 success rate for startups is a bit of an urban legend. It’s suspiciously neat. My guess is the odds are slightly worse.”

Well, someone(anonymity intentional) wrote me this-

“So, I hear you’re starting your own business?

Welcome, welcome.

Welcome to 16 hour days, and your employees earning more than you. Welcome to heartache and racking your brains for something to give you an edge, calling on experience you don’t have yet. Welcome to doing boring and tedious tasks that if you fail, can land you in prison, like accounting and keeping receipts. Welcome to trying to protect your ideas from much larger and more powerful companies who will take and exploit them in a heartbeat.

Welcome to getting your first solicitor. Welcome to earning far less than minimum wage for months on end, and lets not forget that you may never get anything back. Welcome to friends and family slowly becoming more distant as you have no time to devote to them, welcome to becoming a fanatical zealot, welcome, oh yes, welcome to compromising most of your ideals just to stay afloat.

Welcome to management – you’re the boss now! Welcome to having to see both sides of the story, welcome to slow or non paying customers, welcome to learning how to manipulate your fellow man to achieve your ends, welcome to grey hair and addiction to mild stimulants.

Welcome, welcome, one and all. Do stay a while.

And that light at the end of the tunnel you are striving for?Well I’m not sure what it is, exactly, are you?”

well, every word above said is true, 100% of it, but remember the goal is to kick ass. Yes, indeed.

In the beginning there was nothing….

….God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
Just read the essay by Pual Graham “How to Start a Startup”. Inspiring and informative piece, full of profound advices.
Carving out theories behind success and failure of businesses, and to make out predictive pattern out of those, is indeed favourite pastime for some,and for some it is even their livelihood, yet the list of various B-School case studies and theories is never ending. Every now and then, people came up with some new explanations.
3 years back, I had written one of my course TermPaper on the Analogies between biological and business systems. And while doing that, I’d come with the notion that just as the “mutation” in the evolutionary biology cannot be predicted, can only be accounted for, business systems follow the same logic(or non-logic) of evolution.
Now coming back to the essay, it had some solid points, advices, humors and rumors..”Does your product use XML?”…its a good read anyday.