essays & ephemera

The Dirty Work

If you're not getting dirty, you're not doing biz dev. We recently called out to theHacker News crowd with a job opening for a non-hacker “hustler type.” We got a load of resumés, thank you.  While we were pleased with the applicant pool, we were also surprised at the general attitude of many of the job seekers.

image and text via Forbes

Christopher Steiner does a nice write up of the true nature of "biz dev." It reminds me of one of my own posts from the archives: Death to bizdev! Long live bizdev! where I argue that the entire concept of biz dev is a fallacy. It's an amalgamation of so many different kinds of dirty work or, as Steiner, says, "the kind of tasks that founders do." Business Development is many things, and all of those things involve getting your hands very, very dirty. The tasks are varied, valuable and oftentimes very tactical. I think they're both good reads for those in the consumer technology space, especially in startupland and would love to hear your thoughts both on the Fortune piece and my own.

Kindling

    via The Penguin Blog via DF

Gruber decided to send us to Penguin's blog yesterday to take another gander at these absolutely delightful and sexy  James Bond hardcover book covers. Seeing this art and the archived post from the good people of Penguin reminded me of a thought that's been rumbling around in my head for some time:

Wither the bookcase?

The compact disc has already almost fully migrated to the MP3 and is heading; thanks to Rdio, Spotify and the like; towards "the cloud." And that'll be great when it's really real. All the music in world at your fingertips wherever, whenever. Death to the 30 second sample and all that. But it has ruined one lovely artifact of the days of music as physical object: The Record Collection as well as the accompanying Display of The Record Collection and the subsequent Discussion of the Record Collection with visitors... And now the same thing is happening to our collective bookshelf. The books are all leaving, so much Kindling. 

I know I can see my friends mucial tastes in Rdio or Facebook and literary tastes at Library Thing. But what the hell are we supposed to do with all these empty shelves? The photos already left for the web. The music's gone. Ikea is getting ahead of the game by redesigning its bookcases for knick-knacks. Fortunately for us, I suppose, etsy has no shortage of birds to display upon our now vacant shelves.

We used to use the bookshelf to both decorate and display our tastes (and therefore ourselves)  in our homes. Those days are numbered. Now we fill them with completely non functional, expressive tschotskes. 

Maybe Amazon can just ship me some hardcover spines? I'll tape them to the wall.

My Dashboard is Full of Typepad Goodness

I'm looking at so much goodness in my Typepad Dashboard right now. Scription reviewing cool photography gear. Starry Sky Ranch capturing the exotic cars that just drove by. Book of Joe posting the coolest NBA graphic I've seen in a while (and clearest rationale for the death of the midrange jumper). Sparkwook & 21 just being real. Andew Sullivan filling the world with thoughtfullness and frivolity in equal measure on The Dish. Fashion Copious sending along the artful beauty of fashion. Retro Thing pitting the 60's Batmobile vs the 80s Batmobile. 3 Quarks Daily just being awesome.

Beat it MOG

Image via CrunchBase

Headphone maker Beats Electronics is purchasing music subscription service MOG, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal. But the deal hasn’t closed yet.

 

Peter Kafka at All Things D is reporting that HTC-owned Beats is close to buying fledgling music subscription service MOG. That's all well and good but the rationale he highlights is a bit faulty. MOG has three assets really:

1. The application & its installed base
2. Label deals
3. The ad network

Clearly there's no interest (or very little interest) in the ad network. Although I supppose you could pimp Beats headphones pretty hard across MOG's network. So really you're left with the app and the deals. There is no way the deals are transferable, so all of those battles will have to be fought again. Beats certaintly has the folks to fight those battles (see: Jimmy Iovine), and they could do that on their own. And in reality these subscription deals probably all look very much the same given the price points we're seeing in market. So really... what's left is the app, the installed base and the app's distribution footprint on smart TVs and such, which is (updated) actually quite good including Boxee, LG, Roku and lots of other connected home devices.... but not for me the core PC experience isn't great and losing IMHO to Rdio and Spotify in usability. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

HTC & Beats get an interesting asset. They're probably not able to realize the full value of what MOG built over the years, but it gives them a headstart and a leg up. HTC could use Beats/MOG as a very interesting wedge.

Best of luck, MOG.. Now Beat it!

Women’s guide to HTTP status codes for dealing with unwanted geek advances (via @terrycojones)

Here’s a women’s guide to the most useful HTTP status codes for dealing with unwanted geek advances. Someone should make and sell a deck of these.


301 MOVED PERMANENTLY
303 SEE OTHER
305 USE PROXY
306 RESERVED
307 TEMPORARY REDIRECT
400 BAD REQUEST
401 UNAUTHORIZED
402 PAYMENT REQUIRED
403 FORBIDDEN

via blogs.fluidinfo.com

heheheh... click through for more fun from Terry Jones( including Chastity Belt inspired 423: LOCKED). Will someone in Etsy-land please make these into a T-shirt or handy flash card set?!