Splitting Up the US – How About the Rest of the World?
Humor February 8th, 2010
That’s the map of the US based on Pete Warden’s analysis of Facebook profiles. So I live in Socialistan – oh well, I grew up in a Communist country, if this is Socialism, I can handle it 
But what about the Rest of the World? I thought it was a good time to dust off the good old World Map – admittedly not based on scientcific research
P.S. to potential flame-throwers: pls. look up the meaning of irony. Or sarcasm.
ToonDooSpaces: Comics-based Social Network for School Kids
Collaboration, SaaS September 16th, 2009
Zoho is mostly known for their Web-based productivity and business software, but sometimes they venture into … hmm… unproductivity. In the past year or so close to a million cartoons were created @ ToonDoo, and that number grows by 3-4 thousand every day. (Hey, even I contributed one
)
Today they have announced ToonDooSpaces, private comics-based collaborative space for classrooms, be it school or kindergarten level. (Remember when FaceBook – actually TheFacebook at the time – was strictly limit to the confines of actual colleges?) What can you do @ ToonDooSpaces? Here’s how the kids at one of the pilot schools explain:
Even before this launch, ToonDoo has been used at hundreds of schools including Auburn High School, US, Totino-Grace High School, US, Leawood Middle School, US, Korea International School, Korea, Mount Scopus Memorial College, Australia, Lake Superior College, US and many others - apparently all the way to college level. That said I think ToonDooSpaces will be most favored by the younger ones. Here’s a detailed review by Kevin Hodgson who has been using ToonDooSpaces in his class for months:
All spring, my sixth graders (11 and 12 year olds) were fully engaged in the use of our ToonDoo Spaces site. They would walk in the door and immediately ask: Are we going to make comics today, Mr. H? And they give a little shout of “Yeah!” with a fist pump when I say “yes” (after we do whatever other work we have planned).
Here’s an interactive video showing off more of ToonDoo’s features:
But hey, I’m writing a business / technology blog, so let’s get serious here. I often talk about Freemium (more here), and I think this is a perfect showcase.
Remember, Freemium takes patience – in this case ToonDoo has been available for over a year, attracting hundreds of thousands of users before the launch of the “premium” version, Spaces.
And here’s something else: I guess the inner child must have died in me a long time ago, how else do I have the most fun on the Pricing Page? The fact is, we often talk about the need for transparency, and how SaaS should be easy not only to learn, use, but to buy, which includes price information, without having to endure lousy sales calls. Well, it doesn’t get any easier:
Move the cursor along the users / months axis, click anywhere, and voila! – there’s your price quote. SaaS companies, take notice: you can get rid of the kiddie appearance, but should offer a pricing tool this easy.
Now I am off to create a cartoon(doo). 
(Disclaimer: I am Editor of CloudAve, a Zoho-sponsored group blog.)
Tags: cartoon, comics, education, facebook, facebook for kids, freemium, kids, productivity, saas pricing, school, Social Networks, toondoo, toondoospaces, transparency, zoho
Brits, the Masters of the Universe… the Facebook Universe
Marketing / PR, Social Networking, Software June 12th, 2009
Image via Wikipedia
The University of Salford in Manchaster will offer a Masters degree in Social Media, focusing on Facebook and Twitter.
Salford claims to be the world’s first to offer a Masters course in social media, but they are not. That title goes to Birmingham City University which announced their one-year course in Social Media in March. For a cool £4,400 ($7,200) you get a Master’s Degree of … well, let’s just say questionable value.
Tags: facebook, online degrees, social media, Twitter, xfer
Image via Wikipedia
Birmingham City University in the UK will offer a one-year course in Social Media that earns you a Master’s Degree for £4,400. Current Birmingham students think:
“Virtually all of the content of this course is so basic it can be self taught. In fact most people know all this stuff already. I think it’s a complete waste of university resources.”
Indeed it is. Also a waste of money, if you consider the price. After all, you can get a Master’s Degree for $499, (nofollow) without having to fiddle around with any courses whatsoever. Just don’t ask me what you can do with that degree. 
Update: apparently early April Fool’s jokes are not that unusual.
Tags: facebook, online degrees, social media
Bragging on YouTube Results in Criminal Charges
Misc December 28th, 2008
18-old Marko Petrovic probably regrets recklessly driving trough Sozina, Montenegro’s longest vehicular tunnel at the breakneck speed of 260 km/h ( 161 m/h) –or at least sharing the experience on YouTube for the whole world to see.
While the entire world has not seen it yet (only 13k views for now), Montenegro police certainly has: they should up at his parents’ home, filing criminal charges of reckless endangering and impounding his dad’s Audi A8.
(A commenter to the video thinks the car is a BMW, not an A8, since he sees the iDrive – I have no clue, car experts feel free to jump in.)
Anyway, I think this is a great initiative: I would strongly encourage reckless drivers, muggers, robbers, all sorts of criminals to follow suit: document your act, earn your well-deserved fame on Youtube. At least in countries where you can get prosecuted based on a video. 
Source: index.hu (in Hungarian)
Update: This kid’s timing was really, really bad. Barely a month after he posted his video, Montenegro banned Facebook and Youtube access if all public sector offices:
“With the aim of optimising traffic and lessening the network loads of governmental agencies during work, access was disabled to potentially dangerous sites and sites that generate large capacities,” the government told AFP.
Tags: audi, bragging, facebook, montenegro, reckless driving, youtube
Email is Still Not Dead, and Won’t Be For a While
Collaboration, Personal Productivity September 17th, 2008
I can’t believe the email is dead theme, popped up again, this time on SocialMediaToday, originally on OnlineMarketerBlog. I responded in detail on CloudAve.
Image credit: CrunchGear.
Tags: Collaboration, email, facebook, IM, online documents, SMS, Twitter, wiki, wikis
Email is Not in Danger, Thank You
Collaboration, Personal Productivity July 2nd, 2008
Yet-another-email-is-dead (OK, just in danger) article, this time by Alex Iskold @ ReadWriteWeb. Alex adds Twitter’s increasing popularity to the standard “reusable” arguments: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, and most recently Facebook instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable – hence email usage will decline.
I beg to disagree as I did before, and before. Sure, I also get frustrated by the occasional rapid-fire exchange of one-line emails when by the 15th round we both realize the conversation should have started on IM. Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations. However, we all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, like it or not… Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication. As much fun Twitter may be, I rarely have (or see) serious ongoing discussions there – in other words Tweets are in addition, instead of email.
Email in business is being “attacked” from another direction though: for project teams, planning activity, collaboratively designing a document, staging an event… etc email is a real wasteful medium. Or should I say, it’s the perfect place for information to get buried. This type of communication is most effective using a wiki, or an increasing number of online tools supporting native collaboration. Yesterday I reviewed a startup CEO’s ppt deck, and it took us 4 rounds of emailed versions of the same presentation – it would have been a lot easier to collaborate on just one “master” presentation in Zoho Show.
So yes, I agree with Alex, even in business we’re offloading stuff off email. But email is far from dead, or even in danger, and it won’t be any time soon. We just have to learn to use the right tool in the right situation. As usual, Rod Boothby says it better in a single chart:
Rod’s chart is almost two years old, but still valid – perhaps I would update it to say “Wiki and collaborative documents”. My own post here is a slightly updated version of an older one from last year, which in turn was an almost verbatim reprint of another one from July 2006. I rarely re-post old stuff, but in this case I felt it still made a valid point. Next year, when someone brings up the “is email dead?” question, I’ll dust it off again. 
Tags: Collaboration, email, facebook, IM, online documents, SMS, Twitter, wiki, wikis, zoho show
Facebook Runs a Sweatshop – Literally
Humor May 29th, 2008
Facebook runs a sweatshop – literally. The evidence is in the yellow circle on this Valleywag-supplied photo of their Palo Alto office space.
While employees are struggling with the heat, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is clearly wearing shoes instead of his trademark Adidas flip-flops at the D6 conference in Carlsbad (photo by Dan Farber):
Therein lies the solution: bring the flip-flops back. But don’t stop there: mandate beach-wear in the office. An amazingly simple solution to many of Facebooks problems:
- - No more heat problem
- - Increased employee morale, probably enough for them to forget about revoked housing subsidy
- - Additional incentive to stay in the office longer
- - Reduced energy bill
- - Going Green is trendy, there’s another $5B added to their valuation.
I’m a genius. Sending Zuck a $10K consulting invoice. 
Update: Why can’t Wordpress 2.5 dislay bulletpoints properly?
MicroScoble: Scoble to Become Microsoft CEO
Humor May 19th, 2008
While outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is being egged in Budapest Fake Steve Jobs is already running a poll to find his replacement. Ex-Microsoftie, current Uber-Blogger Robert Scoble seems to have a solid lead:
Congrat’s, MicroScoble! 
Update: Robert did not hesitate to declare his first move as CEO: Why Microsoft will buy Facebook and keep it closed.
Tags: ballmer, budapest, facebook, fake steve jobs, fsj, Humor, microscoble, microsoft, scoble, scobleizer
SmartTurn: Inventory & Warehouse Management SaaS-style
ERP / CRM, Enterprise Software, SMB / SME, SaaS, Startups January 23rd, 2008
Here’s further proof that the Software as a Service (SaaS) model will not be limited to CRM and Accounting: SmartTurn, providers of the first On-Demand Inventory and Warehouse Management System (WMS) announced today its $5M Series A financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Emergence Capital Partners.
I admit the announcement took me by surprise; I have not heard of the company before. A quick look at the Oakland address made me suspicious though, and yes, I was correct: this company is a spin-off of Navis, who are veterans of Warehouse Management systems, from the “old”, i.e. on-premise world. Old-world or not, the Navis team carries the SaaS DNA: a little-known fact is that their CEO, currently Chairman of SmartTurn John Dillon was CEO of Salesforce.com before Founder Marc Benioff took the reins back in 2001. The investors are not exactly new to SaaS either: Emergence Capital were early investors in Salesforce.com, and they specialize on SaaS and nothing else (I believe they are the first Valley VC firm to do so).
Warehouse Management is an awfully complex area (I know first hand, having lead SAP logistic projects in the 90s), so if SmartTurn is successful, it will truly be a validation of all aspects of “Enterprise Software” being eligible for the On-Demand model.
There are very few Enterprise SaaS players around, but SAP’s (SAP)new SaaS product, Business ByDesign for the SMB market and NetSuite (N) for small businesses are worth mentioning: they both offer complete, integrated systems, including Inventory and WMS. The opposite of the integrated systems is the best-of-breed approach, in which case one of the most difficult decisions in enterprise systems is where you draw your functional boundaries, and for companies implementing a multi-system scenario what functions are left in which systems, where to cut overlaps. Inventory Management is planning and accounting for your inventory levels; Warehouse Management is the extension of the concept down to physical locations (warehouses, buildings, down to bin levels). SmartTurn appears to support the Procurement and Order Fulfillment processes as well, which, from a logistics point of view are the inflows and outflows to/from your warehouse.
This is an area worth keeping an eye on and I expect to revisit it once I know more about the company and their customers.
On a lighter note… $5M to manage the inventory of major businesses vs. $50M to superpoke FaceBook users… am I the only one sensing imbalance here?
Update: No, apparently I am not the only one… Will Price, Managing Partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners:
It way well be that Slide raising $55m from mutual fund companies at $500m+ pre-money will be the “what were we thinking” moment of the current cycle. I think, however, the investor who leads a $4 on $4m Series A in a company with a differentiated technology and a direct tie to hard ROI will feel calm in the storm.
Tags: business bydesign, Enterprise Software, erp, facebook, inventory management, navis, netsuite, On-Demand, order fulfillment, procurement, SaaS, salesforce.com, sap, sap bbd, Slide.com, smartturn, warehouse management, wms
Zoli Erdos
