A Tale of Two Discoveries, E.T., the Drake Equation & the Fermi Paradox

Two recent discoveries this week have overturned some of science’s most basic assumptions about life on earth  and   the probability of  extra-terrestrial life elsewhere in the universe. The first one was announced by NASA in a news conference today.  Up until now the basic building blocks of life  were considered to be :  Carbon, …

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Is Facebook Unstoppable?

There is an aticle today on TechCrunch that asks the 35  billion-dollar question : “Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut?” The statistics about Facebook’s dominance are staggering indeed : 500 Million users, $35 billion in valuation, $836 million in funding, accounting for nearly 25% of web traffic  and growing virally at 5% a month.  It …

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Are You Making “Milkshake Mistakes”?

Among  the many great ideas and insights in Clay Shirky’s book  “Cognitive Surplus“,   I came across one that was particularly interesting.  It has some valuable lessons for anyone involved in  product development, market research or strategy. Shirky describes a market research project conducted at McDonald’s aimed at improving their milkshakes.  The intent was to …

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From The Network Computer to Cloud Computing – The Long and Winding Road

“Everything old is new again”, is a popular expression that usually applies to trends and fashion. Surprisingly, it can also be an apt way to describe many current trends in computing. In particular, the emergence of cloud computing, is a classic example of how an old idea that failed and died before, can be reborn …

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The Evolution of Paid Search and Why Google Won & Yahoo/Microsoft Lost

Google’s exponential growth and emergence as a technology juggernaut has been driven by one simple but incredibly successful business model : paid search or pay per click (PPC) advertising.  Google  appears invincible today because it dominates one of the largest and most lucrative  web businesses – Online advertising via  paid search.   Google’s  version of …

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Education and Public Schools in America – What The US Can Learn From India

It is now widely acknowledged that America’s  public school education system  is broken and needs fixing. Numerous studies rank US school children well below other countries in  science and math tests: “The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a …

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