RO: Orange Prepay Mascots
Office 2.0 Database
No client application other than a web browser.
This is the essence of Office 2.0: one should be able to perform most office productivity tasks without having to use any client application other than a web browser.
That means no email client, no word processor, no spreadsheet, no presentation tool. Nothing but a web browser. Of course, special needs create exceptions to this rule.
The Office 2.0 Database is developed and maintained by Ismael Ghalimi , a passionate entrepreneur and fervent industry observer, founder and CEO of Intalio, creator of BPMI.org, initiator of Office 2.0, and author of IT|Redux. Ismael is an advisor to several high-tech companies, including AdventNet (a.k.a. Zoho), EchoSign, EveryTrail, Open IT Works, ThinkFree, and 3TERA. Ismael is a professional scuba diver, private pilot, and American V-Twin rider.
Ismael can be reached at ismael@itredux.com.
Loic Le Meur’s Ten Rules For Startup Success
The Financial Times has a profile of French (now Silicon Valley) entrepreneur Loic Le Meur today.
Loic is an accomplished entrepreneur – he founded uBlog (merged with Six Apart), organizes the annual Le Web conference and has now created Seesmic.
Included in the article are his ten rules for startup success. Reprinted below.
1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.
Pour Your Heart Into It
Since 1987, Starbucks‘s star has been on the rise, growing from 11 Seattle, WA-based stores to more than 1,000 worldwide.
Its goals grew, too, from the more modest, albeit fundamental one of offering high-quality coffee beans roasted to perfection to, more recently, opening a new store somewhere every day.
An exemplary success story, Starbucks is identified with innovative marketing strategies, employee-ownership programs, and a product that’s become a subculture.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a manager, a marketer, or a curious Starbucks loyalist, reading Pour Your Heart into It will let you in on the revolutionary Starbucks venture.
The author is the entrepreneur behind Starbucks, the coffee-shop chain with a “passion” for quality coffee. CEO Howard Schultz recounts the company’s rise in 24 chapters, each of which illustrates such core values as “Winning at the expense of employees is not victory at all.”
Broadband: Access Denied
Broadband service is available worldwide, but it is beyond most people’s budget.
Saudi Arabia: $571.82/100 Kbps
Expect to shell out 58% of the average monthly salary for DSL. Not surprisingly, only about 0.1% percent of the population has a connection.
Mozambique: $361.83/100 Kbps
The nation’s civil war is long over but a high-speed connection costs as much as a private army: 1,400 times the average monthly wage.
Pakistan: $106.98/100 Kbps
Local bloggers incensed President Pervez Musharraf’s support of the Us must pay nearly twice the average income to have their say.
Kazakhstan: $52.68/100 Kbps
The broadband prices, it’s nice? Not so much/ The 2,000 Kazakhstani users must sacrifice one-fifth of the average monthly salary for access.
Bolivia: $39.06/100 Kbps
There are only about 11,000 broadband customers in Bolivia, but each forks over nearly half of the average monthly wage to get online.
Russia: $28.13/100 Kbps
The 1.6 million users who may want to stream President Putin’s latest judo moves surrender 8% of the average pay for the privilege.
Nicaragua: $14.65/100 Kbps
No wonder this Central American country has only 6,600 high-speed customers, access costs a fifth of the average monthly paycheck.
United States: $0.49/100 Kbps
The nearly 60 million broadband subscribers in the US typically pay 0.01% of their average monthly salary for a connection.
Netherlands: $0.14/100 Kbps
Toptoe through the tulips and you will find 4.1 million broadband customers enjoying some of the lowest prices on the planet.
South Korea: $0.08/100 Kbps
South Korea boasts 12.2 million braodband users, some of the world’s highest speeds, and low prices, second only to Japan.
Source: Wired (Sep. 2007)
Photoscape, Free Photo Editing Software
Photoscape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos.
Key Features
Live-Documents.com : MS-Office Killer
Sabeer Bhatia was the co-founder of Hotmail, the Web email service Microsoft acquired for $400 million in 1998. Now, Bhatia wants to bite the hand that fed him. He formed a new company, InstaColl, and is joining Zoho, ThinkFree, Google, Yahoo (Zimbra), Adobe and lesser know others in the effort to squish Microsoft Office with a new suite and complementary collaborative component, Live Documents.
Live Documents is a set of Flash-based Office 2007-like applications and also embeds collaborative capabilities and adds online/offline synchronization into Microsoft Office documents.
Bhatia said, “We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software. This is a significant challenge to a proportion of Microsoft’s revenues.”
(via ZDnet.com)
IT – Walking Ads
Everytime I am in Milano around the Dom, I come across these walking TV put on young guys shoulders and strolling in the crowded streets showing different ads and promotions.
Shouldn’t it be double sided affair in order to make the most out of it?
IT – Funghi
Some Italian funghi for gourmet food lovers, 3.1kg for 530- Euros (777 USD).
Can be bought at La Rinascente in Milano.
