Category: Technology

attention & value.

One of the reasons I love writing is that it makes me form coherent thoughts. This process sometimes ends up changing how I view a topic. My previous post on what we value has ended up being one of those times. We live in a world of insane inattention. For me it started with AIM back […]

could vs should.

For the past few years the one thought that has never been far from mind is my “could vs should” debate. Essentially, I think we’ve become a society that has stopped asking if we “should” do something and instead default to if we “could” do it. “Can we get away with it?” has become our […]

a better stimulus plan?

I meant to post on this last week when Friedman’s op-ed in the NYT hit, Start Up the Risk-Takers. Friedman, not surprisingly, beats up on the US autos among others, and says that instead of giving them more money, we should instead turn to venture capital. He proposes giving the top VC’s (top 20%) a […]

the reporting business.

Time magazine writes an article this week on “How to Save Your Newspaper.” Their conclusion? Micropayments. Basically, allow people to pay a small fee, like 5-25 cents for every article they read. The dominant platform for this doesn’t really exist since Paypal charges fees too large to make this viable. I used to think that […]

the rebirth of the long.

Up on the Tom Peters site there’s a good note on the “Generation Gap.” The idea is that his generation was handed a functioning business world with solid fundamentals, and that they took it created a world of stilts, which the current generation has now been bequeathed. Today those stilts are being knocked down and […]

google newspaper.

Almost 2 years ago, I mentioned to some folks at Google that they should rethink their branding of Google Reader. For those who don’t use it, Google Reader is their RSS product (and, by far, the best on the market). Most of the people I know don’t understand or use RSS, and I’ve been dumbfounded […]

check out the new look.

The blog has some new digs. For those of you reading this via RSS/feed reader, click to come back to suryasays.com and check out the sweet new look. Props go to Ben for doing another killer layout. He’s done some great layouts over the years– here, here. But I think this is his best work […]

for you, my rage is boundless.

dear media, I once was sad for you. I wondered what the impact would after you were gone. We’ve been predicting your demise for well over a decade as everyone said “new-media” was going to kill you. Once upon a time, I was terribly sad for this. I worried about who would fill the void […]

google go next.

Good article on fortune.com by Adam Lashinsky on where Google goes from here. Definitely worth a read. It’s a fascinating question. Google was started by smart guys with a good idea. They stumbled into a helluva advertising model that printed money based on intent (goto.com actually invented it). Google then used these funds to build […]