What’s the difference between a million, a billion, a trillion?
A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
A million minutes ago was - 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
A million dollars ago was five (5) seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.That certainly puts things into perspective.
Monday July 07, 2008 at 15:21
This post was reblogged from Point of Focus.
Comments (View)Sunday July 06, 2008 at 0:24
Saturday June 28, 2008 at 12:40
Ball Girl Catch Faked
I posted a video of a spectacular catch made by a ball girl in a minor league game. Turns out it was faked and part of a commercial that never aired. It looked good, but it was fake. I didn’t follow up and should have. Oh well.Friday June 27, 2008 at 15:50
Will Twitter Be Spark Capital's First Home Run?
Scott Kirsner, at Innovation Economy, asks if Spark Capital can hit it out of the park with Twitter. I don’t know, but congratulations to them for getting in on the $15 million round (valuation about $100 million). Spark partner Bijan Sabet will sit on the board. Other than the random blog comment or twitter encounter, I’ve never met Bijan, but he seems like a thoughtful person and investor. He definitely likes to use what he invests in. Besides, he likes to have breakfast at Zaftigs.
I have no doubt he’ll be fully engaged in helping Twitter reach the next level. Entrepreneurs should take note, investors who actually use what you offer are likely to be a lot more involved. Now let’s hope they spend that money on reliability and performance; the slowdowns on Twitter are killing me.
Monday June 23, 2008 at 9:06
THE MPG ILLUSION
Duke University School of Business has an interactive quiz to test your knowledge of fuel mileage. Some of it is counter-intuitive, unless you have some clue how internal combustion engines actually work.
Which saves more gas:
- Switching from a 10mpg SUV to a 20mpg Station Wagon, or
- Switching from a 30mpg sedan to a 50mpg hybrid?
Sunday June 22, 2008 at 22:17
Ball Girl Makes Incredible Catch. A minor league ball girl makes an incredible catch on a foul ball in left field. (thank you brooklynmutt).
This is simply a great catch. The outfielder is dumbfounded. I’m impressed.
UPDATE: It was faked. Turned out she was a stunt woman and had some ropes attached. Still, it was a nice looking catch.
This post was reblogged from Brooklyn'Mutt.
Comments (View)Tuesday June 17, 2008 at 11:19
Fail Early or Iterate Early?
One mantra that is often brought up for entrepreneurs is to “fail early” (and some add “and often”). The theory is that if your business is not working it’s better to fold before you have spent a lot of money and try something else instead from scratch. There is not just the money - if you go too long in one direction you build an organization that has inertia in that direction making it difficult if not impossible to change direction. I have certainly seen this happen firsthand many times and one of my biggest investing mistakes was trying to take a consumer company in the personal finance space and help turn it into a B2B content provider.
But this mantra may no longer apply in a world of lightweight web services and cloud computing. For starters the amount of money required to start something has declined dramatically. So has the number of people required to build and operate a service. In a world where one or a couple of people can run a meaningfully big service (e.g. plentyoffish, tumblr), maybe “fail early” needs to be replaced with “iterate early.” Get something out there. Let people bang on it. Not working? Try something slightly different (or radically different for that matter). As long as you keep your burn low and your team small, you should have a lot of flexibility. We are beginning to see some examples of this approach, such as iminlikewithyou which launched as a dating site and is now a game platform.
“Iterate early” sounds like a good idea. It definitely sounds better than ‘fail early’. Nice post Albert.
This post was reblogged from Continuations.
Comments (View)Wednesday June 11, 2008 at 10:18
The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World | Cracked.com (via yumwatch)
If you are at all squeamish about bugs do not follow the link. I think we are just lucky, because these bugs are ruthless and, short of a nuke, we wouldn’t stand a chance.
Friday June 06, 2008 at 16:34
A fascinating animation of the Civil War on the US Map circa 1860-1865. Time scale: 1 week = 1 second. I’ve been reading Shelby Foote’s excellent 3-part Civil War: A Narrative series, all 1.5 million words of it. Now I fear I’ve started on a path of never-ending fascination with Civil War history.
This post was reblogged from Katydid...did you?.
Comments (View)Monday May 12, 2008 at 10:45
Peanut Butter Disproves Evolution (via asprettyasasong)
I present this without comment except to say: education is our only hope!
This post was reblogged from As Pretty As A Song.
Comments (View)Saturday May 10, 2008 at 19:22
Summize Conversational Search
Summize is a twitter search engine. It’ll search the twittersphere for keywords or twitter names. It is pretty slick. A nice little feature: when it finds an @twitname it includes the sender’s avatar and a mini-avatar for the target.Thursday May 01, 2008 at 13:21
U.S. has Nelson Mandela on terrorist list
Nobel Peace prize winner Nelson Mandela is on the terrorist watch list. I feel safer already.← Step Back Page 1 of 12
