Amazon Payments Service
Posted: August 3rd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Tech | No Comments »This has been all over the major blogs today, so I am not going to blather too much about it, just give my opinion. Standing on one leg, Amazon now lets web developers add payment stuff to their site, so they can sell things.
To me, this is a true game changer, especially for entrepreneurs. For most start up websites, the only two sources of revenue are advertising (which sucks), and getting money, in some way, from visitors. Handling payments yourself is cumbersome and way too expensive. Most third party services are geared towards enterprises, and their payment systems are far too complex. On the other end, there is Paypal, which is the third-grader way to do it. Heck, when I was in student groups, that’s the way we would do it, because it was so simple. Amazon comes in right at the middle, with yet another service for startups. I saw this, and breathed a sigh of relief, as this is something we all had been looking for, and what better a provider than Amazon.
But I think the bigger story is the reasoning behind it. Think back for a second…. what on earth is a bookseller doing? Database services, web hosting, Mechanical Turks?! Obviously, as a publicly traded company, they have a need to grow to keep shareholders happy. But it’s an important lesson. By being the world’s largest books-and-everything-else store, they built up the expertise. And the equipment. Why keep it in-house?
Sell what you are good at.
Social Networking for the dead
Posted: August 3rd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Tech | No Comments »A network noone should ever have to use. Creepy.
links for 2007-08-03
Posted: August 3rd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Links | No Comments »-
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Not covered in the MSM
Posted: August 3rd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Israel | No Comments »‘Egyptians killed 4 Sudanese on border’ | Jerusalem Post
The
Egyptians then carried the man several meters away from the border
fence, and proceeded to beat him and another wounded refugee to death
with stones and clubs.
Sad. And Israel still gets plugged as the major human rights abuser by these cowards.
Remember when people bought Soundtracks?
Posted: August 2nd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: General | No Comments »I used to buy soundtracks for movies I liked all the time. Sometimes I would own the soundtrack before even seeing the movie. Besides having top artists, they also served as mixtapes, introducing you to music you would otherwise never listen to, such as this sick track, from Inside Man.
Here’s the movie version (this clip will make you want to see the movie too):
And here’s the original version (fun music video):
links for 2007-08-02
Posted: August 2nd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Links | No Comments »Obama’s Speech on Foreign Policy
Posted: August 2nd, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Politics | No Comments »Obama’s Full Terrorism Speech: Sharpens Contrast With Hillary On Foreign Policy | TPMCafe
The America I know is the last, best hope for that child looking up at a helicopter. It’s the country that put a man on the moon; that defeated fascism and helped rebuild Europe. It’s a country whose strength abroad is measured not just by armies, but rather by the power of our ideals, and by our purpose to forge an ever more perfect union at home. That’s the America I know. We just have to act like it again to write that next chapter in the American story. If we do, we can keep America safe while extending security and opportunity around the world. We can hold true to our values, and in doing so advance those values abroad. And we can be what that child looking up at a helicopter needs us to be: the relentless opponent of terror and tyranny, and the light of hope to the world.
Regardless of politics, after this, he has my vote. No doubt.
100 Users!
Posted: August 1st, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Ideas, Tech | 1 Comment »Facebook Platform is awesome.
Late one night, a couple months ago, my girlfriend and her best friend called me up with an idea for a Facebook application (this was just after the Facebook platform, a way for people to make mini-sites that live within Facebook and are used/shared by people with Facebook accounts). I initially ignored it, as I was busy on my own projects. But then, undeterred, they told my best friend. He called me up, and all of a sudden, I found myself deep in the Facebook API, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
We opened up our application last week, and invited a few of our friends to join it. Just now, less than a week later, we hit 100 users. I’m not going to say what it is or what it does, you can go on Facebook and check it out yourself.
We anticipated some friction with this, especially among our friends, as this application addresses something that some consider very private. Some of our friends refused to add it because they are afraid that I am going to look into their private data. Hah. We’re going to submit it to the public application directory in the coming days, in the hope that doing that causes our membership to expand exponentially, as it does with other applications. After that, we may look towards some form of sponsorship. This has been a great learning experience, not to mention a good exercise of working with someone else, bug-testing, user-testing, privacy issues, etc. This is the first, and definitely won’t be the last, thing you’ll see out of me.
Internet Overload
Posted: August 1st, 2007 | Author: Zvi | Filed under: General | No Comments »I have 101 items in my toread queue on del.icio.us. eeks!