The Catalyst Code

You’d think that America’s days were numbered from all the doom and gloom talk coming out of Davos this year. Some of the complaints about the States have merit. At least with the benefit of hindsight there seems to have been an incredible amount of bad judgment in the massive amount of subprime […]

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up and hosted by C.E.H. Wiedel from One Man Band: DIY Online Business for One. The CoTC is a weekly roundup of quality business and economic posts from bloggers working outside of the mainstream media.
Our Apple’s Achilles Heel post is included as part of the […]

Google’s CEO is “bullish” on mobile advertising. If he doesn’t want to see Google’s stock go into free fall—it’s lost about $42 billion since the new year—it had better be bullish and right. Google’s future is tied to getting ads on more places besides PCs and the mobile phone is the obvious place. You’ve […]

Informa’s Mobile Web USA conference held last week in San Francisco brought together an interesting group of people and companies deeply invested in mobilizing the web (pun intended). There were a number of great presentations about innovation in the mobile ecosystem, getting consumers to adopt mobile content, whether flat data pricing is what will […]

Randall Stross’s comments on the Kindle in today’s New York Times reminded me that I’ve been meaning to review the Kindle which I bought myself as a pre-Christmas present in early December. Unlike Randall, I kept my wife’s paws off of mine and I’ve been happily using it for about six weeks. It is a […]

I rather disagree with Jonathan Skillings’ cynical take on Gates’ WSJ op-ed and remarks to Bild. Stump speech perhaps but there’s a lot of truth to it. Tech sure can’t save the economy from the normal ebb and flow of the business cycle. We’re going into a recession in the US and who’s to […]

Making data transportable between websites sounds like a great idea and it has lots of really smart people behind it. You’ve plugged all your friends and their details into FaceBook and you’d like to have them available on MySpace or the next super social networking site out there. With transportable data you just pluck up […]

Any entrepreneur who hasn’t lived in a cave in the last twenty years knows that we are living through a period of “creative destruction.” Many a business book has taught us about the role of innovation destroying, creating, and reshaping industries, from Peter Druckers’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive. […]

Steve Jobs has taken a lot of flak since his speech at MacWorld on Tuesday. Of greatest concern is whether Apple’s streak of luck in the digital media space has run its course. The content providers that make its iTunes store valuable and get people to buy those pricey iPods have been bailing in […]

Experience is the source of value which is the source of brand loyalty. That’s why if you look at the top 10 most beloved brands, virtually none (okay, 2) offer points or other such inducements to their customers. But the elephant in the room is really understanding what experiences should be delivered to what customers. […]