Mark Goldenson
Recent Posts
What’s Next: a Wikipedia for small businesses?
Three years after Alexander Graham Bell spoke the telephone’s first words in 1875 – “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” – the first phone directory was published.
The New Haven Telephone company published a white card with the names of 50 subscribers, divided into business and residential. (Only when a printer ran out of white paper and used yellow did the directory become the Yellow Pages.)
In 2007, yellow page directories were a… Continue Reading
What’s Next: fully ergonomic laptops?
When the first laptops were created around 1979 — laptops like the Grid Compass — ergonomics was not exactly a core concern. The screens were only 2-4 inches, RAM was a few hundred kilobytes, and batteries were huge. The Osbourne 1 weighed 24 pounds, perhaps making it the first portable computer and dumbbell. Hooray for convergence!
Modern clamshell and tablet designs have solved many of these issues: screen sizes exceed 17”, RAM can be several gigabytes,… Continue Reading
What’s next: an eHarmony for Travel?
What is the perfect city for you? How would you learn?
After 12 happy years in Silicon Valley, I have felt wanderlust and looked at living in places with the following:
A temperate climate within five minutes of a warm-water beach
English-speaking, since the only other language I know more than 10 words in is dead
Relatively low cost of living
Modern amenities
Safe with a stable government.
The question is, what are all the cities in… Continue Reading
What’s next: Facial recognition from mobile phones?
When social networks spread like wildfire through college campuses, it arguably wasn’t messaging friends, announcing events, or trading goods that drove the most use. It was browsing and (mostly) innocuous stalking. Humans are intensely social and curious, and technology now lets us learn more about each other faster than ever before.
Pew Research reports a third of U.S. adults and two-thirds of U.S. teens have social network profiles. Two-thirds of these users publicly post photos or… Continue Reading
What’s next: A StumbleUpon for porn?
(Note: this article discusses pornography but has no X-rated links and should be safe in PG environments. School teachers and clergy are duly warned.)
If the web has let a thousand flowers bloom, pornography has been its most prolific deflowerer. One study found a third of Internet users visit an adult site at least once a month (a number that sounds low to me), and one in four workers view porn during work hours, the most… Continue Reading
What’s next: Friend matchmaking that works?
In a college class on human sexuality, I learned a fascinating stat: over one-third of marriages stem from an introduction by a friend. Matchmaking has been practiced for thousands of years, from astrologers making matches with tarot cards to Ashkenazi Shadchans matching Jews for a fee (current recession pricing: $2,600).
Yet this ancient behavior has barely migrated to the web. For 15 years, most dating sites have been glorified databases: input your stats, run a query,… Continue Reading
What’s next: a Mint for your physical location?
I don’t mean to scare you, but there’s a faceless entity that knows you better than your friends, your spouse, and even you: your technology. As the Internet and phones weave into your life, they know your purchases, tastes, friends, messages, and more. The result is terabytes of data that form a remarkably detailed picture of who you are.
Josh Kopelman describes services that use this “data exhaust” as the implicit web. Mint does it for… Continue Reading
What’s next: A Pandora for fashion?
In recent pieces for VentureBeat, I’ve been proposing ideas for new companies. This next one was proposed by PayPal writer and fashionista April Van Scherpe.
Style is like pornography: you know it when you see it, but few can do it well. It’s a skill of creativity and pattern recognition, knowing the working combinations of color, line, and form. Many of us would like to have it but don’t have the time or inclination and resign… Continue Reading
What’s next: A dashboard for online dating?
A friend once said online dating is like a full-time job with only occasional benefits. America’s 40 million online daters must answer questions, post pictures, run searches, write emails, and block bikini-clad spambait, usually across multiple sites. Susan Mernit, a former product director at Yahoo! Personals, reports the average online dater uses at least 3-4 dating sites. It’s exhausting — and not in the good way.
There are nearly a thousand dating sites for every niche… Continue Reading
What’s next: Signatures as a Service?
Signature blocks, those lines of text some people include at the bottom of their email messages, are as old as the web itself. Some of the earliest emails included primitive signatures; perhaps Major Raymond Czahor earns the dual honor of first email signature and first screamed message: “CHIEF, ARPANET MANAGEMENT BRANCH, DCA”. Plain vanilla signatures include name, title, company, and contact info. Interesting ones contain jokes, quotes, and other colorful items that convey something unique about the… Continue Reading
What’s next: A butler for your idle computer?
Idle grid computing — applying unused computer time to a task — is a great solution in need of a problem. Hundreds of millions of computers sit unused two-thirds of the day. Most of these PCs have the CPU, storage, and internet access to run complex tasks, but instead just suck power.
Dozens of free programs let people use this time for worthy causes: Seti@Home searches for ET, Folding@Home analyzes proteins, neuGrid studies brain diseases. Most… Continue Reading
What’s next: A butler for your idle computer?
Idle grid computing — applying unused computer time to a task — is a great solution in need of a problem. Hundreds of millions of computers sit unused two-thirds of the day. Most of these PCs have the CPU, storage, and internet access to run complex tasks, but instead just suck power.
Dozens of free programs let people use this time for worthy causes: Seti@Home searches for ET, Folding@Home analyzes proteins, neuGrid studies brain diseases. Most… Continue Reading
What’s next: Free computers for small businesses?
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) -– companies of less than 50 employees -– are the holy grail of software. They compose 99.7% of all U.S. employers and generate 40-50% of GDP, but are notoriously resistant to technology: Only 39% think IT can help them compared to 80% of large businesses. 70% of SMBs don’t even have a website. Technology vastly enhances productivity but as analyst Steve Hilton writes, “SMBs are stuck in a productivity malaise… Continue Reading
Next new biz: Free computers for small businesses?
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) -– companies of less than 50 employees -– are the holy grail of software. They compose 99.7% of all U.S. employers and generate 40-50% of GDP, but are notoriously resistant to technology: Only 39% think IT can help them compared to 80% of large businesses. 70% of SMBs don’t even have a website. Technology vastly enhances productivity but as analyst Steve Hilton writes, “SMBs are stuck in a productivity malaise… Continue Reading
10 lessons from a failed startup
A year and a half ago, my co-founder Dev Nag and I started an internet TV network for games called PlayCafe. Our ambitious plan was to run highly interactive game shows in which everyone was a contestant. Players could watch our hosts, answer questions, win prizes, form teams, call our studio, live chat, and run their own games. It was a huge undertaking, but despite great engagement — users watched for 87 minutes per session… Continue Reading