Juan Diego's shared items

Small companies create jobs in America.

According to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, companies less than five years old generated nearly two-thirds of the new jobs created in the U. S. in 2007. But what’s even more important is that without these startups more jobs would be lost than created, the U. S. economy would permanently shrink and America would eventually lose its superpower status, simple as that.

This is because big companies grow by increasing scale and productivity, which is to say by reducing the number of jobs per unit of sales, while startups grow by inventing cool stuff. See the difference?

The startups that most reliably become giant American corporations and creators of wealth are technology startups. Without startups to compete with or acquire, big technology companies would do almost nothing new. In the United States large companies depend on startups to explore new technologies and new markets. Startups play a particularly important role in growing jobs out of a recession. New companies produced all of the net new jobs in the U. S. from 2001-2007, and also from 1980-1983, the last big American downturn.

Why then, has U. S. economic policy been aimed almost entirely at saving large and dying industries (banks and car companies)? Because sometimes even Presidents don’t get it.

U. S. technology startups are born and die at astounding rates. Ninety-five percent of technology startups fail — ninety-five percent. With odds at 19-to-1 against success, why do entrepreneurs even bother to build these companies? Because the potential rewards are huge (Microsoft and Apple, Cisco and Intel were all startups, remember) and for real entrepreneurs there are some things even worse than failure, like boredom or being like everyone else.

American technology startups change the world all the time and are this country’s primary global advantage, though hardly anyone understands that. Encouraging technology startups is the key to keeping America competitive and prosperous, though hardly anyone does that. Technology startups succeed despite these adversities because Americans are full of ideas, startups are so darned fun to do, and they don’t have to cost that much, either — sometimes nothing at all.

Technology export sales drive the U. S. economy and technology startups drive U. S. industry, yet in this era of too-big-to-die companies hardly anyone knows about or understands this phenomenon. The experts are supposed to be the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley and Boston, but they don’t really know what they are doing. VC returns are way down for a variety of reasons mainly coming back to the same greed and stupidity we’ve been seeing at work in other financial markets.

Something needs to be done, then, to encourage America to restart itself, and I’m just the guy to try it.

Announcing the Cringely 2010 (Not in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour.

Starting next month I will be accepting from readers nominations for interesting startup companies in six general categories — biotech, energy, entertainment, information technology, materials, and transportation.  Over the course of about six weeks we will examine and discuss as a community these nominated companies of which I am hoping there will be hundreds, primarily not from Silicon Valley or any other tech hotbeds.  I’ll have some assistance in this process from the Kauffman Foundation.

Together we’ll whittle the number down to 24 then come June I will set off with my family in our RV to visit all 24.  We’ll camp in the parking lot or in the driveway of the CEO and spend a couple days at each startup, learning about the company, the people, their technology and their market.  I’ll take with me a small camera crew and we’ll produce what will begin with a summer of blogging and end with a 13-part TV reality series

That’s my plan for restarting America and I hope you’ll be along for the ride.  Look for details soon, but no nominations yet, please.

That's the rumor (BI via WSJ). The idea is to let Gmail become your portal into status update.  

It won't work, period, unless it connects to Facebook and Twitter. And so far, as I've pointed out before, Google won't do that, at least, not yet, and and certainly not in the way it should be done.

Google is simply not understood by consumers to be a place where they can connect with friends and colleagues. If it intends to become that, it has some DNA mutation in its future.

This one should be interesting.  

Kick-Ass encierra una secuencia de acontecimientos sencilla: decides hacer el bien, te pones a ello, alcanzas el éxito, la fama y el reconocimiento, y te metes en una burbuja de la que es difícil salir. Haces el bien con una motivación implacable y eludes la violencia, sin darte cuenta de que ésta existe y es imposible evitarla. Y llegan las traiciones, los desengaños amorosos, el dolor.

Este cómic de Mark Millar y John Romita Jr. habilita un mensaje demoledor dentro de su disfraz de exceso gore, que se atreve incluso a colar paradigmas de la comedia juvenil. Los superhéroes no existen, al menos no como nos los presenta Marvel: con un traje hipermolón, una guapísima novia virginal, una fuerza extraordinaria, todo aciertos, ningún fracaso. Dave Lizewski está aburrido de sus amigos, de que el pibón de su clase Katie Deauxma no le haga ni caso (hasta el punto de que se hace pasar por gay para convertirse en su mejor amigo) y de que lo único que le anima a seguir viviendo es la magnífica unión con su padre, un santurrón afligido por la viudedad.

Podría parecer redundante encontrarnos con una nueva perspectiva sobre el ocaso del superhéroe (‘Watchmen’ de Dave Gibbons), el génesis (recuerda a ‘Spiderman’, de Sam Raimi), su naturaleza (‘The Dark Knight’, de Frank Miller), o la formación de grupos (‘El supergrupo’, de Jan), pero ciertamente es un prisma nuevo, natural, cercano, sobrecogedor.

Kick-Ass es sangre, golpes, mutilaciones, y aún así no es lo más impresionante: Kick-Ass es la historia de cómo nos gustaría ser alguien destacable, creer en la inocencia y en la bondad, y esta sociedad nos decepciona bruscamente. Es pesimista porque Dave Lizewski sale mal parado de la aventura, y es optimista porque a pesar de ello él seguirá intentándolo.

Una nueva obra maestra del cómic que será próximamente adaptada al cine (no sabemos si con brillantez). Y todo muy del siglo XXI: aparece YouTube, MySpace, Danny Elfman y el chat de Apple.

Kick-Ass es para disfrutar y para reflexionar, a partes iguales. Doy gracias al Focoforo por habérmelo descubierto.

Remember this video from 2007, demonstrating a technique for content-aware image resizing that didn’t involve cropping or distorting the central elements of the image? Savoy Software’s Liquid Scale brings this technique to the iPhone. Pretty cool.