I ummmed and ahhhhed quite a bit. I wasn’t sure. Finally, I came up with chopsticks. At first people were sceptical. They can be difficult to use, isn’t a fork better?

Here was my rational. Their simple, and yet extensible, when you become good at using them you can find them easy, it’s almost a badge of honour to be able to use them well. Their design hasn’t changed much in decades. They can tell you a lot about personality and traits (Cathy mentioned that in China there’s a belief that you must hold them at a certain position, too high means you’re too ambitious, too low means you’re not ambitions enough). For me they’re cool in their simplicity and watching someone eat with them can almost be artistic – or a train wreck.

Chopsticks also are a good analogy for decisions in design. Simple beats complex. Less complex lowers costs (in most cases), can make messaging and use much easier. From Twitter, to Google to the Mac, to the kindle, books, amazon.com, Spotify, to iTunes. From Uniqlo to the Gap, Hulu to the iPlayer, simple products with a focus on quality and execution can lead to success.

With the new first puppy;

There’s a ton of others, Obama with a basketball tossing a football in the oval office etc. Lots of great pictures. I love this for two reasons:

One – the access that we have to this White House is unreal, unmatched and really unbelievable.

Two – it reminds me of a great TED video on play by Stuart Brown (below) discussing the impact of play on cognitive development.

I love the thought that play contributes to development and progress. People need to be imaginative and playful to be able to think laterally and develop new ways of doing things. Which is why I’m really looking forward to being a dad, think it will give me an excuse to play more. Not that I need one, but at least when I play with my child the Bee won’t look at me strangely for being stupidly playful.

Now if facebook had begun by only introduced a limited function for free, with no picture posting, no messaging (only wall writing) no apps, and then said if you’re a pro user (for 20 USD per year) you can do all these things, I might, might have caved.

I believe in the freemium model, named by Jarid Lukin on Fred Wilson’s blog, and I think this is a great business model. But I don’t think you can reverse introduce a freemium model. It needs to be there from the beginning of the business or not at all.

I like a lot of services that give themselves away (twitter for example) and try and worry about the business model later. Google does a good job of this, where they create new products and worry about monetisation later. But Google can do this as they have a cash cow called search. So what if all their other products bleed cash for a couple of years, net profit is good. Start-ups don’t have this luxury so I find it confusing when start ups start without a monetisation strategy. How is this sustainable? This point is especially true during a down turn when eyeballs aren’t worth what they used to be.

But the one thing I can’t get over is the impact of the web on this year’s election. So far we’ve seen

• The “Yes We Can” video on YouTube months ago
• Signed onto the Facebook groups in favour of Obama
• Checked out Obama’s flickr
• Read Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson’s blog posts (among others) on the candidates and the policies
• Checking out Yahoo’s Political Dashboard
• Watched the debates on CNN online the day after the debates – and fact checking what the candidates said
• following the twitter broadcasts for the election
• watching clips of Matt Damon rip the potential VP
• and Saturday Night Live – my God Tina Fey looks like a double, surely she’d make a better veep candidate?

The bottom line is this election has been heavily impacted by the web, the information that those of us who live outside of the US – and in fact people who live in red and blue states – have access to is phenomenal and is likely to only grow. Also the access to data and opinions has also grown exponentially through the internet.

Even this late in the day we’re able to see new online tools come across online to help citizens and users make their decision – Obama’s just launched a tax calculator to combat the remarks that people will face hire taxes under an Obama administration, unreal. Freedom and information are totally empowering, I don’t think Obama could have come this far without the internet, can’t wait to see how this thing finishes.

It’s incredible how much excitement is generated from the WWDC, with speculation running rampant from tech blogs to the BBC. Flickr has over 11,000 pictures tagged with the term wwdc. My favourite is this picture that has the covered banner from inside the conference space.

What Apple does really well is create products and get people excited about them. People are so excited that when they release a newer cheaper version a few months’ later people aren’t ticked that they bought the more expensive version, instead their lining up to buy another phone.

It all comes down to innovation, design and execution. Apple does this well, they build innovative products, they ensure the design has a “wow” factor and they execute early, often and iterate like crazy. That’s a great model for tech businesses if you ask me.

More information on the Flickr blog and there’s a video group that has some great content already.
Personally I think this will be different to the other video sites already online (thinking YouTube and Facebook) because the community on Flickr is pretty strong and puts up solid content. People on Flickr are passionate about photos and getting the same people to put up videos will lead to great video content.

Loving Dunstan’s beach close ups for example.

Kites in the sky

Originally uploaded by farhanlalji
Took this picture yesterday while walking around in Hampstead Heath. It always amazes me how much green space there is in London. You could be in the middle of buildings and yet not be far from a big park. Love it.

Mumbai

Originally uploaded by farhanlalji

The Tate Modern has a fantastic exhibit right now, called Global Cites. I finally got a chance to go and see it this weekend. If you’re in London and you’re looking for something to do this week/next weekend, I can’t recommend this exhibit enough.

From the Tate’s website:
“Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.”

Slightly surreal moment for me when – after I read how Mumbai had 34,000 people per kilometer squared (compared to London which has 4,500 people per kilometer squared), and I used some basic math to deduce that this means about 34 people per m squared in Mumbai – the lady next to me said “there are way too many people at this exhibit”. The density in the exhibit was about 2 people per m squared… maybe.

man_u_teddies

Originally uploaded by farhanlalji

While having lunch today with the wife. These three ladies and their Man United teddy bears joined us. All of a sudden a photo shoot broke out. I resisted the urge to kick one of the teddies into the Thames.