Zynga IPO And What it Says About the New Economy

...."It takes decades after an iconic turning point for structural revolutions to come to full flower and upend the social and economic order.  The profound impacts of the first era of computing didn’t start until the late 1980s, nearly 30 years after the invention of the first mini-computer, Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP-8.   What makes a Zynga possible comes decades after the invention of the Internet.  Now, as then, the velocity of change will accelerate.".......
.....more
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markpmills/2011/12/18/the-good-news-behind-the-zynga-ipo-and-what-it-says-about-the-new-economy/

Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success

When we built System Software Associates as an enterprise application software company in the emerging mid market in the 80's & then reinvented it in the mid 90's we lived by  lessons learned from companies like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Coke and McDonalds. 

1. Be fast, flexible &  focused
2. Change the way the world does business and change the playing field for competitors
3. Do it right or don't do it
4. A quarter pounder should taste the same everywhere around the world
5. Think globally, execute locally (distributors/affiliates/business partners)
6. Act like what you want to become
7. If you think you can, or you think you can't....your probably right
8. Sell the whole Vision but install in digestible pieces - lead from the front
9. Luck is the intersection of where preparation meets opportunity and you take advantage of it - make your own luck
10. Earn the right to own your piece of the market - clients/customers are what matters most - the rest flows from there

Here is Steve Jobs list for when he founded then reinvented Apple.

BY Carmine Gallo | October 14, 2011|

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Steve Jobs' impact on your life cannot be overestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect -- computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs' greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.
Over the years, I've become a student of sorts of Jobs' career and life. Here's my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our "inner Steve Jobs."
1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world for the better." Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, "I'd get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about." That's how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.
2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, "Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" Don't lose sight of the big vision.
Related: Why Entrepreneurs Love Steve Jobs

3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn't have any practical use in his life -- until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don't live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.
4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to?
5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?
Related: 10 Things to Thank Steve Jobs For
6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter. Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.
7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It's so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.
There's one story that I think sums up Jobs' career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that's the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.

Emotional genius?: IBM chip mimics the brain?

This is one of the new cognitive computing chips created by researchers at IBM that is said to mimic the human brain.

(Credit: IBM)


 
Computers with processors that mimic the human brain's cognition, perception, and action abilities are a lot closer than they've ever been after IBM on Wednesday unveiled the first generation of chips that will power them.
The announcement comes nearly three years after IBM and several university partners were awarded a grant by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to re-create the brain's perception, cognitive, sensation, interaction, and action abilities, while also simulating its efficient size and low-power consumption.
The grant was part of Phase 2 of DARPA's Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project, the goal of which, IBM said, is "to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment--all while rivaling the brain's compact size and low-power usage."
According to IBM Research project leader Dharmendra Modha, the first tangible results of the grant and a great deal of work by those at six IBM labs and five universities is finally ready to be shown to the world.
"What I hold in my hand as I speak," Modha told CNET by phone Wednesday, "is our first cognitive computing core that combines computing in the form of neurons, memory in the form of synapses, and communications in the form of axons...[and] in working silicon, and not PowerPoint."
The development of the new chips comes two years after Modha's team finished work on an algorithm called BlueMatter that spelled out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha has said, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information.
While it's too early to say exactly what kind of applications will be powered by the new chips, Modha suggested that they will likely tackle some of the thorniest problems in computing. Among those he foresees are programs that could analyze financial markets with extreme precision and attention; that could monitor global water supplies and track and report information on things such as wave height, ocean tides, water temperature, and even issue tsunami warnings; and those that could allow a supermarket worker to instantly sense when produce has gone bad.
Others see even more potential applications. For example, the chips could offer earthquake detection due to "infinite patience" and being our eyes and ears on a seismic fault line in a way that would bore people, said analyst Rick Doherty, co-founder and director of the Envisioneering Group. Similarly, the chips could be used for a wide range of military, public health or public safety purposes, Doherty suggested.
All of this is due to the fact, Modha said, that the chips can enable biological "senses" such as sight, sound, smell, and touch, and "drive multiple motor modes while consuming less than 20 watts [of power] and occupying less volume than a 2-liter bottle of soda, and weighing less than three pounds."
While Modha wouldn't say when the first commercially available applications based on the new chips will be available, Doherty said he thinks the first such programs could be ready by 2015 or 2016. And Doherty, who was briefed on the cognitive computing news, said he thinks that IBM's latest work is "exciting" and significant because of the fact that the chips are designed to learn and even give feedback on what they've learned.
Beyond von Neumann
To Modha, his new chips are nothing short of an entirely new computing paradigm, perhaps the first in decades, and one which could far surpass the decades-old von Neumann architecture on which today's computers are based.
IBM's new chips contain no biological elements, the company said, but do have digital silicon circuits "inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a 'neurosynaptic core' with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons), and communication (replicated axons)," IBM said in a release.
At the moment, Modha's team has come up with two prototype chip designs. Each contains 256 neurons, while one has 262,144 programmable synapses, and the other has 65,536 learning synapses, IBM said. For now, the company has used the chips to demonstrate basic applications such as pattern recognition, machine vision, classification, navigation, and associative memory.
And the company expects that the chips will move away from von Neumann computing to "a potentially more power-efficient architecture that has no set programming, integrates memory with processor, and mimics the brain's event-driven, distributed and parallel processing."
Eventually, Modha said, IBM hopes to "weave the [building] blocks together into a scalable network and progressively scale it to a mammalian scale system with 10 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses, [all] while consuming 1 kilowatt of power [and] fitting in a shoebox. Think of a cognitive supercomputer in your pocket."
Not replacing today's computers
Although the chips may some day create a new computing paradigm, Modha said he doesn't see them as replacing existing computers. Rather, he said, it's about "extending and complementing today's computer stack."
Perhaps more to the point, Modha's team has set out to come up with a new computing architecture that isn't weighed down by the imminent end of Moore's Law.
Today's computers, he argued, are hobbled by three fundamental constraints: first, that they must have progressively increasing clock rates; second, that those clock rates require smaller and smaller devices that are quickly approaching hard physical limitations; and finally that today's computers are essentially programmed systems with linear sets of instructions that are occasionally interspersed with if/then/else statements. By contrast, IBM's cognitive computing chips could in theory put off those physical limits for some additional time, enabling a wide range of previously impossible applications, Modha said.
"Everyone else is playing within the [Moore's Law] system," he argued. "We're changing the game."
(Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between.)

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20093845-52/ibm-says-new-chip-mimics-the-human-brain/#ixzz1VidP8xpq

Groupon IPO not worth the price

Assuming Groupon has a successful IPO - it seems the math shows it will be way over hyped and astronomically over priced.