I only ate at a Chipotle for the first time less then a year ago, but I really like their food (ie, I think it tastes good). Seems like a good company to support too…
Way to go Willie!
Honestly, I’m not really all that into computer games (I bought a Wii over a year ago and it’s still sitting in its box). But I did work for a computer game company back in the 90s. During that time I had the pleasure of helping Ron Gilbert, Chris Taylor, and the Total Annihilation team develop a web presence for the game before it launched and maintain the website as the game came out and expansion packs were released on the site. I learned a lot about building and maintaining a high traffic website during those days, more than once the release of a new preview or expansion to the game crashed our poor old web servers (we initially were on a T1 line with a dual 200mhz processor server, probably about 512k ram).
So, I thought it was cool to discover this new project on Kickstarter, Double Fine Adventure. Apparently Ron has teamed up with Tim Schafer, and after not finding interest for a new point and click adventure game (looks like the old Humongous Entertainment games) from the big studios they decided to take the project to Kickstarter. They managed to raise the $400,000 they are seeking to develop the game in 8 hours! Currently, they are almost at a $1mil raised, with 33 days left to go.
I just may have to buy this game (I mean, support this Kickstarter campaign)!
This is a pretty amazing fact, Apple’s iPhone business, a business that didn’t even exist 5 years ago, is now bigger than Microsoft (that is, the entire company). In the December quarter, Apple’s iPhone business generated $24.4 billion in revenue, Microsoft as a whole generated $20.9 billion. Overall, Apple generated $17 billion in profits on $46 billion in revenue vs. Microsoft’s $8 billion in profits on $21 billion in revenue, more than double in both cases.
What really is amazing is Apple is doing this by creating NEW businesses. The iPhone and iPad “markets” didn’t exist 5 years ago, Apple created them. Of course, we all know that creating new business areas has never been Microsoft’s strength, they’ve always been best at moving into existing business areas (Graphical OS, Internet Browsers, Game Consoles, Search Engines, etc).
It’s also amazing the smartphone sales are now outpacing PC sales. Bill Gates dreamed of a PC on every desktop, but it looks to me like the real dream is a computer device in everyone’s pocket!
This is a very cool little tool that suggests an equity distribution for co-founders of start-up based on 15 different paramaters. Simply answer the questions for each co-founder and press “compute.” I’ve been playing around with it a bit and I’m finding myself pretty much agreeing with its distributions. Once you’ve hit “compute” you change the different paramaters and see how they change the equity distribution.
Ok, I’ll have a first real post coming up in the next day or two here, but I couldn’t help but comment, Apple’s numbers from last quarter are just amazing. It’s hard to believe this company was almost dead when I first got into the technology field after college. I can’t lie, I love my Apple products.
Ok, looks like I’m all setup and ready to go on my latest attempt at blogging. My previous blog focused on my travels and ski adventures, Rick 4.0 is going to focus on technology and entrepreneurship (and probably a little politics here and there, I just can’t help myself). Since meeting my fiancee, Corine, two years ago I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Bay Area. It’s an exciting time here, and while we as a country and planet have many challenges ahead of us, I can’t help but be optimistic about the future. I believe many industries are going to be turned upside down in the next decade and areas such as mobile computing and social networking that barely even existed 5 years ago are going to become more and more integrated in our lives. I’ll be sharing my thoughts here, thanks for stopping by!