Howard Schultz, likely one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, talks about making bold moves that not everyone agrees with, and about having courage in your conviction.

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Bye Google Wave! Whatever you were...

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via nytimes.com

OK, this guy is clearly who Dos Equis had in mind when creating their Most Interesting Man campaign. I mean, it even reads like those commercials. Unbelievable.

"At 13, in thrall to Tarzan, he ran away from home to live in the jungle."

"At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle."

"At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate."

Wonder what was on his bucket list...

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Pinterest is hot. If you haven't read at least one article daily about how the social sharing startup has already crossed 10 mm MAU, is more engaging than every other website besides Facebook and Tumblr, and is apparently driving more traffic to retail sites than Google+, then you've been living under a rock. Or at least not in silicon valley.

So what makes Pinterest work? While some people have their bets on shady viral marketing tactics, you cannot deny that Pinterest is an incredibly engaging product. 

Also, while I agree that Pinterest is fundamentally a curation app, I don't think the "curation motive" alone drives this engagement... though it is a big factor.

Here are some of my thoughts on what makes Pinterest so engaging:

1. We are visual animals.

Pinterest is highly visual. In essence its a visual Twitter. Its a simple micro-sharing app where the content you share is not 140 characters of text but an image. As as we all know, images always win over text in engagement... humans are inherently visual animals. Photos are also much easier for our brains to process and react to (like, comment).

Even the simple actions on Pinterest are the visual equivalents of their Twitter counterparts: Retweet = Repin, @reply = Comment and Favorite = Like. But instead of navigating techie syntax, users get visual cues (aka UI) for each action, making them much more approachable and easier to engage with.

And to top it off, the continuous scroll interface gives you an endless (literally) amount of visual porn so you never have to leave, making the site highly addictive.

2. Constrains are an equalizer.

Again taking a page out of the Twitter and Instagram books, Pinterest constrains all pins to the same size (195 px wide, height adjusted to maintain aspect ratio) and column layout. Whether you pin a photo of the interior of a beautiful home or of a shoe, the pins are the same size and are given the same treatment on the site. And just like the 140 characters constrain of Twitter or the square format with filter of Instagram, this brings a sameness to the content, making it an incredible equalizer. It allows everyone to contribute without inhibition... even if they are not a professional blogger (Twitter), photographer (Instagram), or tastemaker (Pinterest.)

3. Closing the consumer-participator gap.

Pinterest turns the classic social-media-user-segments pyramid on its head; or more accurately, evens it out. On Pinterest, its super-simple to go from being a consumer to a participator by Liking or Repinning an item. True, Pinterest didn't invent either. Facebook probably deserves the credit for making the Like button ubiquitous, and Repinning is much like Retweeting or Reblogging on Tumblr (its more akin to the latter.) But where Pinterest wins is making these actions, *how* you consume content on the site: using Pinterest literally means browsing around (endlessly - see above) while liking and repinning items as you go. There is nothing else to do on Pinterest, and that turns out to be a very good thing.

Whatever the reasons for its awesome growth, this is definitely going to be the year of the pin! Oh and one more thing... if I were working on product at Pinterest, my focus would be on building a killer iPad app. iPad is the perfect medium for Pinteresting.

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via washingtonpost.com

Its disgusting what Assad is doing to his own country and his own people. The only way I can even comprehend this is that the man is pure evil. Some incredible (although very disturbing) images in this gallery.

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Over the holidays Bob and I went to India to visit my family and we all went to Jodhpur and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Some photos below. 

Driving into the desert. Jaisalmer is almost at the Pakistan border. We saw tons of BSF (Border Security Force, a division of the Indian Army) trucks on the way.

Lunch break at a hotel half way from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer. The whole group - my dad (as always glued to his phone), mom, sisters, kunal (brother in law) and bob.

Bob was very jealous of all the Rajasthani moustaches. Here is one of his favorites - the doorman at the lunch place.

Mandore temple and gardens in Jodhpur. This is only one of the tons of beautiful temples here.

Sunset in the desert was really beautiful. The desert camp had tons of peacocks, some of whom watched the sunset with us.

The folk singers at the camp happened to be really good, which helped because it was ridiculously cold and hard to sit around outside for very long. Not that being "inside" helped since we stayed in tents.

Tourists watching the sunrise on top of dunes. We abandoned our camel ride up the dunes after my mom and little sister fell off a camel, and walked up instead. There was a great little chai and noodles cart on top of the dunes.

The Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur alone was worth the trip. The Jain temple inside the fort has some of the most beautiful sculptures I have ever seen.

See the full gallery on Posterous

The queen's bedroom inside the fort - the balls in the ceiling are from belgium and reflected the oil lamps to light up the whole room. Innovation in the 15th century!

Patwon Haveli in Jaisalmer. Haveli literally means mansion. This one was built for 5 brothers in the early 19th century and is still occupied by their descendents! 

See the full gallery on Posterous

And of course no trip to rajasthan is complete without shopping :) At a textiles shop in Jodhpur.

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via wired.com

Steven Levy's interview of Jeff Bezos in Wired is definitely worth a read. His focus on building a company that creates real customer value is great to see. Silicon Valley vcs throwing money at "entrepreneurs" looking to make quick exits should take note.

"There are always shiny things. A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last. You really want something that’s much deeper-keeled. You want your customers to value your service. And there are companies that haven’t gone through tough times, so they’re not really tested."

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I came across this wonderful article in HBR today about how women tend not to talk in professional situations and at the workplace when in the presence of male colleagues. 

There is of course lots of evidence that this is in fact the case, but I have personally never been one of those women. I've always been happy to speak up even in meetings where I am the only woman amongst 25 men... which has often been the case in my tech career.

Lately I have been wondering whether my comfort with speaking up has something to do with the fact that I went to a women's college. College is the first simulation of a professional environment for most people. In my college (Mount Holyoke) there were no men in class, even in my computer science and discrete math classes. So there was no opportunity for me to second guess my own knowledge in the presence of men as Ms. Johnson describes. I wonder whether this tendency of women not speaking up in male-dominated professional environments is less prominent amongst women's college graduates?

When I went to Mount Holyoke, my decision was based 100% on what school gave me the biggest scholarship grant. I had no intention of seeking out a women's college and I honestly did not appreciate being at a women's college while I was there. It is only now, many many years later, when I come across articles such as this one, or Sheryl Sandberg's TED talk, that I think that perhaps its partly my women's college education that gave me the conviction and confidence I have in myself. 

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Google doodle today in honor of Lucille Ball's 100th birthday is so cool! 

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2099931/Google-Loves-Lucy-Lucille-Balls-...

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Disclaimer: although I am a (recent) Google employee, I have nothing to do with the Google+ team or product strategy. My opinions are my own and not Google's. I have been using Google+ since end of May. 

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Google+ is clearly Google's best attempt yet in entering the social ecosystem. In fact many people, including myself, are actually quite surprised at how good of a first version it is. Some of us had given up on Google doing anything interesting in social. 

But IMO, the feature touted as the biggest innovation of Plus -- Circles -- is also its biggest drawback, and could turn into the achielles heel that hampers the growth of the social network.

What's wrong with Circles?

Google+ asks users to manually organize their connections into groups (Circles). While privacy is definitely a big positive of this design, and pretty much the reason Google+ does this, there are some serious negatives.

A major annoyance with the Circles feature is the need for a lot of upfront work, and ongoing maintenance. Others (@Kevnull | Yoav Shoham | @FastCompany) have also written about the tediousness of this task, and the inevitable inaccuracy of the result.

The tedium is easily apparent to anyone who's been on Google+ for the last few weeks. I have ~800 friends on Facebook. The thought of adding them all to Google+ and painfully categorizing them into Circles is daunting enough for me to not have attempted that task. In fact the majority of my connections on Plus are in my "Following" Circle - people I dont know at all but follow their posts, filled with primarily the same people I follow on Twitter already. I would be willing to bet that if Google published results of Circles created by Plus users, we would see that only a small fraction of users have bothered to create any Circles of their own beyond the default ones (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following).

As for the inaccuracy - few relationships in life are permanent (only family.) Co-workers leave for other companies, friends move to other cities or become not as close, even husbands and wives break up. For Google+ to work as intended, all of these relationship changes will require users to manually update their Circles. I highly doubt that the vast majority of users - like the 750 million currently on Facebook - will bother with this level of maintenance of their digital relationships. And this innaccuracy will have serious privacy implications, thereby negating the only real reason for Circles. (e.g., I continue sharing stuff meant for Google coworkers with my Googlers Circle, while half of them have left Google for competitors.) 

But wait, there's more... like how the hell does this work?

There are further issues around the sheer confusion of how Circles work and what you can and can't do with them. Circles seem to be closest to Twitter lists. They are great for filtering your inbound stream but useless for sharing out. I can easily see what my Photographers Circle has shared today, but if I wanted to share my latest photo project with them, I cant - some of them may not have added me to their Circles, and those who have may not have added me to their photography Circles, etc.

What if I wanted to discuss party planning options with my closest girlfriends for one of our friend's baby shower? It is pretty near impossible to figure out how to do that on Plus... in fact it may actually *be* impossible. If you know how to do this - please enlighten me! On Facebook - you simple start a message thread with the 5 friends you want to do this with. Since friendship is a 2-way street on Facebook, you can private message any of your friends. But on Google+ Circles are a one-way relationship (like Twitter) so you can't private message anyone. But shouldn't Plus at least have the equivalent of Twitter's DM?

I could go on and on... 

Implicit Circles may be an answer...

I am not pretending to have answers to the Google+ Circle problem, but at least part of the answer may be implicit, algorithmically created Circles. For a company as obsessed with the algorithmic solution to any problem as Google is, I am surprised they did not build at least some algorithms around Circle creation and maintenance into Plus. Something like: use my corporate email and school email to automatically create and maintain my co-workers and classmates Circle -  is so obvious that it seems strange that its missing. But beyond that, Google could use my location, interests, events, and contact frequency with connections to automatically create or at least suggest Circles for me. This would at least take the tedium of categorizing all your connections upfront and further maintaining them out of the picture.

As for the confusing way Circles are structured, a much needed feature is a concept of "Shared Circles" or groups that apparently Google is already working on.

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via fluentin3months.com

This guy is clearly a lot braver and most importantly *freer* than I am. Great post.

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It feels like all the hot debate about the lack of Adobe Flash on iPhone and iPad has died down. Somehow everyone seems to think its OK that a $700 device whose main purpose is browsing the web, just doesn't render a large portion of web content.

Even I had stopped complaining about it until I had another infuriating no-Flash-moment today. I was on the bus on the way to work, going through news on the iPad when I found out about the Bombay blasts. Both my sisters live in Bombay. After calling them to confirm they were ok, I tried to find video coverage from Indian TV stations, which are a lot more comprehensive than anything on CNN or BBC. One of the best Indian TV stations - NDTV has an entire section of video devoted to this news. Of course, I could watch none of it on the iPad. It was beyond ridiculous!

Apple needs to stop pretending that its lack of Flash support on iOS has any other reason than the fact that browser-based flash games will completely cannibalize app store revenues. We don't care about your business model conundrums, Apple. Just get Flash on the iPad.

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Just came across this video via @booooooom of a Miami artist who sews little bits of poetry on to thrift store clothes. Inspiring to see people do interesting things with their time. I play with my cats :/ 

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