Top Posts
-
Why Nobody Can Copy Apple
Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled...
-
The Job Decision Matrix
A Job Decision Matrix will help identify what is actual...
-
Path To Green
A Path To Green (PTG) is a clear, crisp, and complete s...
-
You are Thinking of Your Career Trajectory Wrong
Most people think about their career trajectory as bein...
-
STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory
My computer bluescreened with a STOP 0xC2, BAD_POOL_CAL...
-
The 5Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
Always have a plan. Always. A great, simple, framework...
-
Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit
Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligate...
-
Merit Badges – A Mental Model for Success
The concept of a Merit Badge comes from the Boy Scouts...
-
Tenets
Tenets are a few carefully articulated guiding principl...
-
Work Backwards From The Customer
At the 1996 Microsoft Professional Developer Conference...
-
Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins
Tom’s Hardware is generally really solid. But they shou...
-
Customer, Business, Technology, Organization (CBTO)
CBTO = Customer + Business + Technology + Organization
-
One-Way and Two-Way Doors
Effective decision-making starts with understanding; in...
-
Be a Great Reader
When an organization has a culture where the written wo...
-
Paying Developers is A Bad Idea
The companies that make the most profit are those who b...
-
RSS
Search Results for: platform
Virtuous Cycles, Platforms, Flywheels, Snowballs, and Tidal Waves
I’m working on writing down my thoughts on space. I’ve learned a ton since deciding space would be my next mission. Some pretty clear thoughts are forming, and whenever that happens, I’ve trained myself to write, write, and write to really solidify things. Space is big. In fact, it is, literally, the largest domain. Given the vastness of the domain, I need to formulate a Taxonomy and Lexicon that resonates to gain clarity. I’m a …Continue reading
Apps Must Be Cross Platform
This is a copy of a guest post I wrote for GeekWire. View the original here. Maybe there are a few Robert Scobles out there who still believe that a significant number of successful apps in the future will be unique to any one client platform. Connected experiences across all devices is where the growth is and it would be insane for anyone, from a major brand to an early-stage startup to believe they don’t …Continue reading
Formally Advising The Buddy Platform
I love startups. I love developers. I love Seattle. Given that my own startup will be based in the Seattle area (news on that coming soon!) it is important to me that the Seattle startup scene thrives. I’ve thrown myself out to the community and have been blown away by all the great people and fantastic ideas. I’ve lost count now of how many early stage folks I’ve met with in the last 6 months. …Continue reading
Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both
If you think the thing you are building is both an “app” and a “platform” you will fail. Oh, and if you think it’s going to be a just a platform, you will fail too. (Update: April 6, 2012 – I updated this post with some typo fixes and minor tweaks). A recent story on Hacker News gave me an excuse to write down my thoughts on this subject. I’m reposting here in order to …Continue reading
Announcing Kindel Leadership Development
July 21, 2023
In 2020 started hosting my Free and Open Office Hours as a way to give back and meet more people in the space industry. As I became useful to those in the space industry and gained expertise in the space domain I discovered how fulfilling helping multiple companies with leadership development was. To that end, I have pivoted and made Kindel Leadership Development my primary focus. Hire me for Learn more and get started here: …Continue reading
Be A Volunteer
Once you get to the point in your career where you realize a) you’ll be just fine financially (because your resume kicks ass), b) your company doesn’t give a sh*t about you, and c) you know what the Right Thing to do is, act like a volunteer.Continue reading
I’m Breaking into Space
I exited my last role recently and have been drafting my next chapter. I have decided to make my new mission Space; specifically getting humanity off Earth. Over the past months, I’ve focused on learning about the space industry’s state and meeting people working on cool stuff. I’m convinced there must be initiatives where someone with my experience and expertise is needed. I now need to figure out how to ensure folks with such need …Continue reading
kindel.com is no longer at home
kindel.com has been hosted on my home network since 1996. Today, I finally moved it to a modern web platform. This includes migrating an OG Active Server Pages (pre .NET) & SQL Server app I wrote in 1997 for decoding Porsche option codes By doing this I finally got to turn port 80/443 off on my home network. It’s been bugging me for a long time because it’s a really bad practice as it makes …Continue reading
winprint 2.0
Ever since I started programming on an Apple ][+ in 1981, I’ve had a thing for printing. My earliest apps focused on printing and my first money-making endeavor was “Tapes”, which printed casette tape ‘J-cards’ for all the mix-tapes of great ’80s music we made for the girls. Whenever I learned a new programming language or OS, the first app I’d write was Spit, an app for printing my source code all pretty (it “spits” source …Continue reading
Tenets
Tenets are a few carefully articulated guiding principles for any endeavor. They act as a guide to align on a vision and simplify decision-making. Tenets are the written-down rules that distinguish good behavior from behavior that is not welcome. Tenets simplify and help with being right more often; they can be used as tiebreakers when making tough judgment calls. There is no better way to expose misalignment, and then get aligned, than going through the …Continue reading
Mental Models
A secret to clear thinking and decision-making is to learn, invent, and adopt mental models. You’ve probably noticed effective leaders can frame complex ideas simply. They’ll lead conversations like this: “Well, I think there are three things we should focus on and they are…” “Folks, I think there’s another way of looking at this problem. What if we viewed the problem through these four lenses…” The key to simplifying the complex is to be intentional …Continue reading
I’m Betting on Control4
Previously I blogged about revamping the home control and entertainment system in my home. I decided to go with Control4. I mean REALLY go with Control4. First, I’ve been having a professional premium smart home installer (Wipliance) completely revamp my home with Control4 products. Second, I’ve decided to join Control4 as Senior Vice President of all their products and services. See the press release here. The home project is almost complete. All that’s left for …Continue reading
Have a Plan
Yesterday someone asked me to share my thoughts on the secret to building excellent things. I summarized what I know as: “Put the customer first, have a plan, create a shared mission, get early victories, remove process, and make it fun.” – me, yesterday. This was the formula my cohorts that built the Windows Phone app platform used. It worked. This is what the small team that created www.milelogr.com did. “No battle was ever won …Continue reading
"Write Once…" is Anti-Customer
Just as in the ’90s, there’s a bunch of hype these days around solving the cross-platform development problem. Mobile platform fragmentation is killing developers, and if only every device supported some common language or technology engine we could all Write Once and Run Anywhere. If only. WORA was, is, and always will be, a fallacy. WORA reminds me of the mole in whack-a-mole. It just keeps popping up and the realities of competing platform vendors …Continue reading
Apps are Dead. Long Live Experiences.
I like to get people’s attention by asserting “apps are dead”. I do this because it causes people to pause and think about what “apps” really are. After Apple started the app explosion in 2008 most apps were primarily client-side code. Today, however, it is almost impossible to find an app that does not rely on at least some Internet based service. In fact the apps most people use most of the time are almost …Continue reading
Has MS Finally Gotten Through To DELL?
I complained on Twitter to @MichaelDell that I could not buy a DELL XPS One 27 with “Microsoft Signature”. Today I got tweet from @MaryFadAtDell that read: @ckindel We have committed not to install bloatware on our XPS systems with Win8. I’ll email you details on what’s pre-installed. — Mary Fad (@MaryFadAtDell) November 1, 2012 The full of her email is below: Charlie – I wanted to get back to you on your concerns about …Continue reading
LockerGnome Guest Post on Mobile Fragmentation
Today LockerGnome ran a guest post by yours truly titled “The Fragmentation of Mobile Fragmentation”. This is a follow-on post to my post focused on Android in January, intended to express my opinions on the broader mobile ecosystem. (Note, as of right now, the post on LockerGnome does not have my byline. They are working on fixing that). “Mobile fragmentation is going to get significantly worse over the next few years. While this fragmentation will …Continue reading
The Market Sides of the Mobile Ecosystem
I’ve been using a taxonomy to describe the market-sides of the mobile ecosystem that looks like this: Up until now, my writing on the mobile ecosystem has been focused on smartphones, because their adoption and sales dominated. Given the season of the tablet has started, I need to make some points about how tablets relate. Even though we use the term “mobile” to describe scenarios involving both phones and tablets, before I go …Continue reading
What Kindle Means for Android
[This is a copy of a guest post I wrote for GeekList. Find the original here.] I still think Amazon would be stupid to build a phone. But I no longer believe they won’t do it. Within the next 6 months Amazon will go big with their own Android based smartphone. And when they do, it will be the moment that everybody else realizes that Google lost control of Android ages ago. “Google has already …Continue reading
Paying Developers is A Bad Idea
The companies that make the most profit are those who build virtuous platform cycles. There are no proof points in history of virtuous platform cycles being created when the platform provider incents developers to target the platform by paying them. Paying developers to target your platform is a sign of desperation. It means developers have no skin in the game. A platform where developers do not have skin in the game is artificially propped up …Continue reading
RSS - Posts