Already August?

Summer in San Francisco is like winter in London – grey, cold and muggy. One forgets that it is summer until one heads off outside of the city an experiences the true summer. Fortunately, we are heading off again for a few weekends trips to Oregon and New York. Maybe even London.

Did you feel it?

We did. At 4.42am this morning we woke up by rattling windows and doors. The earthquake just lasted for about 10 seconds and then back to normal. Great wake up call!

Web 3.0 or something completely different

As people are sucking up anything associated with *Web 2.0* one realizes there there truly is born one sucker every second. It’s like this craving to belong to something that people talk about, to be associated with the *new* and with the *future*.

When Flickr started in 2004 it was merely as a way for one of the engineers to share his photos with his friends. He solved a problem that was important to him. And if a problem is important to solve for one person the solution is often welcomed by many.  And it took off.

The difference between cool idea is: I got this problem I’d like to solve cause it matters to me and The market for women is under served online.  Hmm, I’d like to vote for number 1 – as do many.

So what comes first? The category or the innovation? We’ll I’m sure that there are many that could claim the Web 2.0 expression as a natural progression of Web 1.0 (big surprise!). But does that really matter? The key thing is to solve important problem and then what history decided to name it us, at least in the present time, very unimportant.

Bought the iPhone

Yes, I got sucked into buying the new 8GB iPhone about 10 days after it’s debut. My plan was just to try it out, claim that it was a miss and then return it sans 10% restocking fee. Gotta say that my plan went out the window as soon as I turned it on.

The iPhone is truly awesome. It’s the phone+iPod+mobile mail+browser I’ve dreamt about for 10 years. It’s pricey but worth every cent. It’s my new interface against the world – world wide. It makes the Crackberry look ancient and Neanderthal.

It’s the last piece that will make me 100% mobile and a complete road warrior. I like!

The Life-Deferred Plan

I just finished The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and gotta say that I’m really impressed. Most of his advice are things that we have already put in place or discovered during our mini-retirement last year (actually my second mini-retirement; first was in 1999). That said, he puts everything into a nice context and reinforces our decision to challenge current career conventions and focus on living life and stop following the Joneses.

The overall message is to become the CEO of your own life and focus on what really matters to you. It’s about finding your true purpose and living a rich life. Maybe not rich in dollars but rich in happiness, personal growth and sense of meaning.