Facebook's Money Problem

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook's Earnings Report Underscores Its Challenges

the decelerating growth of its advertising business, which accounted for 85 percent of its $3.7 billion in revenue ..... in the last quarter, Facebook got $1.28 in revenue from each of its users, which is barely changed from the same time last year. .... the average revenue per user in the U.S. and Canada jumped to $3.20 from $2.84 a year ago

There is no relationship at Facebook between user growth and revenue growth. And that seems to be the problem. Long term I am not worried. There are several ways to monetize Facebook. Facebook has to figure out Facebook-unique ways to make money.

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A Stealing Kind Of App

Русский: Планшет (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For all intents and purposes your mobile operating system should be more infected than Windows. If it is not it is because the bad guys simply have not had the time to zero in.

There is much more room for mischief in the mobile space.

Google Approves an App that Steals All Your Data

an app that stealthily steals personal data such as photos and contacts ..... Google needs to improve both its app-scanning system and its Android operating system. ...... SMS Bloxor was finally pulled from the store after the researchers uploaded a version that continuously sent all the data from a device back to the app's creators, without ever stopping. ..... app stores will soon be subject to significant criminal efforts .... the coming wave. ..... most examples of mobile malware consist of targeted attacks against individuals, such as CEOs that might have access to valuable corporate data. "Round the corner is going to be some more widespread catastrophe that's could hit tens of thousands or millions of users."

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Life Secrets: Beyond Reach?

A slight mutation in the matched nucleotides can lead to chromosomal aberrations and unintentional genetic rearrangement. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Biology's Master Programmers

Since the mid-1980s Church has played a pioneering role in the development of DNA sequencing, helping—among his other achievements—to organize the Human Genome Project. To reach his office at Harvard Medical School, one enters a laboratory humming with many of the more than 50 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows over whom Church rules as director of the school's Center for Computational Genetics. ..... synthetic biology, an ambitious and radical approach to genetic engineering that attempts to create novel biological entities—everything from enzymes to cells and microbes—by combining the expertise of biology and engineering .... modify microörganisms to create new fuels and medical treatments. .... "It will change everything. People are going to live healthier a lot longer because of synthetic biology. You can count on it." ..... The very idea of synthetic biology is to purposefully engineer the DNA of living things so that they can accomplish tasks they don't carry out in nature. ...... a rapid drop in the cost of decoding and synthesizing DNA, combined with a vast increase in computer power and an influx into biology labs of engineers and computer scientists, has led to a fundamental change in how thoroughly and swiftly an organism's genetics can be modified. ..... we will be able to replace diseased tissues and organs by reprogramming cells to make new ones, create novel microbes that efficiently secrete fuels and other chemicals, and fashion DNA switches that turn on the right genes inside a patient's cells to prevent arteries from getting clogged. ..... The cost of both decoding DNA and synthesizing new DNA strands, he has calculated, is falling about five times as fast as computing power is increasing under Moore's Law ...... Up to now, it's proved stubbornly difficult to turn synthetic biology into a practical technology that can create products like cheap biofuels. Scientists have found that the "code of life" is far more complex and difficult to crack than anyone might have imagined a decade ago. What's more, while rewriting the code is easier than ever, getting it right isn't. ...... The idea, Church explains, is to sort through the variations to find "an occasional hopeful monster, just as evolution has done for millions of years." ..... no matter how elegantly compact the DNA code is, the biology it gives rise to is consistently more complex than anyone anticipated .... synthetic biology is genetic engineering on steroids ..... an expanding list of DNA circuits, including biosensors, oscillators, bacterial calculators, and similar molecular gadgetry ........ the claims that some synthetic-­biology companies made now appear to have been overly optimistic ...... Codon, in Church's words, was established to be the Intel of the bioengineering industry ...... Warp Drive, which was launched in January, employs fewer than a dozen full-time staffers and occupies only about 1,000 square feet of office and lab space in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But the startup, which has raised $125 million in investments ...... nature is particularly adept at creating chemicals that act safely and precisely on a desired biological target ...... "Nature seemed to have already engineered in complexities that drug chemists don't understand." ..... nature is still the best programmer.

A lot of people can't wrap their head around the fact that even biological processes are subject to engineering. It is not that different from metal engineering, just at a different scale.

It is like this friend of mine at high school. He just never could wrap his head round the fact that the earth was round. He wrote the right answer for exams and stuff. But he said, you know what, I just don't buy it. The earth feels flat to me, he said.

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Seeking Strategic Consulting Gigs

Image via CrunchBase

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 12:11 PM
Subject: Courtney, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: Courtney Bolton

Please help find some gigs. Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:26 AM
Subject: Timo, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: Timo Ewalds

Please help out if you can. Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:25 AM
Subject: Shane, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: Shane Snow

Hi Shane. Can you please help me land a gig? Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:54 PM
Subject: Hi Eric, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: eric@foursquare.com

Hi Eric.

I seek a short term strategic consulting gig with FourSquare. Can you
please help out?

Thanks.

Paramendra.

(I hope I got your email address right. I guessed it.)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:16 PM
Subject: Hi Albert, requesting help
To: Albert Wenger

Hello Albert.

Can you please help me land a few strategic consulting gigs?

Thanks.

Paramendra.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Fred, need a small help
To: Fred Wilson

Hi Fred.

If I manage to get through your inbox impossibilities and you do end
up reading this email....... Can you please help me land a few
strategic consulting gigs with some of your portfolio companies? Would
be a big help.

Thanks.

Paramendra.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:10 PM
Subject: Seeking A Strategic Consulting Role
To: Dina Kaplan , Mike Hudack

Hi Dina. Hello Mike.

I was at your guys' Holiday party in 2010.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/12/bliptv-how-do-they-ever-get-anything.html

I seek a strategic consulting role with Blip.TV along these lines:
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-politician-in-redmond.html More
about me here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/paramendra I was Barack
Obama's first full time volunteer in NYC, and the campaign in Chicago
picked up specific advice from me three times, each documented at my
Barackface blog.

I am someone working to launch a tech startup in the microfinance
space down the line. But I do consulting gigs right now.

I hope my services will be worth it to you.

Thanks.

Paramendra.

--
http://gutkhaconsulting.com
http://www.paramendra.com
917 512 5445

Fred Wilson's Impossible Inbox

Wilson's Snipe perched on a fencepost near Wales, Central Utah. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

@fredwilson Sent you an email at 5:15 PM. Please find in your impossible inbox and read, time permitting. Thank you much.
— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) July 26, 2012

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Conveyor Belt Blogging

Over the past few days I seem to have resorted to what can be called conveyor belt blogging.

I have a private webpage that has links to sites and news sources I visit often. And so I have a list of places I go to for technology news and commentaries.

This is the conveyor belt concept.

You open up a news source. You open up an article or blog post. Even before you have read it, based just on the headline and summary you create your own headline and jot down a few comments. You start work on a new blog post. You insert the headline and hyperlink to it. You grab key sentences and phrases to quote in your own blog post. By the time you are done reading you should have more comments. Those comments are the meat of the blog post.

Then you use Zemanta to add related articles, the image. Google's Blogger helps with labels and products to advertise (although noone has bought anything at my blog yet .... I am blaming it on the ongoing recession).

You can produce one blog post every 10 or 15 minutes. You can do it all day long if you enjoy reading as much I do. This is a great way to work out your mind. I can just feel it. I can feel my mind muscles building up.

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