Netizen

Friday, April 30, 2010

Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way

2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

If You Like Your Inbox, Keep It

Like Obama never tired of saying on the campaign trail for health care reform, if you like your current coverage, you get to keep it. So if you like your current inbox where you get emails from your friends and family and those dictators in Nigeria, you get to keep it. You actively would have to choose to go for the multi inbox option. (Obama's Got Momentum: He Could Defy History In November)

The Inbox As A Spectrum

All human beings are created equal, but that does not apply to emails. All emails are not equal. And the inbox has to reflect that.

Inbox 1

This is the inbox that you see when you log in. These are emails sent by people whose emails you have saved as contacts. These are emails sent only to you and not to a group of people.

Inbox 2

Emails sent by people whose emails you have saved as contacts, but these emails have also been sent to other people at the same time.

Inbox 3

Emails from mailing lists I might have subscribed to.

Inbox 4

Emails from everyone else. This is not the folder for the spam emails. The current spam folder gets to hold ground.

Addendum

An email that should have showed up in inbox 3, if it shows up in inbox 1, you get to tell the system it belonged in inbox 3, and all future emails from that address would end up in inbox 3. You teach the system as you use it.

Also you get to set an expiry date on the various inboxes. All emails in inbox 3 that are more than a month old, please delete them without asking, something like that. Because even Gmail has a space limit.

And there should be an easy way to delete contacts. If you ended up saving an email address you did not mean to save, delete. Free the soul.

I think with this simple change, the inbox could see new life. Inbox 1 could again become something to always look forward to. And this suggestion is not to displace the already in place concept of threaded conversations and the other goodies.

Dropio's Indian Cofounder Darshan

Me: I just found out you cofounded Dropio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop.io Why did you leave?
Darshan: yup! helped build out the tech team there, and then hopped to a startup i began in high school - http://bit.ly/4DLylg

In case you did not realize, the Indians are statistically significant.

Darshan Somashekar - LinkedIn
Video Interview With The Founders of Drop.io
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Thursday, April 29, 2010

The FourSquare Appeal For Me

(1) Cutting Edge

FourSquare is on the cutting edge. (Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter) I would add FourSquare at the end if I were doing this blog post today.

2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

(2) New York City

I love this city like no other geographical location on earth. FourSquare is the hottest technology company in town, and it is one of the hottest tech companies out there, period. They are a hometown gig. That is illustrious. I take unabashed hometown pride in FourSquare.

Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
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New York City: Transformed Forever?

(3) Mobile

The mobile web is bigger and growing faster than the old web. There location is key. Location is the starting point of the FourSquare experience, and that is so in sync with the mobile web.

The iPhone, Nexus One, Or Droid?

(4) My People

This is key. I am a Third World guy. This is existential to me. This is spiritual. This is religious. This is fundamental. I was born in India, grew up in Nepal next door. I was in my 20s when I landed in America. I have to move towards one world. The First World, Third World dichotomy is a little too much for me. It makes me uncomfortable. My startup that I have put to rest after a rough 2009 wanted to bring a ton of new people online. But I perhaps made the mistake of thinking in terms of the old web. Mobile is perhaps the way to go. Four billion of the six billion plus people already can access mobile phones. And so perhaps software is where it is at. How simple can you make it? If they can do voice over their mobile phones, could they do a mightily stripped down version of FourSquare? Before, way before, a full web experience? Could they check in as a way to protest and tell the world that they are protesting? Checking in even the illiterates could do.

This is the number one reason I want to work for FourSquare: 4:16 PM @ FourSquare.

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Reshma Saujani: Innovation, Ethnic Pride, Thought Leadership

Start-Up NY: Innovation and Technology Startups in New York

Reshma Saujani's Innovation Advisory Board is hosting an event on the evening of May 3rd called "Start-up NY: Innovation and Technology Startups in New York".

Moderated by prominent tech blogger Meghan Asha, Saujani has gathered six panelists with backgrounds in venture capital, education, politics, entrepreneurship and social networking to discuss technology and innovation in New York City.

Panelists include:

Albert Wenger, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures (The event is near Union Square)
Dina Kaplan, Co-founder, Blip.tv
Evan Korth, Clinical Associate Professor, NYU; Organizer, NY Hackathon
Franklin Madison,Technology Program Director, ITAC (Industrial and Technology Assistance Corporation)
Nate Westheimer, Executive Director, NY Tech Meetup; Co-founder, AnyClip
Reshma Saujani, Community Activist and Democratic Congressional Candidate, NY District 14

A question and answer session will follow. The event will be broadcast live at Livestream.com and recorded for a broader audience.

Reinforcing Saujani’s commitment to entrepreneurship, economic diversity and innovation in New York, the “Startup” summit is the first in a series of ideation panels. In the coming months, additional summits will focus on cleantech, biotech and public-private partnerships.

We hope you can join us for the event.

WHEN
May 03, 2010 at 6:00 PM
WHERE
833 Broadway
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10003
Google map and directions

Reshma Saujani: Innovation, Ethnic Pride, Thought Leadership

FourSquare Must Cut A Deal With Yahoo

Carol Bartz wanting to buy Yahoo is no longer a rumor, this TechCrunch post makes it more than official.

TechCrunch: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz On Foursquare: It Depends On How Much Money They Want The topic on everyone’s lips was Yahoo’s rumored talks with Foursquare ..... Bartz’s response: “It depends how much money they want.”

Selling FourSquare would be a mistake, a huge mistake, a fatal mistake, taking $10 million at a $80 million valuation from a VC firm would be a good move, but the best move at this point would be to take $10 million from Yahoo upfront and then $10 million annually thereafter to be reevaluated in two years to add location to as many Yahoo properties as possible. Just like Twitter took $25 million each from Google and Microsoft to let them offer tweets as search results so as to be able to claim they also now do real time search, FourSquare should also make money by letting Yahoo be able to say Yahoo now does location in a big way.

Take $10 million right away, and then another $10 million for the first year, and turn the various Yahoo properties into a major project. Expand the team. Get a new office space. I recommend Dumbo. (Digital Dumbo: Here I Come) If not Dumbo, then Williamsburg. Actually, Williamsburg would be far better. Cooper Union is too cooper.

If FourSquare can cut a deal like this with Yahoo, it can cut a deal like this with many other major web properties. It could fund its growth with all that money. You go to VCs, you get diluted. You make money like this, you don't get diluted.

Hire me to work through some of these deals: 4:16 PM @ FourSquare.

Yahoo would be a great first customer for FourSquare. You have to understand, Yahoo used to be Google, it was hot. It was so hot, selling to Yahoo was the first exit strategy the two Google founders thought of. It was Yahoo that refused. We already have a search engine, they said. Over the past decade Yahoo has tried to regain some of that lost glory. In FourSquare they see a chance of that happening. Yahoo mistakenly thinks buying FourSquare will do it for them. It won't. Instead if they cut a deal with FourSquare, that will cost them much less money, as less as one fifth, and could actually do the trick of making Yahoo a hip company all over again.

Yahoo is going through an identity crisis of sorts, and cutting a sound deal with FourSquare might just be that thing it needs.

FourSquare needs the money to grow. Yahoo needs location. Cut the deal. How will FourSquare add location to the Yahoo properties? That is a whole another blog post, or preferably a job.

TechCrunch: Don't Sell Out FourSquare. Not Now. Not To Yahoo
Business Insider: Yahoo Considers Buying FourSquare For $100 Million
The Fabulous Life Of Dennis Crowley, The Most Wanted Man In Silicon Valley