http://william.telemuse.net/blog William Jolitz on the newest businesses 2014-06-11T17:45:10Z http://william.telemuse.net/blog/37 [Disclaimer - I know this area and am active in all of these components. I have a stake in this game, and a long history here, so am about as biased as one can be.] Of news recently is "Levchin’s Payments Startup Affirm Has Raised $45 Million". One of many - see "Programmers Size Up Bank Borrowers With Algorithms Rather Than FICO Scores". Even more in the offing from my business contacts. We are on the verge of another spate of "me too" investments on both coasts. Not to mention internal acquisitions already under way. FICO scoring is under attack from long standing issues, exacerbated by the need to apply Big Data, and poor application of data science is where the battle lies. Read more. william 2014-06-11T17:45:10Z http://william.telemuse.net/blog/36 Last week in DC included an visit, an homage to our space roots at the National Air and Space Museum. My family was present for my daughter's award, which coincidentally was for an analysis of Mars conditions for life begun with the Viking lander - my dad fabricated and tested the transponder it used (along with a half dozen other museum exhibits too!). I found myself recounting dozens of stories and "lessons learned", and getting into many discussions about specific missions and how certain presumptions tilted things rightly (and wrongly) for the evolution of entering the frontier of space, born as an exercise in cold war "soft power" conflict. Even though the cold wars been over for a couple of decades, neither NASA nor the aerospace industry have quite "moved on" to the necessary evolution to the next stage. Cold war relics (including myself!) still abound and seeming warp the present around the past in attempting to force a future that never seems to arrive. Not unlike attempts to take a fish-oil company and rebrand it as a trendy "dot.com", yet retain its "fishy" origins. We can already see that for things to go further, we can't do the huge "overwhelm and devastate" approaches appropriate for superpower competition - that trick hasn't worked for decades and ten's of billions. "Programs too big to fail" fail. Especially when we can least afford them to do so. I won't bore you with the manifold political, structural, or social reasons - they're all contorted, contrived, and ... irrelevant. However I will address "segment emergence" and the perception of brand as a critical element to breaking the nostalgic cycle that prevents us from entering into the next era that my children will thrive in. Read more ... william 2010-10-04T20:41:35Z http://william.telemuse.net/blog/35 Sometimes there is a change that is so obvious that its as big as the Earth ... yet nobody sees it. That's because no one notices the elephant in the room when they are too busy scratching where the fleas are biting. Bottom line - the largest volume OS market is about to come online. Only Google and Apple are ... william 2010-06-24T20:04:55Z http://william.telemuse.net/blog/34 In reading Bob Herbert's column "What the Future May Hold" (on the lack of investment in American infrastructure) in the New York Times, I was struck by 's comment which saw this through the lens of over investment in American power influence rather ...... william 2009-11-17T22:02:33Z