Disqus - Latest Comments for dsplittgerber

Re: Learning from Michael Burry

Daniel Splittgerber — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:45:21 -0000

This is a really interesting post - thanks for putting it all together!

Re: Unemployment and Structural Change (2)

Daniel Splittgerber — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:06:17 -0000

You may enjoy the current cover article of The Atlantic ("How a new jobless era will transform America" - http://www.theatlantic.com/... ), which discusses many of these points as well.

Re: Irrational beliefs

Daniel Splittgerber — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:35:35 -0000

The official explanation can be found on any of the sites I linked to above,
feel free to check them out.

Have you ever seen what actually happens to a plane when it hits a wall?
Watch this video for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Now consider again what might have happened to the 757 upon impact.

And I already linked to an image showing where exactly the DNA of the
passengers of Flight 77 was found on the grounds of the Pentagon.

Also, have you realized that Ronald Reagan National Airport is situated only
a few hundred meters away from the Pentagon, with a landing strip pointing
directly to the direction of the Pentagon? There are literally hundreds of
airplanes that are "allowed to get any where near the Pentagon" every day.

Please stop asking questions anyone can debunk in two minutes time.

Re: Irrational beliefs

Daniel Splittgerber — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:28:50 -0000

It's interesting, the way you counter my arguments. You don't bring forth
specific evidence (e.g. photos contradicting any evidence I gave), but
instead you state generalities, change the topic ever so slightly and
otherwise provide no helpful facts.

The government brought forth - though not always in the most forthcoming way
- the facts. So anyone is free to analyze these facts and draw his own
conclusions. In my view, these facts absolutely fit what we know or, as you
would like to call it, the government's "conspiracy theory". If you disagree
you have to specify why and what evidence supports your claim - that's the
basis for rational discourse. That's all I have to say on this matter.

Re: Why I’m giving away WriteRoom for 6 days

Daniel Splittgerber — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:37:54 -0000

It's just an emotional thing I guess, but still: I bought WriteRoom months ago - I very rarely buy software, because I neither need much nor feel there is enough original value in most of the stuff that gets published. But I liked the minimalistic idea. Now there's a kind of sour aftertaste: I don't have a lot of money as a grad student, so I'm not going to spend it on another software which may be given away for free some time soon. Don't get me wrong: I love your product; but I specifically wanted to support you with the payment. Also, it might make strategic sense for you to give it away etc. There's still some kind of aftertaste though for users who recently bought it.

Re: Cloud/Web App Security - A Modest Proposal

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:57:08 -0000

I think putting data into the cloud doesn't change that much after all. True, other people at the back end now theoretically have control over your data. But you can minimize the influence of potential data theft by properly encrypting everything before it gets stored on their servers (on the way or prior to any updates/uploading).

I guess the problem remains the human element. Most people don't use sophisticated passwords; their answers can be guessed etc. The more important the data, the stricter requirements for users should be to establish proper passwords, change them etc. Do you all think technology can or should help with that?

Re: It’s neither the chicken, nor the egg – Thoughts on disrupting online dating business models

Daniel Splittgerber — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:45:12 -0000

Quite an interesting concept and you certainly nail one possibility of doing
the matchmaking angle. Great to see!
Your sign-up process may impede faster user growth though - why not use
Facebook connect or some similar service in order to speed up the sign-up
process (which is an undervalued hurdle and has a silent evidence-problem:
you never hear from users who would otherwise complain about your lenghty
sign-up process, as they just leave)?

Re: It’s neither the chicken, nor the egg – Thoughts on disrupting online dating business models

Daniel Splittgerber — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:39:07 -0000

This is a great idea - do you believe it is technically feasible within the
next two years or does it require more of an local aware smartphone
adoption? There may also be another element at work. People may like to be
disrupted by people making dating advances to them online or when browsing
online social networks. It might take a while for people to get acquainted
with location-based smartphone services on the one hand and constantly being
targeted by a dating app while on the run, at work, with friends etc.What do
you think about that?

Re: It’s neither the chicken, nor the egg – Thoughts on disrupting online dating business models

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:14:15 -0000

I agree, it would probably be difficult but a possible path. It may be
difficult though to get people to accept some kind of data gathering about
their behavior? Although, just as with bonus miles, you may be able to offer
them something in exchange for their data: suggesting people who share their
interests.
The main difficulty
probably lies with the step of installing some kind of software for
data gathering. It provides
a hurdle you need people to overcome.. Do you see a solution to that?

Re: It’s neither the chicken, nor the egg – Thoughts on disrupting online dating business models

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:39:17 -0000

Thanks for pointing out Zoosk! Would have been surprised to see that someone
hadn't already thought of my idea. Will check that out.
And your second point is absolutely valid. I think there are several niche
markets left in online dating, where one definitely is finding people out of
your current circle or within a specially defined niche. Whether it is a
niche or whether the mass market wants such a breaking out of current
circles is a good question!

Re: Looking for Help in Starting Not-for-Profit

Daniel Splittgerber — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:05:22 -0000

How is it coming along? Would love to hear more about it as it sounds like such a great idea!

Re: The Tribunal Investigations of the Hariri Murder: a UN cover-up? And what it says about journalism

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:42:44 -0000

There is a great post by David Kenner at Foreign Policy, which also raises good questions about the quality of the Spiegel piece and has interesting considerations concerning Hezbollah's (non-)involvement.

Re: The Tribunal Investigations of the Hariri Murder: a UN cover-up? And what it says about journalism

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:00:41 -0000

Thank you for commenting. You agreed with my main point, the questionable journalistic piece. That is great to hear.

You may indeed be right - I may have been a bit hasty in my assessment concerning Syria. But I still believe it to be plausible.

First of all, there is and was sufficient evidence at least not to dismiss Syrian involvement or responsibility. The Mehlis report, named after the first UN investigator, stated that "Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamil al-Sayyed" were behind the killing; the first one being the brother of the Syrian President, all else being senior Syrian and Lebanese officials. Some witnesses may have been unreliable at the time. But I suppose it still fits into a general theme. Syrian President Al-Assad supposedly threatened Hariri in 2004; former Syrian vice-president Khaddam even went on television to implicate Assad by stating that Assad had personally threatened Hariri shortly beforehand. Also, in the aftermath of the Hariri assassination, many other anti-Syrian figures and vocal critics of the Syrian presence in Lebanon were killed in bombings, which hints at a broader plan to weaken anti-Syrian elements in Lebanon.
So I think that the Syrian government benefited a fair bit from all those deaths. It may be implicated and have less political clout for the time being, but Lebanon was still weakened enough from their standpoint.

An involvement by both Israel or the US doesn't strike me quite as obvious. It would have made some strategic sense for them at the time being - especially as Syria had a bad standing in the US at the time - but ultimately I don't consider it as realistic as a Syrian involvement. The US were already quite stretched with their occupational roles elsewhere and I didn't get any grasp of imminent NATO plans to occupy Lebanon?
Also, it reeks a bit of a conspiracy theory - given a prominent book by Jürgen Cain Külbel blaming Israeli and US involvement, which I have not read but seems to be perceived more as a political POV-style book than an accurate account of factual research.

Would love to see some additional elaboration on your points!

Re: Looking for Help in Starting Not-for-Profit

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:44:09 -0000

I can do that when the time comes.

Re: Looking for Help in Starting Not-for-Profit

Daniel Splittgerber — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:02:28 -0000

This is an awesome idea. If you ever think about setting up something similar in Germany or could use some help from over here, I will be most willing to help you out. May be able to offer some German legal perspective as well - am a Ph.D. candidate here.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Daniel Splittgerber — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:18:00 -0000

Mobile payments very well might be a field of massive possibilities. It is also inherently difficult to master. Just think of all the security & fraud problems; if I remember correctly Paypal started out as a Palm mobile transfer system before changing course.. you might want to read up on it in Founders At Work, pp. 1-16 (interview with Max Levchin).

Re: Gameplay is the New Social

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:55:46 -0000

I have some reservations about the usefulness of gameplay elements in some business models. I think it boils down to where gameplay "fits" and where it's just "bolted on" and also an inherent factor of gameplay elements.

Gameplay certainly motivates activity and engagement in many systems. It's basic psychology: you get addicted to achieving social status by reaching certain levels, it provides you with instant gratification and provides distraction.

(1) But I think (wildly guessing here due to my own youth experiences with gaming) you cannot retain users in that way. They get hooked pretty easily, that's nice. But I think gameplay inherently has a gets-boring-pretty-soon factor, which overshadows the true usefulness of the product. Most games will get bored sooner or later as some shiny new thing comes along or they just finish the game part. Will your users then get bored by the whole product and move on or will boredom be limited to the gameplay element?

(2) Which users do you want to attract? "Serious" users - who don't mind a little gameplay but are deeply focused on the "real" product like Mint - or "gaming-minded users" - who wouldn't have shown interest in the product and are primarily gratification/distraction oriented? Does your mass appeal suffer by offering gameplay elements due to people viewing it with certain reservations about its seriousness?

What do you think?

I would love to see some data concerning user retainability and gameplay elements!

Re: Making Name-Your-Price Work for Digital Goods

Daniel Splittgerber — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:07:28 -0000

Great post! Keep them coming.

I'm interested as to how this applies to the future of newspapers. I've been commenting on the uselessness of (current forms of) micropayments for news(papers) recently.

I totally agree with you that going back after reading and paying then will just not happen.

I see some potential in your idea for automatic tracking of actual consumption though. This may work; one could install an app, which tracks all news and articles consumption on all major news sites, calculates the value you got from it (by counting for how long you read a piece, what you did with it etc.) and proposes a "fair" price. It adds all those prices together at the end of the week and you can pay (to some aggregator site which takes care of all payment distribution and app things) in a single lump sum.

This is still quite a hassle though. People have to install an app, register with the aggregator/payment/portal site and shell out actual money for a non-scarce good (like news/articles). You have to provide some value to them. This may be:
- superior reading experience
- availability of "subscriber"-only content
- social/peer recognition by badges etc

I think all of this working out depends (on the business side of things) on publishers sticking together in just 1-2 portal/aggregator sites in order to keep it simple.

What do you think? Would love to see some discussion on that!

Re: Sony’s PRS-505 ebook reader will fail – on wasting the potential of electronic reading devices

Daniel Splittgerber — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:12:11 -0000

Thanks for you comment, Ben, it's appreciated.

Naturally, I don't agree with your arguments, though.

1. Having the ability to expand memory/storage is nice, agreed. That's no excuse for providing you with 192mb internal memory for 299 € though. Given that price, I expect a device to which I am not obliged to add external storage in order to properly use its stated purpose - ie carry my whole library with me.

2. Ebook reader have been around for several years now. Where is the innovation with the PRS-505 when it comes with no wireless connectivity? The whole point of the Kindle (and surely one of the reasons for its success) is that it provides you with a revolutionary new feature. I think connecting your reading to your pc is indeed cumbersome. It's just not the point of mobile reading devices, in my opinion. Everything has gone mobile (email, surfing, mp3 streaming etc), books should be next and thankfully are, due to the Kindle.

3. As I said, prices are for Germany. That's where I'm located and there is no cheaper pricing here.

4. I'm arguing for the ability to share newly produced/amended/mashed-up/etc content. "Remix" some quotes and publish it as a blog post to further the book's points, for example. That would be a really great feature, which even the Kindle does not have.

5. You can get some sort of push-email on your Blackberry and iPhone. Why would I want to plug my ebook reader into my pc just to finally be able to read new blog entries, newspapers etc?

I tend to think only those ebook readers are innovative and therefore worth their purchase price who provide me with wireless connectivity. That's just what I expect in 2009 from an innovation and user-experience point of view.

Oh, and for the sales figures.. I think the Kindle has already outdone all Sony ebook readers and Sony is reportedly working on a new device with wireless connectivity.. guess they get it now.. :)

Re: More Globalization Thoughts

Daniel Splittgerber — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:46:30 -0000

I think it probably correlates with GDP or PPP or some measure like that. Simply said: As long as Asian/Latin American citizens do not have the same amount of $$ as an American citizen and do not spend as much on tech, it will be difficult to get to the same level with revenue/user. There may be some niches which can already be successful by leveraging the differences in the market or address the rich elite class, but I suspect it may take a little longer for the investment capital to be distributed more equally along the continents.