Just found out that iKobo will be opening their doors again on December 4th. About a month back, they announced their plan to shutdown their services. Apparently something has happened, rather changed,  in the last couple of weeks. This is a good news for the Atlanta region. Every failed company compounds the failure rates for future startups. At the same time, every successful company does the exact opposite. Remember, Atlanta is no silicon valley and there are only handful of successful companies - every bit helps.
About: iKobo is an online …

This is the most hilarious and strikingly truthful view of the startup companies these days.
Everyone wants to have a 1) blog, 2) Social Network, 3) Tag 4) Ratings and blah blah Web 2.0 features.  Anyone worked in a startup could easily relate to this video.. enjoy!!!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I]

Roger Ehrenberg wrote an excellent article on why monitor110.com failed even though they were able to raise boatload of money. I will reserve my thoughts for later, but following are the 7 deadliest sins according to Roger, which I wholeheartedly agree:

The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game
No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
Too much PR, too early
Too much money
Not close enough to the customer
Slow to adapt to market reality
Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the …

I couldn’t help laughing at the following advertisement:
Basically the highlighted text, in Tamil language, request the users to click on the google advertisements shown all over the screen. This pretty much violates google’s adsense ToS. I wonder how much money this site made so far with this innovative approach!!!
Funny note to Google: Wakeup and hire people skilled with every possible language on this planet to nix this issue. How about Tamil for a starter!!

Alright!!! enough is  enough - I am getting inundated with questions about my future plans. Most of you know by now that I had quit Music Intelligence Solutions; going to be two months soon. So the question is what’s next? Well, we are just getting started on a new innovative product and hopefully we’ll get the initial version out in September/October. Thanks to Ruby on Rails!!
Stay tuned for more details… We have so much work to do, but not much time left.

There was an interesting article on ABC News about email usage, Best Way to Annoy Your Co-Workers? Using  E-mails.
Even though I agree with most of it, a clear distinction between big monolithic companies vs Startup/agile companies are warranted.  For example in big companies, it is all about CYA. But in a startup environment, it is all about execution - mistakes are the norm, not the exception at small companies, and are part of everyday life. Meanwhile  big companies are all about job security. In other words, “Reply to all” is …