Roundtable Recap: August 19 – Niche E-Commerce Is Great For Bootstrapping

This week’s roundtable had entrepreneurs ranging from e-commerce to mobile apps to video collaboration, some of which are already doing significant revenue. First up was Judy Schmitz presenting an e-commerce company focusing on luxury yarns. Fabulous Yarn is already doing $500,000 in revenue and has positioned itself as a niche site for high-quality yarns catering to women passionate about knitting. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Ric Telford, Vice President Of Cloud Services, IBM (Part 2)

SM: What is the situation with cloud application vendors such as Salesforce.com and SuccessFactors, which have cloud applications hosted on their own data centers? Is there a push toward those kinds of applications? >>>

Roundtable Starting In 30 Minutes

Today’s roundtable is starting in 30 minutes, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/8:30 p.m. IST. Click here to join.

From Steve Jobs’s Soulmate To Founder Of Fotopedia: Jean-Marie Hullot (Part 4)

SM: From 1987 through the early 1990s, what were your thoughts about the future?

JH: At that time I did not really foresee anything. It was the very beginning of NeXT. We had to get an operating system and the interface out the door. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Ric Telford, Vice President Of Cloud Services, IBM (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra, Pablo Chacin and Saurabh Mallik

SM: Ric, to start can you tell us about what you have done thus far in cloud computing and talk about how it has evolved at IBM?

RT: I started working on cloud computing – what it was all about, what was going on in the marketplace, and what we should do about it at IBM – in 2008. In that year, we formulated our cloud strategy, which we have been executing ever since. 2009 was a year of consolidation of views – everybody was using the term “cloud” for so many things, most of them inaccurate. The value proposition, cost model, and delivery model all took hold in 2009. We had a lot of work going on: pilots, customer engagements for some of our first cloud services such as LotusLive, and information protection services, which are backup and recovery in the cloud. >>>

From Steve Jobs’s Soulmate To Founder Of Fotopedia: Jean-Marie Hullot (Part 3)

SM: After you identified the need for an improved interface, what were your next intentions?

JH: I did a project at the research institute for the interface that eventually became Interface Builder. At that time it was called the SOS Interface. I did it, and it was simple and beautiful. I was getting a lot of attention at conferences with that interface, but I was not sure what the next step was. >>>

Vision India 2020 Book Review: For People Who Dare To Dream And Want To Change The World

Here is Churni Bhattacharya’s review of Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra:

“After establishing herself as a successful entrepreneur and technology thought leader, Sramana brought together her experiences, keen observations as a technology strategist, and a uniquely refreshing and precise writing style to her blog, which continued in her books. I was pleasantly surprised to see ‘Where the mind is without fear’ by Rabindranath Tagore in the introduction of Entrepreneur Journeys, Volume 2 – it’s a very appropriate mention.

Vision India 2020 is Sramana’s audacity of hope. This book does not describe a get- rich-quick scheme, nor is it “Entrepreneurship For Dummies.” This book is also not a ‘fact based’ collection of viable business plans. This is for people who dare to dream and want to change the world. This book takes us back to the same poem by Tagore – the last line of which is ‘Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.’”

Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra is available from Amazon.com and Flipkart in India.

From Steve Jobs’s Soulmate To Founder Of Fotopedia: Jean-Marie Hullot (Part 2)

SM: What made you decide to get a PhD?

JH: My girlfriend was preparing to go to college, and she ended up going on vacation during her registration time slot. She asked me to go to the university and take care of her paperwork for her. I had to stand in line, and while I was standing there I saw an advertisement for a PhD in computer science. >>>