The Mozilla Story and the Open Source Revolution

I’ve just read this excellent piece by CNET.

The story behind the start of Mozilla is intriguing and inspirational. They went from a failing product to a whole new organization that helped the software industry change gear from closed source to a more open-source collective.


The Big Four and Microsoft

Scott Galloway, the author of The Four recently wrote in Esquire about the power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. It’s a great read, and he makes some solid arguments.

I’d like to make an addition to the list and argue that Microsoft should be part of the list.

Microsoft has a $708B market cap as of 18 February 2018, they still are enormously dominant in the desktop market and have recently taken a strong position in the social media market by acquiring LinkedIn.

Their cloud business Azure is working on blockchain initiatives, they’ve developed Hololens which is one of the first big AR/MR headsets and recently committed $500m to their startup programs.

I like what Satya Nadella and Microsoft are doing, and I’m interested to see what will happen.


The Next Big Thing is a Toy

Aaron Harris from Y Combinator recently published ‘Why toys?‘.

It’s about the idea that some of the biggest services and products start out as toys. a16z has a great explanation shown below.

He gives some great advice and has plenty of useful insights.


Mozilla Open Source IoT

Mozilla announced their IoT platform recently; they aim to create a standard for the way IoT devices interact with each other.

It’s called “Project Things” and works via a gateway installed on a Raspberry Pi which controls all your devices. This makes it less accessible for consumers, but over time as developers build extensive applications and products, it might get more mainstream.

Using adapters and the “Web Things API” developers can build their additions to the platform. The platform includes functionalities for voice control, ‘If this, then that’ logic and an OAuth implementation for third-party applications.

I’m looking forward to seeing some exciting applications; then I might consider setting it up myself.


The Power of the Pen

I love this post by Adam Grant.

I’ve recently started writing more, and it has certainly helped me get more clarity and improved my thinking process.

About visionaries from the article: “Along with preserving a record of their ideas and experiences, journaling might have helped them make sense of stressful experiences, focus on their goals, and achieve success.”



Changing your Online Habits | HabitLab

Stanford recently released HabitLab which is a Chrome extension that helps you with your online habits. Some of its features include showing timers, disabling scrolling or blocking clickbait.

Its good to see that people are working on tech-addiction and making useful tools.


AlphaGo – Evolution of AI

I just watched the AlphaGo documentary about the AI that beat the best Go player in the world two years ago. I love the message of the film that machines like AI will empower humans to do more, just like they’ve always done.

You can check it out here:


Crypto Whale Tactics

Olivier de Jong explains how whales manipulate the market in his recently published article. He describes the tactics very well and gave me some valuable insights.


Why do fads fade?

In an older article, Nir Eyal explained why Flappy Bird was doomed to fail and why fads fade away.

It certainly made things clearer for me and is an interesting insight. This explains why finite games keep adding new DLC’s and content. It’s worth a read.


Creating Profitable Businesses

Pieter Levels recently gave a talk about how to bootstrap startups.

💡 Idea 🛠 Build 🚀 Launch 🌱 Grow 💰 Monetize 🤖 Automate 🚪 Exit