One year

It has been a year since I started blogging. It is not much of an event (even I missed it in 4 days…) but it made me look back on the blog statistics. I posted 55 posts, about once a week- much more than I expected. The posts that got most of the attentions were ones that came up in popular searches. For first time visitors, here are the top posts:

I Am Back

I am back from Vietnam and Cambodia and already jumped into a new gig (details to follow soon…). Before I resume normal business/SMB blogging, I wanted to share few pictures from these amazing countries….

Out for Vacation

Hi All,

My blog (and its owner) are taking few weeks off, to explore the SMB scene  in Vietnam and Cambodia… See you on the other side of my vacation.

Gadi

PS- you can subscribe to this blog RSS feed (or mail subscription) so you are notified when I am back.

Do You Have the Right Beta Program?

The blogosphere and yours truly gave Microsoft a very hard time about Vista. My claim was that I truly don’t care if Vista is easier, nicer or has many new features as long as it is so much slower than Windows XP, its predecessor.

During the last month, Microsoft started releasing its first service pack for Vista: SP1. I downloaded the whole 600MB of it and installed it, and guess what? Windows Vista is working better and faster now. It is still not XP, but the operating system works well enough for me not to complain. I guess that the Vista ordeal cost Microsoft hundreds of millions in lost goodwill. So how come Microsoft was not smart enough to release the right Vista in the first place? I can think of few possible scenarios, read all of them: one can be relevant to the way you release products…

The Wisdom of Crowds- My Top Posts

I am working on a new post that will put an end to the slow turkey week but in the interim, I figured out I can recognize my top posts based on how much you liked and read them. It is two months that I am writing now, so it is good time to name the winners…

The most popular by far is Leading a Global Team- The Starter Guide. I got few mails from people that said it really helped them which made me feel great…

Second in popularity is Apple Company Ethics. I am not sure why, but this one still attracts readers and a lot of people are getting to it by Googling Apple + ethics. Why is it that so many people are worried about Apple’s ethics?

Which Problem Is Facebook Solving?

In a typical Silicon Valley speed, Facebook coverage moved from being all glamorous to more realistic coverage that focuses on the challenges ahead. It looks as if the company has matured in a matter of weeks and now needs to deal with the real world problems and not only with the hype.Seth Godin compared Facebook with good old Hotmail. He foresees similar monetization challenges for Facebook, since they never developed a permission asset and a real relationship with their customers. (It is amazing to see that the question of how to monetize a free service is still open, more than 10 years after Hotmail was launched.)

Alas, I am not going to discuss monetization today. I think Facebook has another big challenge for long-term sustainability (and they have $15B to sustain…): it does not solve any real problem for its customer base.

What Windows Vista Failed To Do

I am no expert in operating systems and I would not attempt to review Windows Vista. If you are really interested in Vista, there is a whole blog dedicated to it. There is really only one reason why I regret using it (not that I had any choice, it came with my new laptop…): it is slow.

You see, products have jobs to do and each product has a “job zero”