Fun facts: Puckle Defense Gun

In the 1700's, Englishman James Puckle invented what many credit as the first machine gun. One selling point: It fired round bullets for shooting Christians and square ones for shooting Muslims, who he felt deserved a more painful death.

Leave searching to search engines

I was looking for an article that I read several months back on the Washington Post. Naturally, I went to WashingtonPost.com first to search. Put in my search terms, went through their filtering tools and nothing. Realized that articles past 60 days can be searched from their archives section. Put in my search term again and wait. It's very slow. Nothing.

For kicks, went to Google and put the same search phrase in along with the words "washington post" and voila, the article I was looking for is the 2nd link in the results. Search was instantaneous.

Back to the Post, the search in archives didn't turn up the article that Google turned up. I even put in the exact article title and nothing. More frustrating is how slow the server runs.

So where would I search the next time I need to find an article on the Washington Post? Not WashingtonPost.com.

I I was running WashingtonPost.com, I'd call up Google and ask them to run my search. They do a better job bringing readers to my site than my own site.

TechCrunch April 15, 2008: "Mowser Founder Says Mobile Web Is Dead"

TechCrunch April 15, 2008: "Mowser Founder Says Mobile Web Is Dead"

Mobile web is NOT dead and continues to grow but unfortunately as a small startup, it is very difficult to generate a profit and stay in business. One of the previous commenters listed a number of startups “doing well” but we have to be reminded that none of them are actually making any significant money from mobile. Most of them are able to sustain themselves and fight to stay relevant from the investment they raised.

I am convinced that for the time being, there only 2 kinds of companies that’ll succeed in the mobile web space:
1. A big desktop web company who can cover the losses with rev from the desktop or
2. A startup that raises lots of money to cover their burn for the next 3 to 5 years.

There’s a lot of activity in this space but I do not believe that mobile web, in its current form, is in a state that can support lots of startups; especially those that depend on traffic. Therefore, I believe that it is the big companies that will first see some success from monetizing the mobile web. They will either find that the mobile web will prove to be a business on its own or at least help their desktop business.

Only then will startups have a chance to thrive which is why they need to raise lots of money now. If their current business plan calls for generating enough traffic in the next 2 years to stay in business, might as well close shop early because I do not believe this will happen.