Early products by James Dyson
“James Dyson’s first product, the Sea Truck, was launched in 1970 while he was studying at the Royal College of Art. A few years later came the award-winning Ballbarrow that can go where no wheelbarrow has ever been before. Then there was the Wheelboat and the Trolleyball. Even the integral hose, seen on most upright vacuum cleaners, is a Dyson invention.”
Building loyalty with the long wow
“True loyalty grows within people based on a series of notable interactions they have, over time, with a company’s products and services. No card-carrying programs are necessary: Apple doesn’t have a traditional loyalty program; neither does Nike or Harley-Davidson. These companies impress, please, and stand out in the minds of their customers through repeated, notably great experiences.”
Joel on installable software
“Making an elegantly-designed and easy-to-use application is just as gnarly, even though, like good ballet, it seems easy when done well. Jason and 37signals put effort into good design and get paid for that. Good design seems like the easiest thing to copy, but, watching Microsoft trying to copy the iPod, turns out to be not-so-easy. Great design is a gnarly problem, and can actually provide surprisingly sustainable competitive advantage.”
Turtles all the way down
“For Hawking, the turtle story is one of two accounts of the nature of the universe; he asserts that the turtle theory is patently ridiculous, but admits that his own theories may be just as ridiculous. ‘Only time will tell,’ he concludes.”
The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks
Pretty self-”explanatory.”
Nike’s Phil Knight at Stanford
“But it was around that time that Mr. Knight was surfacing anew in the classroom. Though not registered as a student, Mr. Knight has periodically taken classes with Stanford undergraduates over the past three years, swapping homework assignments and even going out with fellow students for a few beers at Palo Alto bars. He has told fellow students that he is writing a novel.”
About blogs on the Kindle
“If Amazon charged a monthly connection fee for the Kindle and made blogs free, instead, no one would complain (about the blog part). Because that’s the pricing model they’re used to.”
Global open-source car design summit
“Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, ‘will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave’ and provide ‘200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better.’ The Linux of cars! They’re not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on their Web site — vds.mit.edu — is ‘to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency’ on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car. I just love their tag line. It’s what gives me hope: ‘We are the people we have been waiting for.’”