BernardoSosa.com » google

Idle toughts on a Thursday afternoon

Bernardo — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:37:12 +0000

Will Apple kill AppleTV if the iPad lives up to its hype and becomes an important part of the “digital livingroom”?
Will Google kill Google Wave if Buzz in Gmail proves to be the chosen tool for social communication of the average Google user?
I’m definitely no environmental expert, but doesn’t the snowpocalypse kind of deny the whole theory of global warming? UPDATE: I was referring to the catastrophic discourse of global warming, as explained by Bjørn Lomborg. You don’t need to be an environmental expert to know that there’s something wrong with our climate.

Google’s Design Mantra

Bernardo — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:44:02 +0000

Writing a paper on Google and Innovation (I know, what a strange combination, right?) I find myself continuously amazed by how the company lives by the following 2 rules when it comes to product design and development and how positive it turns out every time:

“Ubiquity first, revenues later”
“Usefulness first, usability later”

Love it.

The GroupGuess Oscar Exercise

Bernardo — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:00:52 +0000

A couple of minutes ago, my colleague and I finally finished coding the alpha site of GroupGuess, the early-stage venture we have created while at Babson.
We came up with a simple site that will let people guess Oscar 2009 winners in 5 categories: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor.
This exercise will let us gather our first set of collective data and analyze how effective “groupguessing” is and how it can be applied to real business problems. In this first open guess we introduced the incentive to answer guesses outlined in our business plan as a revenue source: there’s a $100 USD prize for the best guesser(s). So, if you’re reading this, what are you waiting for? Go to GroupGuess.com and participate! (you’ll need a Google Account to log in the system).
I must also say that it has been a great experience learning to deploy to Google App Engine. It’s fast, functional and, best of all, free.