Enquiring Mimes

Google Doodle Celebrates Mark Twain’s Birthday.

Dan Perlman — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:26:51 +0000

Crusty Mark Twain gets his own Google Doodle as does Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

If you’d like to know more, here is Vatornews’ take.

I’ve Been Away (but I’m back)

Dan Perlman — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:00:56 +0000

I started writing Enquiring Mimes in 2008 and continued into 2009. At the beginning I was dead serious about the project and had a vision for what purpose the blog should serve, and that went something like helping adults (my generation) understand technology.

That was noble enough goal but writing a blog five to seven days a week has to be an essentially comfortable endeavor, which means you tend to write about what interests you and what you’re comfortable with sharing. “Mimes” first morphed into technology and new open source applications and then by late 2008 became more and more personal with posts about cooking, my little boy and then the Obama election.

I had gotten the idea of writing a blog from doing a little freelance blogging for hire for a short-lived technical site called Techlusive. Having found the gig on Craigslist, I think I got paid $10 per entry.

At the time I was impressed or at least starstruck by Mike Arrington and TechCrunch and thought I could do something similar. I had started the site with the cute but untenable name of Enquiringmimes. Cute huh? Like Enquiring Mimes want to know, get it? Get it? Yuck.

I then decided to write another blog exclusively about tech startups and called it TechGolem. My love for Golems is rooted somewhere between the writings of Michael Chabon and Terry Pratchett. I’ve since worn out the franchise with MobileGolem and recently AustinGolem, yet to be published.

Writing about just tech startups turned out to be confining and never comfortable for me and I abandoned and restarted that blog repeatedly, the only thing I really liked about TechGolem was the name.

All the while I was running marketing for an enterprise software startup that was creating a desktop virtualization product called VERDE. Well, presto, that company, Virtual Bridges, got funded in 2009 with an “A” round by Austin Ventures and, puff, I had a more than a full-time day job. I’ve been working at that since.

Now it’s time to get back to it and scratch and shuffle again amongst the golems and the mimes.

The world, 2009, when I left this blog, was a world of no iPads, Firefox was the hot browser among the cool geeks, Google Chrome, Groupon and Android were still babies, TechCrunch was still the Tech website to watch, Twitter was still trying to justify itself and Windows 7 was only a few months old.

Shaking my head and taking a look around now, Jobs is gone (as are jobs), Arrington is a VC, the tech war is being fought over iPhone and Android and it seems technology companies would just as soon make their revenue from patents rather than innovation.

Well, I’m back. I live in Austin not Silicon Valley, the little baby that was featured in several posts and pictures is now four and walks, talks and plays with an iPad.

I could tell you what I’ll be writing about, but all we really know is it will be something that is interesting at least to me.

Welcome back to Enquiringmimes with the subtitle Techgolem.

Follow me on Twitter.

Arrington’s UnCrunched reportedly retains 68% of his TechCrunch readership (thenextweb.com)

Plan for a 100-year Company

Dan Perlman — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:20:42 +0000

Evernote is one of those companies that I get excited about. They have a great product for ubiquitously capturing, storing and retrieving all the information of your life. The product runs on Windows, Mac, the Web and just about all mobile platforms and is free. I like the product and I like the company and follow both.

Phil Libin, the CEO, was recently at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Beijing. Libin gave his take on why he doesn’t want to build a company just to be acquired, instead he wants to build a company for 100 years because it’s only worth building a company you love.

His three tips for building a hundred year company:

1. Do something that you love enough to devote the rest of your life to.

2. Make sure all of your investors feel the same way.

3. Surround yourself with people you to spend the next hundred years with.

Here’s the TechCrunch interview:

Via [TechCrunch] obviously.

Want to be a Social Media Strategist?

Dan Perlman — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:36:42 +0000

This presentation shows what Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter groups finds to be the job.

Keynote: Career Path of Corporate Social Strategist

View more presentations from Jeremiah Owyang.

What’s Happening?

Dan Perlman — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:47:13 +0000

I bought the domain name danperlman.com several years ago with the idea of writing a personal blog. That never really happened. Now this domain is becoming the heir to my web writing.

Among other online toys and personas, I’ve used Techgolem and had planned to write a blog about tech startups focusing on marketing as techgolem.com. That never really happened. So I’m pointing techgolem.com here, so if you’re one of the 3 – 5 people who landed on that site in a day and wonder how the hell you got here – now you know.

For the last year, I’ve written about technology and tools on enquiringmimes.com (I have an unfortunate weakness for stupid domain names).

Moving forward, the plan will be to still write enquiringmimes.com. There I’ll continue to cover the kinds of technology and tools that fascinate me and are supposed to make me more productive.

danperlman.com will cover startups, marketing, some technology and probably a little food and the occasional personal stuff.

I’m also parking previous techgolem and enquiringmime posts here just because.

What about Bob? or Sergey?

Dan Perlman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:33:42 +0000

Gmail Labs are the experimental additions to Google’s web-based mail service. Some are muy useful, like being able to add emails to a “to do” list, others not so much, like changing the Gmail logo back to show that the service is still in beta, as it was for so long.

For awhile the additions were coming hot and heavy, lately we haven’t seen much new — until today. Gmail added two new ones – “Got the Wrong Bob?” and “Don’t forget Bob” .

Got the wrong Bob? – Gmail checks to make sure the “Bob” you’re including in your email is the right one based on who you email most often. When I send to Mark, I mean my brother, not some guy I worked with in a former life. Addressing email to the wrong person can, of course, be more embarrassing that my example.
Don’t forget Bob – With “Don’t forget Bob,” you can start composing an email to a group of people, and Gmail will suggest other contacts you might want to include.

To enable either or both, go to the labs icon in the upper right of your Gmail screen, click it, find the Bob’s and enable them.

Since it is Google, wouldn’t “Got the wrong Sergey” have been catchier?

Prosaic steps to becoming happier

Dan Perlman — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:08:30 +0000

Declaring that I’m a fanboy for Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness Project is no new ground here, but watch this to see Gretchen on the CBS News giving “prosaic” steps you can take to make yourself happier. She mentions:

Get enough sleep
Get some exercise — a 15 minute walk is better than no exercise

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Gretchen has promised me an interview for this site after her up-coming book is released in December. I’m looking forward to it.

How to sell condoms? Not the same way around the world (ever so mildly NSFW)

Dan Perlman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:09:34 +0000

Very funny short video from Slate on TV commercials for condoms around the world.

Maybe Ikea is just a damn comfortable store

Dan Perlman — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:44:47 +0000

Much was made of photos showing the new Beijing Ikea store being less about shopping and more about being a good place to take a nap.

Ikea Beijing Picture LA Times

On a recent visit, it seems the Ikea store in E. Palo Alto, CA had the same soporific effect.

Ikea, E. Palo Alto, CA - photo android phone

IKEA In Beijing Is More Like A Giant Public Living Room [Window Shopping] (consumerist.com)
Honey, We Holidayed At IKEA Last Year (paul.kedrosky.com)
Ikea as tourist attraction (kottke.org)

Why when we try to motivate people we don’t

Dan Perlman — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:59:50 +0000

Dan Pink makes a case for why extrinsic motivators don’t really work. In an 18-minute video Pink, a “career strategist”, explains the social science behind why contingent motivators – if you do that, then you get this – only work for small band of problems and especially don’t work if the problem requires creativity.

Pink has an interesting back story – his last “real” job was as a speechwriter for Al Gore and as a law student he was bad such that “he graduated in the part of his law class that makes the upper 90% possible.”