Entries Tagged 'popular' ↓

Google’s latest acquisition is the popular twitter-like site Jaiku. I am a user of both Twitter and Jaiku and have enjoyed participating on both sites. Although Twitter has been the most popular micro-blogging site, this news from Google may eventually change that, or at least bring greater growth to Jaiku and put it in the limelight for the moment. I thought the following quote from the Google Blog regarding the acquisition was pretty interesting…

Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it’s more difficult to keep track of everyone when they’re running around at warp speed. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve acquired Jaiku, a company that’s been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most — regardless of whether you’re at a computer or on a mobile phone.

Micro-blogging helps us make up for that loss of contact and communication we may experience due to technology making our lives more fast paced. In a way it helps us better keep tabs on what all our family, friends, and contacts are up to, but since it is voluntary and permission based only people who want to share will be tracked, so there is no invasion of privacy. Helping us better stay connected is why Google has acquired Jaiku. Personally, I think they could go a whole giant step further in that goal if they were to acquire Facebook also.

According to a recent article at Entrepreneur.com the fictional town of Springfield in the popular TV show The Simpson’s is full of examples of entrepreneurship. Among the most entrepreneurial of the town are The Simpsons themselves. From the article:

Perhaps more than any other family in sitcom land, the Simpsons are an entrepreneurial bunch. Homer sees all situations as potential money-making opportunities, and Bart is following in his footsteps. Homer has gone into business with his father, and his long-lost brother, Herb, was a successful entrepreneur–at least until he met Homer. Even Marge ventured into franchising with a pretzel wagon.

The abbreviated list of the many Simpsons’ ventures includes: selling rides on the elephant Bart won in a contest; selling sugar found in the street after a traffic accident; plowing snow; selling Grandpa’s love tonic; running an internet business, which was bought out by Bill Gates; selling kitchen grease to rendering plants; bootlegging beer during prohibition; offering security services; running a daycare center; and selling tickets to see an unearthed angel fossil.

Biggest Accomplishments: Mr. Plow, until the snow thawed; the daycare center, until Homer was forbidden to see the children and kidnapped a few of them; the grease business, until groundskeeper Willie found out Bart and Homer were taking his “retirement grease”

Success Secret: “If at first you don’t succeed–d’oh!–try again the next time you find some free junk in the road.” –Homer J. Simpson

Biggest Mistakes: “All the ones where I got arrested …or bankrupted …or in trouble with Fat Tony.” –Homer J. Simpson