As we give up land-lines for cell phones, there’s still one useful purpose for the plain-old telephone:  providing a number for the entire “household”.

There are a bunch of cases where a household number is needed:  giving an emergency contact number for school/camp/etc., having a contact to give the power company/cable company/bank, etc.  And even mundane cases as having a number your kid’s friends can call, before they have cell phones of their own.

Google Voice is close to providing this, but seems more focused on the individual than the household.  I want a simple menu tree (“Press 1 for Andy, 2 for Kellie, etc.” that routes incoming calls to individual cell phones, inboxes, etc.  I want to transfer calls between cell phones, just like I transfer a call at home by having my daughter pick up the phone.

AND, this should be part of my cell phone provider’s “family plan” (I’d pay extra for it).  They could make it stupid-easy by porting existing analog lines when people sign up.

Why not?

Recent discussions about bailouts and regulations have got me thinking.

Corporations enable capitalism.  The main feature is limited liability, which limits owner’s losses to their original investment and employee’s to losing their jobs.  In other words, if a corporation has obligations it can’t fulfill, the owners (stockholders) and employees aren’t on the hook.  This feature lets investors risk capital without worrying about losing their homes.

Moreover, this liability limitation is unbounded — if a corporation racks up $1 or $100 trillion of obligations, a bankruptcy cleans it up and everyone walks away.  Unfortunately, as we’re learning, US and world economy does not have an infinite capacity to absorb losses.  When corporations amass obligations so large and far-reaching (e.g. AIG, LTCM, etc.), we can’t (collectively) afford to let them fail.

Now, we’re debating regulations to prevent this from happening again.  Regulation has a number of problems, including the ability of free markets finding a way to route around, inventing ever complex financial structures, and making money in unregulated ways.  Regulation may prevent this crisis from happening again, but won’t prevent the next one.

There is an entirely different way to address this, by targeting the root problem.  What if some personal liability phased in for cases of huge, “off the charts” liability?  In other words, if your corporation amasses obligations so large that bankruptcy would materially affect the US economy, you might not be able to keep your houses and bonuses.

I guarantee that a threat of the smallest personal liability will cause a whole lot of self-regulation.  The art would be to do it in a way that it only applies to the extreme 0.01% of cases, and untended consequences (e.g. the problems with Sarbox) are minimized.  It may be possible to make this work.

It’s a slightly crazy idea, but not entirely crazy.

With the proliferation of public computers (e.g. libraries, hotel business center, etc.), we need a browser with a lockable “public computer” mode, unlockable only by the computer administrator.

In this mode, no passwords are stored, and auto-complete for form fields is turned off (or quickly expired).  Any open windows would close automatically after some period of inactivity, and the browsing history is quickly expired.

Also, the browser would send this mode information in all Web requests (in an HTTP header), so apps could modify their behavior accordingly.  For example, a Web app might NOT offer the option to “stay logged in” when using a public computer, and/or might aggressively time out an inactive session.

I’m sure someone’s thought about this — is this a new idea?

The venture capital business is in the middle of a shakeout.

For too long, venture’s been over-funded and over-staffed with homogeneity:  the same kinds of partners, operating with the same fund model, looking at the same investments, in the same markets.  It took an economic meltdown for LPs to finally realize they were putting money into an asset class that wasn’t generating a return commensurate with the risk.

Because of the typical 10-year agreement terms in venture partnerships, everything happens in slow-motion.  But there’s some early evidence things are breaking up:

• Venture firms cutting back on partners, or moving some partners to “venture” partners
• Top-tier partnerships having a hard time raising new funds (and coming in below target), and 2nd-3rd tier partnerships having an impossible time
• LPs missing capital calls (a very big deal)

Partnerships getting hit the hardest:  those without some recent distributions (some are rumored to have nothing in the past 7-9 years!), those with no previous funds beating T-bill IRRs (or even showing a positive return), and those with heavy university endowment LPs (which have gotten slammed).

I don’t wish ill-will on any of my venture friends, but I think this is good for everyone in the long run:  we’re flushing out a broken, over-capitalized, me-too industry.  Hopefully we’ll see some innovative fund models, looking at new markets, and funding companies in new ways.

Why do we need Twitter and Facebook?  (esp. after Facebook’s redesign, making it much more Twitter-like)

One reason:  tweets are 100% public, Facebook status updates are (generally) not.

As such, the collective tweet-stream is a great source of near-real-time information.  Lately, I find myself searching more than tweeting, mostly to find current info or if others are sharing my current problem (e.g. “EC2 down”).  When I do tweet, I’m tweeting more to a search result audience (e.g. “lots of spam getting throug gmail”) than to my immediate friends.  But I’m not sure this is typical behavior.

Twitter really wants to be a feature on Facebook.  I think they (Facebook) could pull this off if they came up with a manageable way to deal with privacy scopes:  100% public, semi-private, etc.

I thought Douglas Bowman’s recent post about his departure from Google was interesting.  As a visual designer, he felt Google’s data-driven culture was “paralyzing the company” and “preventing it from making any daring design decisions”.

Ten years ago (before I blogged, and therefore could prove this claim), I opined the future of user interface design would be a combination of visual design and direct marketing analytics.  (At the time, the DM folks were the ones that figured out the yellow envelope worked better than orange, etc. — the precursor to modern Web analytics).

The combination is key:  visual design without considering usage data is just flying blind.

Analytics without any design work doesn’t yield innovations & breakthroughs.  Think of it this way:  no amount of analysis of a farmer’s use of his horse and plow is going to get a design for a tractor.

Google’s clearly doing something right, but maybe they’ve taken analytics-driven design to the extreme?

Brad Feld’s recent blog post on “Investment vs Speculation” is recommended reading for every entrepreneur.

Brad’s writing as an investor always learning now ways on how to invest $10000, but the points apply to entrepreneurs working on new opportunities.

Is your idea an “investment”:  do you see an opening to create real value?  Or are you speculating, and betting that someone will acquire the future business for more than the financials suggest it is worth?

I’m a huge GPS fan, and have wondered how I got through two decades of driving without electronic navigation help.

Recently, the innovation rate in navigation applications seems slow.  TomTom raised the bar a few years back, but nearly everyone’s caught up:   most units are quite good.

I’m wishing someone would “iphone” this market, with a great design that delivers a new level of innovation and blows everyone else away.  To that end, I’ve started collecting design elements and features I’d love to see, on this Wiki page.

Please feel free to comment and contribute.

David Pogue wrote today about the 15,000 apps now available in the iPhone app store.  It’s pretty amazing.

But where’s the app store for Mac and Windows?  

Buying apps on-line is not a new concept:  I’ve got a handful of “indie” apps that I use regularly, and many big-name apps can be now bought on-line.  But Apple’s nailed the user experience for shopping and purchasing:

• User reviews.  Gathered in one spot, on the “buy” page, just like Amazon.
• Streamlined purchase & install flow.  Enter your iTunes password and you’re done.  Compare this to filling out an order form, entering payment info, confirming, downloading, opening the download, starting the install, going through the install wizard, and launching the app.
• Enabling small value purchases.  Apple has enabled the low-price, high-volume app.

The same thing should exist for Mac and Windows.  

User reviews and “most popular” would let the best float to the top of the charts.  A standardized store would supplant the proprietary download/install modules (e.g. Adobe, EA, Valve/Steam, etc.).  The rev share with the store operator (currently 30% for the iPhone) would be lower because it competes with other distribution methods.

But it’s something only Apple and Microsoft can pull off — it really needs ubiquity to work.  (But Apple might be able to do it for Windows, if they bundled the app store with QuickTime/Safari).

Last Christmas, I got my daughter an Asus EEE PC netbook.  We were one rev too early; the screen’s just slightly too small for Webkinz.  But netbooks are great “first computers” for kids:  small, light, and cheap enough it’s not a total disaster if it breaks.  Plus, flash-drive models have no hard disk to fail, the leading cause of laptop destruction among kids.

Between discussions with Antonio, and blogosphere chatter, it’s been amusing to watch the marketers try to figure them out.   Are netbooks a new “category” or just cheap laptops?  And, why are both Intel and AMD on record dissing netbooks?

I’m not a market expert, but the analysis path seems straightforward.  First, figure out who’s buying them and why, especially where the netbook purchase happens relative to other device ownership (e.g. smart phone and full-size laptop).    Extrapolating from our own experience, I’d bet that the typical netbook purchase is a first-time computer, in many cases for kids.  Then the question is:  when (if at all) do those users outgrow their netbook?  And: are we creating a “netbook” generation?

This seems like a replay of PCs vs workstations, back when PCs were viewed as toys.  Over time, unit volume drove PC price/performance improvements much faster than workstations, causing PCs to overtake workstations and ultimately removing any category distinction.  Now, “PCs are workstations”.

My bet:  the exact same thing will happen with netbooks vs laptops.