They are artist-slash-entrepreneur

Radiohead newest album ‘In Rainbow’ seems to be the last stroke at the dying music industry. The band made available the download of its album for any amount that their fans were willing to pay. The strategy paid off and the release, just in the first day, made an astonishing amount of $6 MM (1.2 million downloads at an average price of $5). All the money went straight to the band’s pocket. Even though these numbers are not official several other bands and artists have shown some interest to release themselves from the major labels – e.g. Paul McCartney, Madona, Oasis, Jamiroquai and Nine Inch Nails – and start to sell its records directly to its audience. Bands and solo artists are abandoning their former employee spirit and are embracing a rising entrepreneurial desire that is about to change the industry forever.

Download it (but don't forget to pay what you think is worth)

The duo Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan is another example of artists that are getting control over their destiny. Last year they started to record a series of short-film called Chad Vader - a parody with the dreadful character Darth Vader - to a local cable network, 101 Channels, but their show was canceled in its first episode. They didn’t let it get on their way and continued to produce the show and distributed it on the YouTube. The Show became a major hit with almost 19 MM views, which made YouTube invites then to participate in the new professional partnership program – i.e. part of the revenue gained with ads will be shared with the video producers – and they are planning to release the series’ DVD sometime soon.

These are examples how internet has provide the medium to people to explore not only all their potential as artists, but as entrepreneurs as well. The opportunity are enormous all it takes is the desire to make it better, to make it different, to make it unique; and of course a computer.

Some thought provoking arguments about inventiveness and entrepreneurship

Is really the necessity mother of invention? Are entrepreneurs/inventors some rare phenomena of geniality that once in while appear in the middle of mediocrity? Is a good invention or business always accepted?

I know that is quite a common sense to think that an outstanding entrepreneur/inventor are capable to just see a need and then find a way to fulfill that need with the perfect invention/business. Although it might be true to some inventions/business – e.g. the A-bomb, iPod or the pizza delivery service - the bulk of inventions/business are things that are create just from the sheer passion of its inventor or entrepreneur for creation, curiosity and entrepreneurship. That is why even though we have almost 70K patent registration in the USPTO only a few of then see the bright light of the market. And a lion’s share of new business faces mortality in the first years.

A clear example of that would be the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison; he did not have a clue what would be the use for that equipment. He suggested 10 uses for the machine - e.g. to record the last words of dying people was one of his suggestions. It never crossed his mind that the equipment could be used to play music. When people started to use it to listen to their favorite tunes he got pretty upset and thought that this was not the best way to explore the equipment. Finally, after 20 years he admitted that the equipment could be used that way and started to sell music records.

We see examples like that everyday inventors/entrepreneurs creating new solutions that they are not quite sure who would use it or how he or she would make some money out of it. But is that a problem? I don’t think so. Because let our creativity free is the only way, so far, that we have found to create things that are truly innovative like: airplanes, microwave oven, friendster and blogs.

Another questionable point of view regarding creation of new solution is the aura of geniality of inventors/entrepreneurs. This might be a product of the ‘patent bias’, which forces entrepreneurs and inventors to forget contributions from the past in order to register something clearly new; and therefore something that can be registered. Instead of seeing then as people in touch with the zeitgeist that have made the last marginal contribution to a string of past inventions, which finally made that particular thing useful; we tend to see then like a Zeus that just sprung out Athens from their forehead.

James Watt is considered the father of the industrial age because of his water pump device moved by steam, which accordingly to the legend was inspired by a Kettle. But it is quite often forgot that Thomas Newcomen had invented 57 years before a very similar machine that was moved by steam and that particular one was inspired by Thomas Saverty; which was inspired by a machine from Denis Popin, that was inspired by a blueprint from Cristian Haygens, so on and on. Each of those inventors had to stand on the shoulder of a previous giant to see farther.

This distorted view makes ordinary people think that the capability to create new solutions (business/inventions) is a thing beyond their reach. And that is in my opinion why most of the people never think about develop new solutions; they just leave it to the ‘genius’. A more precise divulgation of what really were the processes to create solutions would make people realize that all it takes is hard work, a little bit of creativity, a little bit of luck and more hard work.

Finally, even though you have come up with an outstanding solution there are still some hurdles that must be overcome in order to make your solution (an invention or a business) a hit.

First, you have to create a solution that is economically better than the previous solutions that are in use. People must be able to see that they are better off with your invention. Then you have to face the social value and prestige that older inventions have. And this might prove the most difficult part. In time, there are vested interests in our society that make harder for a good invention to gain its space. Hybrid cars are a clear example of that dynamic in our society.


I was inspired to write this post by an amazing book that has changed the way I understand the world.

A monday night experiment...

It is not perfect, but I thought it would be cool to post it. Hope you like it.



Intro: Rounabout - Yes -(jon anderson/steve howe)/ Little Wing - The Jimi Hendrix Experince (Jimi Hendrix)

The coolest videos I saw this week

Zero 7 - Destiny - Fantastic Video with a great song. They have other great tunes but this one is a killer.



I aaaam Iroon Mannn!!!!!



Chuck is a bad-ass-m#$%¨$%&¨@#$!!!




Mars Volta - L´Via L´Viaquez - The most weird, but in a good way, band in the whole world.

The only Secret!

During the Rugby World Cup 07 one moment caught my attention; Portugal’s rugby players singing their national anthem. They lost to Scotland (56 x 10) and New Zealand (108 x 13), but they played with their heart during every second of the game. They are amateurs playing against professional, yet if you look to the origin of the world amateur – lover in old French – I can see why it is worth to watch their game.

When have most of the people lost their passion for what they do? People who killed that little inner-child that wanted to be a fireman just because their parents told them they couldn’t make a few bucks out of it. But is this a good trade-off? Do something that is a torture for you just to make ends meet does not seem a good deal to me.

People are most of the time badly informed and end up making decisions supported on poor and misleading information. In order to support young and why not mature people to make a more conscious decision about what to do with their life a real cool site appeared on the web - Ikwa. They are currently in beta but soon enough people will be able to access some of its content that will allow people to make a more conscious decision regarding their career planning.

You should always be passionate about what you do and that is the only secret to be happy. Simple as life should be.

The phenomena land

One thing we – Brazilian - have inherited from Portugal is that we believe in saviors. The most famous Portuguese episode in that sense was the Sabastianism’s belief – e.g. a belief that Don Sebastian, a Portuguese king killed in combat, was expected to return and restore the glory of the old days. More often than not we Brazilians tend to follow the same behavior in several aspect of our everyday life. We tend to put all of our hopes in one person and forget all the hard work of hundreds or thousands of people that helped this person to achieve its goal. But is there any problem with that?

Yes, there is!

First, we end up setting unrealistic expectations of what one can do and, therefore, simplifying the reality and making wrong decisions. When Brazilians elected Lula they thought that the only thing they had to do was vote for him and everything would be alright. It never crossed their mind that they should had elected a base of sustentation in congress or they should had asked who was going to be part of his office. Several months later corruption scandals, incompetence and apathy have been the characteristics that define this administration. When you don’t vote in a plan, in ideas, in a team you vote in saviors and as Santa Claus they don’t exist.

Second, a lot of the time we tend to forget all the hard work that takes to accomplish something and to give all the glory to just one person or to place all our hope on then. Our sport is full of example where we become extremely dependent of our phenomena and forget all that it takes to accomplish a goal. Brazil’s basketball was for almost twenty year dependent on Oscar; once he was gone Brazil can’t even get to the Olympics games. On the other hand Argentina that at the same period did not base its basketball on a single player but instead on a whole structure of teams, league and players has been now harvesting the fruits of this strategy – an Olympic gold medal and a second place in the world rank.

I am not saying that we should not have idols, use their superior abilities and capability to lead, however it cannot overcome the sense that all goal to be achieved demand hard work and teamwork.

Contextualization, humans still "rock"!!!

The human brain is the most powerful “computer” we know. Despite the fact that computers have been replacing humans in several activities there are still some fields where our “computational” power cannot be beaten. Humans can in seconds understand context with thousands of variable and a huge number of layers where computer would fry its circuits to understand it in a rudimentary way. While some engineers still struggle to create more and more complex algorithms – that try to emulate artificial intelligence – others have putted their money in humans with free time.

Born out of crowdsourcing – a way of out outsource a service to a huge number of third parties – the human based computations seems to be the solution to the “simplicity” of nowadays algorithms. This area of computational science believes that a lot human performing small – although complex for computer – tasks would create the most powerful computer ever built. There are several methods of human based computation like: Darwin (programs written by several programmers competing to survive), wiki (several people contributing in a same direction), Human based genetic-algorithm (humans selecting, contributing, mutating and recombinating – Yahoo answers), Social search (humans ranking searches - Cha-Cha search, Google Image), Guessing Games (extract knowledge from people through funny games). These are an example of how human intelligence can be used to make a more complex, complete and relevant experience in several fields.

Let us take contextual market for example, while several companies (Google, Yahoo…) use complex algorithms to deliver marketing to content, boo-box developed a very elegant service that believes humans “rock” when it comes to contextualization. The first group works like a guy with machine gun trying to kill a rat in a dark room, the second like a sniper that shoot just once and delivers the right message to its target – bulls eye all the time!!! There are a few decades ahead before a computer understands what I am saying – even I don’t – until then I am gonna use boo-box. What about you?