Matt Mullenweg is the 22-year-old creater of WordPress. In an interview about simplicity and what made WordPress (the software behind this blog) successful he listed 3 points which resonated strongly with me

• Being adaptive to user-led changes in product direction. The underlying principle is we will not and cannot predict far in the future.
• Articulating the broader philosophy around where we are and where we want to go. The underlying principle is people want something to believe in, not just use.
• Aligning the economic and social incentives of businesses around WordPress. Capitalism is a lever.

(22?! What a legend!)

Is Zenbu something that people can believe in, not just use?

We live in the future

Last week I gave a speech about the history of GPS technology and made a comment about how in a ‘not too distant future’ we would speak into our phones and it would give us search results and directions. I didn’t think it was too ’sci-fi’ but I didn’t think I’d be reading about that technology this week.

Vlingo takes your vocal input over the cell network and returns the text string, bingo. Now all you need is a local search engine with everything to give you what you were looking for!

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Spock is a people search engine launched only a few weeks ago and has already indexed 1.5 billion records. A quick vanity search found myself, but I was amazed/amused to see my location listed as Auckland, Niger . I didn’t even know there was an Auckland in Niger! I decided I had to fix that up in case I got mixed up in some email fraud and the my Spock profile is a bit more authentic. Pretty awesome how they already knew my email address and I had to authenticate by clicking a link in an email they sent to me.  Rad.

Talking phones, computers that learn who I am, I love this shit!