Thursday, January 25, 2007

Web-based Business is Poised to Go Fully Virtual

There is a post at Web Worker Daily about some new services offered by Amazon:

While Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings are currently limited in capability and oriented to only the most technical of developers, what they’re doing changes all the economic rules about creating a web startup. You thought that cheap web hosting and free email services disrupted the startup business space and kept venture capitalists up at night? Take a look at the next generation of web apps infrastructure, as imagined by Amazon.

[...]

When Can I Sign Up?

We’re moving closer to the day when a non-programmer with a regular-sized wallet can come up with an idea for a web-based business and put it together himself from pieces available on the web. We’re not there yet, that’s for sure, but Amazon’s vision for bringing web business infrastructure to the masses, along with a few other key developments in the web technology landscape like DIY web app platforms, means web tycoonhood might be closer than you thought.


This is just the thing that many of us have been looking for and will bear some more research. If anyone has more information, feel free to comment.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

GTD Meets Sun Tzu

GTD is short for Getting Things Done, an excellent book by David Allen that features a method of planning and being productive with your time. I have just encountered this amazing process, and there will be more on it soon. Here is a post at DIYPlanner that is a must read:

Recently, I finished rereading Sun Tzu’s Art of War. For those not familiar with the work, Sun Tzu was a general in ancient China around 400 B.C. The slim tome attributed to him is an approach to warfare and strategy. Many ideas connect to the idea of Tao, such as being in harmony with nature, and understanding yourself and your enemy. One of the most important ideas is that it is better to not fight than to fight, but if you must fight, then fight with everything you have.

So, what does this have to do with us, the modern man and woman, dealing with productivity, organization, and GTD? Well, more than you might think. In my rereading of the book, I realized that many of Sun Tzu's principles apply to our own struggle; the struggle to be productive.


Check it out.