Ultimate Golf Simulator – BusinessWeek

Beginning at $50,000, the Full Swing Golf simulator lets you play 50 of the world’s most famous courses

Full Swing has an impressive client install list, including Donald Trump, Michael Jordan and Curt Schilling. One day when I can spare the cash, I’m definitely going to invest in a sweet golf setup like this. For now however, I’m just going to keep playing cheap golf here in Utah.

Technical experts need to be viewed and developed as business professionals early in their careers; at the speed of business today, it’s essential to align every activity to strategy. Increasingly, areas such as information technology and R&D are moving from being cost centers to driving business strategy. Effective leaders in technical areas require an understanding of the business that extends beyond a single department or function.

Once again, I am glad for my Geek CEO background. I hope that with my programming and database background gained in previous ventures, I will be able to lead Seatability through tough times and stay nimble enough to stay ahead of our competition.

LinkedIn is hewing closely to the Web economy’s new motto on initial public offerings: Easy does it. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn may not sell shares until some time next year. Likewise, social networking site Facebook, worth $15 billion on paper, may not go public until 2010, a company board member says. People close to Facebook previously suggested an IPO could come as soon as 2009.

Mark Zuckerberg – Forbes – Net Worth: $1.5 billion

I’m impressed with how Mark Zuckerberg is dealing with the explosive growth of Facebook.  I can certainly understand how attached he is to his company, but does he really think that Facebook will still be valued at near $15 billion?  As much as I’d want to grow my company and as much as I don’t want to sell out, I don’t think that I’d be able to turn down any amount that can be expressed in terms of billions.  I wish him the best of luck and I hope that he doesn’t end up with another piece of worthless bubbledom.

Despite a slowing U.S. economy, online retail sales will continue to grow at double-digit rates for the next several years, but it will begin to take a turn toward maturity by 2012, according to new research from JupiterResearch.

U.S. online retail sales are expected to reach $148 billion in 2008, up 19 percent from sales in 2007 and comprising about 6.4 percent of total retail sales. That figure will grow to $166 billion in 2009 and $215 billion by 2012, for a compounded annual growth rate of about 11 percent, according to JupiterResearch analyst Patti Freeman Evans.

With so many customers flocking to the web to purchase products, the question is how to translate the experience of a great retail location to bits and bytes. Right now most internet retail sites are servicing the price sensitive, but do a poor job at attracting and selling to people that need advice. Those sales are transacted in the real world, mainly with salespeople that the customer trusts.

For many things, especially electronics, I reached a point long ago where I stopped listening to the CompUSA salesman harassing me because they just spouted out worthless drivel that they heard from someone else. 90% of all my purchases now go through Amazon.com mainly because of their collection of product reviews, which I feel that I can trust because they are unbiased.

That still doesn’t really get me to the point where I feel comfortable purchasing something that I don’t know much about. When I go to a restaurant, I always ask the waitress what the best or most popular items are, because that is my only way to gauge the food. Similarly, when I have limited info, I want to trust someone, but often I just have no idea where to turn.

On the web, I think there is a huge potential for websites targeting niche vertical markets, not just as a catalog of products, but to give advice on the products that are the most relevant, then step back and let the customer decide. There are a number of these companies being built, including www.csnstores.com and www.ivgstores.com amongst many others, but they still don’t go deep enough into the teaching aspect that I think most consumers are interested in.

The site that has done the best job that I have found is www.massage-chair-relief.com. I signed up for their free white paper and they had a series of articles that were automatically sent to me, helping me to feel comfortable that I had a basic understanding of the market and product offerings. I was looking at a big ticket purchase for my mother’s birthday, and not knowing a lot about massage chairs, their content and automated delivery did a fantastic job. All it took for them to do that was a little time creating the content and then setting up the automation, but I don’t doubt that it has dramatically impacted their sales and conversion ratios.

There’s a wealth of sales out there not being closed on the internet because even with all the Web 2.0 buzz, most sites have yet to understand how to gain consumer trust. Any aspiring entrepreneurs out there willing to take on the challenge?

Here’s a good article on News.com about Internet Explorer 8.0 becoming more standards compliant. We are doing multiple web development projects now, from a Seatability website redesign to a completely different ecommerce venture, and this is really giving us fits. We’ve got designs that look great in all standards based browsers, but pulling them up in IE makes it look like someone vomited on the web page, with formatting all messed up and major elements not even visible. We’re going to have to hire someone to come in after the fact to do whatever hacking is necessary to make our sites work in all browsers. I applaud any and all efforts to embrace web standards!

As for myself however, I used to be a staunch IE supporter, going all the way back to 3.0, but the long delays leading to 7.0 and tabbed browsing put me right in the Firefox camp, and I don’t know if there is anything the boys at Redmond can do to win me back.

What inspired this post however is the miraculous restoration of all the data on my stolen laptop. What normally would have been a catastrophic loss turned into nothing major. Normally I would be dead if my computer was stolen and all my files were lost, but I was able to boot up my other computer and immediately download all my files from my stolen laptop. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to open up the backup and see that everything I needed was still there.

For only $5 a month, it’s one of the most worthwhile expenses I have. Just think of all the times that you have lost a single document, whether it was a school paper or a business presentation that you accidentally deleted hours before you needed it. Now think about how much you would have paid to get that one single file back. Multiply that number times 100 or more and you’ll know how great it felt to get all my files back. I can’t recommend Carbonite enough.

(Disclaimer: I signed up as a Carbonite affiliate before posting this, but I was going to make this post anyway)

CEOs Must Know IT–Or Else
A massive study links effective leadership with corporate projects driven by advancement in information technology.  However, some doubt whether the current generation of CEOs is able to adapt, able to get their heads around IT. For those who don’t the message is clear.  BT Global Services CEO Andy Green said: “If CEOs don’t understand, someone else will come along and eat their lunch. CEOs have to be prepared to learn.”

Key CEO issues:

• how to create long-term transformational value rather than implementation of one-off IT projects
• the need to build capability for ongoing change so that IT shapes new business models instead of being the business model
• how to establish a climate of open communication so that employees understand what is expected of them and stakeholders know what to expect
• the need to manage risk with confidence
• reorganising the need for personal IT capability and learning about new IT issues so that IT change is driven from the top down

If anybody out there needs a 2GB SD memory card for their PDA, camera or whatever, you can’t beat free!

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