Toluu : Venture Chronicles

Venture Chronicles

Jeff Nolan's take on investment, innovation, entrepreneurship and the technology industry

We’ve been developing filtering technologies based on behaviors and expressed likes/dislikes. It’s hard stuff and one thing is evident, relying on a single mechanism or ideology for recommendations is a strategy fraught with risk.

If you rely on active participants, people training the recommendation engine, you simply won’t get the data inputs necessary to deliver good recommendations. It’s equally true that if you rely simply on historical behaviors you will end up with a recommendation engine that breaks easily when an outlier condition is observed. Anyone who have purchased a random gift item for someone on Amazon knows exactly what I am referring to, the suggested items list gets polluted.

The user experience is also a sticky subject because the recommendation results have to ride alongside the main content or be easily navigated. The simple fact is that users want recommendations as something extra rather than the main experience. The challenges that Digg’s recommendation engine is experiencing are representative of what I am talking about, a less than stellar user experience that reflects UI and more significantly, recommendation results.

After using it for quite some time, like most such ideas, I find it utterly useless. I use Digg in the following way: I check out the front page and the upcoming Technology section for interesting stories. The recomm

Imports/Exports of Many KindsNovember 20

I couldn’t help but notice the symbolism of imported manufactured goods piling up in ports alongside piled up recycled goods destined for offshore ports to be made into finished goods. The symbolism being that at the same time the flow of goods is halting, so to is the flow of dollars leaving the American economy only to be recycled into Treasuries and other debt instruments.

But the inventory glut in Long Beach is not limited to imported cars. There has also been a sharp drop in demand for the port’s single largest export: recycled cardboard and paper products.

This material typically goes to China, where it is used to make boxes for new electronics and other products that are sent back to the United States. But Chinese factories reacting to sharply falling demand are slowing production, so they need less cardboard. Tons of paper are piling up recycling businesses around the port, the detritus of economies on hold.
[From

PrioritiesNovember 19

Two stories caught my attention this morning, the first is one about California state legislators traveling abroad while the Assembly and Senate were called into special session to deal with that massive budget crisis that California is in. These people sure do travel a lot… but seriously, do our state representatives really need to travel to India to “observe” their high tech industry? Can’t they just, you know, drive down to Mountain View?

The two-week jaunt through India for eight state senators was sponsored by the California International Relations Foundation, a nonprofit tied to the state Senate. The goal of the trip is to promote cultural, economic and political relations. Among other things, the senators were scheduled to observe India’s education system and its burgeoning high-tech industry.
[From

State lawmakers overseas during budget crisis]

Second story, the 3 CEOs of Detroit automakers flew to Washington D.C. this week with hat in hand asking for zero and low interest loans to help them stay alive. While hemorrhaging billions of dollars each month these executives never thought twice about flying on luxurious private jets… keep in mind that busine

I Am a BondNovember 19

Curious about bonds? Here’s a great little video that explains 4 basic types of bonds, Schoolhouse Rock style.

#MotrinMomsNovember 18

Johnson & Johnson took a stick and whacked a hornet’s nest over the weekend. They released a viral video ad featuring a story of a new mom using one of those sling devices to carry around her baby and how it was making her back hurt so she took Motrin (a J&J product) to relieve the pain while still looking trendy. Bam! Angry moms rose up, primarily on twitter with the hashtag #motrinmoms.

I saw the video and didn’t see what the big deal was, which actually underscored the primary point of the critics who said the ad must have been created by a bunch of men who not only didn’t talk to any pregnant women or women with newborns, but apparently didn’t know they existed. Me, being a man, am therefore unqualified to offer any critique of the video… how’s that for sexism.

I did ask my wife about it, and to fully disclose her bona fides, she is indeed a woman, has been pregnant 3 times and is currently in possession of a newborn. She laughed, thought the video was good satire… further added “that Motrin is good stuff”.

Motrin took notice of the angry mob and did