3 Top reasons you need to STOP putting money aside for college

Stop putting money aside for college

Here the top 3 reasons why:

1. Bill Gates is onboard - The internet has come of age.  Today it contains vast amounts of high quality information, including the content of many of the top colleges in the world.



Bill Gates at the Techonomy Conference on August 6 2010 (video)

2. Significant change is imminent - Between 2000 and 2006 Medicaid costs went up 62.6%. Higher Education tuition increased 63.4%. State budgets only 17.6%. Society is open to revolutionary solution(s).



Protests at UCLA about the 32% increase in CA tuitions

3. Startup community is busy at work - The education problem has been attracting many entrepreneurs (including yours truly) that see the great opportunities in this chaotic situation.



Olexe is creating the business metaphors of the knowledge economy

In summary, unless you or your kids need to go to college in the next five years, I would strongly recommend you invest the money otherwise.  If you want an advice, I would suggest you save the money for your kids' first startup. That will become your retirement supplement.  Pretty cool hey?

3 top reasons why Google killed Google Wave

It's official. As of August 4th, Google is pulling the plug on Google Wave .  Accordingly to Google that was due to lack of interest.

First things first.

Do you know what a Google Wave REALLY is?

Google Wave is a knowledge aggregator. A knowledge aggreagator is a system that records and archives reflective events (what happens when you think).  The objective of the knowledge aggregator is to establish individual or group knowledge foundation.

A knowledge aggregator is like a dam but instead of collecting water, from one or more rivers, it collects your ideas.  Instead of a large body of water, a knowledge aggregator creates a body of knowledge.

Top Three Reasons why Google Killed the Wave

Since Olexe also creates knowledge aggregators, I decided to investigate what was really behind Google's failure.

1. The product was not ready when it was announced to the world - I got my Google Wave invitation from a person that had attended the 2009 Google IO.  I was anxious to understand what Google Wave was all about.  After joining, I couldn't believe it.  The product had some "nice to haves" but was missing "deal breaker" features. One that really surprised me was the inability to get notifications of when people changed waves.
   
   
2. Google forgot to define the value proposition - Google called the Wave a 3Ps system: program, protocol, platform. Google wanted to create an ecosystem of apps developers and providers that would put the entire world into collaboration overdrive. Do you see the problem?  They didn't create a system that "would double your income in six months". People go to school because they want jobs.  People use Facebook because it's fun. Google delivered technology (the easy part) and forgot to define the value proposition (the difficult part).
   
   
3. They didn't live up to their own expectations - By the end of 2009, the blogging community had already picked on the negative vibes.  While some kept playing to the doll drums, projecting huge success, others where starting to see the obvious. When Google finally made the platform available to the general public, in May of 2010, the excitement from the previous year was all gone.  They started strong and ended in shame.

Conclusion

People don't want more technology. People want to enjoy their lives.

Even though the people behind Google Wave and Google Maps were the same, the results couldn't be further apart. Anyone gets a map. Few get a knowledge aggregator. In the end that what failed was Google inability to make a business case for the knowledge aggregator.