I’ve just received a very interesting email in my Inbox. Will attach it to this blog post and would like to know your oppinions on the subject in the comment section. Personally, I am very happy Google has taken this decisions.
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
Spreading yourself across multiple companies, startups or projects forms a good approach in shortening ones path to success. Main motive is the increased pace at one gathers multiple skills, having the opportunity to watch and participate in multiple work cultures. The more you do, see and learn, the bigger your chances to succeed at whatever you are planning to do.
The number of projects one can pursue depends on his skill set, level of commitment and time availability. A skilled project manager, for example, can look into managing a couple early stage projects at a time and still obtain good results if he or she has good knowledge of productivity and management techniques and great communication skills.
Such approach is common on freelancing (where one usually works on many projects at a time) and it can also be applied with success on personal business projects. Setting a clear timeframe per week for working on the project and sticking to it ensures a commitment as well as a clear separation between the project and any other tasks.
Diversity usually keeps people excited. Spreading your time and attention across multiple projects along with the fact that one can never know for sure if a business will succeed or not can increase his or her’s chances to create something remarkable.
When one feels that a project has more changes that others will usually allocate right away more time and resources in that directions to increase it’s chances at the expanse of the other projects with less potential.
What is your opinion on the topic? Do you think people should focus from day one on projects or set a timeframe and spread the available work time across multiple projects?
After the tremendous number of entrepreneurship meetings, websites, TV shows, podcasts, blogs, wikis, etc. have emerged in Romania to promote the IT entrepreneurship movement would the industry benefit more from a startup accelerator?
I’m not thinking here of just advisory stuff, where you can call or meet with your advisors every couple of weeks or even months, but daily support in topics like:
- finding the right market for the startup
- creating a product
- marketing planning
- compiling a business plan
- raise funding (and don’t get screwed)
- connecting with the right people
- incorporation help
- legal & accounting advisory
- getting in the right mindset
- polishing the idea
The benefit for the entrepreneurial team is either:
- get a proof of concept to the market faster and maintain or strengthen the first mover’s advantage
- validate the idea faster so seed funding can come sooner than later
- have a well put together company when it’s time to receive the first round of funding
I need your help here as I would like to know how useful would you find such program and what benefits would you see entrepreneurs getting out of it. What should the entrepreneur give back for those services? How would the added value be measured? Please comment even if you’re not involved in any way to Romanian startups. Any kind of feedback is highly appreciated.