I get many requests from early stage companies to give them advice. It is kind of strange since I have been retired (rewired) for about then years. I always try to be responsive and polite. But it is not working out for me. I am spending too much time and getting too little out of it. So the purpose of this post is to reposition myself. Continue reading
Category Archives: Avram’s Past
Avram Miller: A Former Something
I am beginning to wonder if I have youth envy. Every day I read about this 20 something, that 30 something, or even that 40 something. No one write about that 50 or 60 something. In 2 1/2 years, I will be a 70 former something. I don’t really feel much different than I did when I was a “something” … Continue reading
Intel enters the set top race again and again
For twenty years, Intel has tried to enter the set top box market. The company still does not have a strategy for success in my opinion. Continue reading
Facebook: Mixed feelings about Facebook and some views on the IPO.
Facebook is the latest in a line of mediocre technology companies that were at the right place at the right time. Continue reading
My musical past and present
Playing piano and composing have played an important role in my life since I was fifteen years old. Now as I approach this quarter of my life (my wife won’t let me say “the last quarter of my life”), I feel the urgency to both have the experience of writing music and the need to leave something behind that others including my grandchildren might enjoy someday and have posted a link to a piece I am working on. Continue reading
If I was born in 1995 instead of 1945, would I be a billonaire?
Reading this article in Forbes about Nick D’Aloisio, the 16 year old created of Summly (a new search program for the iPhone and Android phones), I had to ask myself if I could be a teenage billionaire if I was born in 1995 instead of 40 years earlier in 1945. After all, I was only … Continue reading
Tales from Rotterdam or how I met a Princess and killed the Computer Division of Philips
How I killed Europe’s Largest Computer Company In 1973 I took a train to Appledorn,the Netherlands. The CEO of Philips asked me to give him my opinion about the viability of his company’s Computer Division. Philips at that time was one of the leading electronic companies in the world and extremely important in Holland where … Continue reading
Life Blues: My reaction to Outlaw Blues by Jonathan Taplin
In reading Outlaw Blues by Jonathan Taplin, I realized how easily my life could have gone in a different direction. Maybe, if I liked the music better, I would have become part of the rock music scene. My management and leadership skills might have taken me on a path similar to Jonathan and eventually my creative side might have emerged as it did for him. I had a similar experience reading Holy Beggars by Aryae Coopersmith whom I recently met. In reading Aryae’s book, I realized that I could have easily continued to explore the spiritual side of myself and may have ended up in Israel as a Rabbi. But I fell in love with technology. By 1966, I was working at the Langley Porter Institute, UCSF Medical School, designing equipment for brainwave bio feedback. From that point on, I had a continuing connection to technology. Now I am back to studying music. Jonathan is a Professor at USC. Continue reading
Hong Kong and Me: How I became the highest compensated advisor in the world (for a little while)
Here I am in Hong Kong some 49 years after I first arrived here. I wrote about that experience recently here. In looking for photos to use with this post, I found some that were taken in 1963 by a family that actually traveled on the President Cleveland,the ship on which I worked. I … Continue reading
How I got the iPad right in 1994 but was wrong about the Information Furnace
Now before you think this post is all about how insightful I was, and I was, it is really about how things turned out differently than I thought and wanted. It really is about a failure to implement a vision and an exploration of the possibility that things could have ended up differently.
In that very same article (again 1994), I coined the term i-pad (see the Article). Sixteen years later, Apple announced the iPad on Jan. 27th, 2010. Coincidentally, it happened to be my 65th birthday. Continue reading
Two Thirds Done 