@ Richard – Would love to hear Rob back on the show again. Although he is probably kepy busy on his own podcast show?

@Alfie – You know I’ve heard that before but I keep forgetting how good a point that is. Thanks very much.

@Richard – That’s not a bad idea since he is being very kind and sending me a lot of advice by email already.

@Aaron – Good catch! 😉

Also, my wife saw the TechZing web site for the first time this week. She said: ‘Wow, they need to get better photos of themselves. And the site looks really basic for technology show.’ I laughed, maybe time to spend some of the donation money!

The whole idea of self education or any radical changes to education is so fascinating. The US is such an extreme case or high education costs that it really makes you expect changes to come from there. $600k for a family, just seems out of reach for many educated individuals. You could easily have two PHD parents that just don’t have near that much.

It’s such a big thing with so many bits and pieces that’s its hard to even visualize how it gets remade. What gets added, replaced and what gets left out.

One thing that I don’t see a replacement for is the commitment device element. An 18 year old can commit in advance to do this big 4 year thing. There is huge moral support for this commitment from peers, parents, etc. that it’s the “safest” big choice they’ll ever make. No one will criticize it. Now they allow themselves to be guided through courses. They move on to the next course even though they didn’t really understand the last one and mostly they catch up. A lot of the time they don’t believe a course is important or interesting. University degree is such a tangible step that they will overcome all these things.

If you have mountains of intrinsic motivation and belief in what you’re doing, you can pretty much overcome that stuff. You’ll work through boring material. You’ll defend your decisions. How many 19 year old Uni students have that kind of mentality though? How does home learning solve poor motivation?

Google was a very late player in the search space, and everybody thought it was way too late for Apple to enter the phone market. If you look at “established players” who have failed at keeping their dominant market position, think Pan Am, RIM, Enron and Lehman Brothers.

@ Justin – Re: Pluggio. A couple of constructive comments/questions. I am no expert and certainly admire what you have achieved with Pluggio.

What is Pluggio’s unique selling proposition/point (USP)?
What feature does it do that others don’t?
Who is the one target market for Pluggio?

I only ask I am not clear when I use Pluggio why it stands out from other tools?

You are gaining users – so you certainly have something to offer. Therefore maybe some more promotion is needed? What could you do on the marketing or PR side to gain some attention?

Maybe you can leverage the pluggio blog more to gain interest from twitter power users. You could share your knowledge to become an expert in the space. Kissmetrics, Buffer and SEOmoz have great informative blogs (that usually subtly showcase their product).

Good luck!