July 2010
There’s Nothing Quite Like a Customer →
Ever expanding web services would lead us to believe millions of users attention is golden. Grow now, monetize later is the moto celebrated by Venture Capitalists who are looking…
Efficient Markets: Tools which extract value from... →
Are Crowd Farmed Volunteers Efficient?
After reading a detailed background article on Caterina Fake and Hunch (the company she’s helping Chris Dixon build) early this AM, I…
Founders are Stage Magicians →
Cascading Effects of Evoking Emotional Response
As a first time founder with an engineering background, preoccuppation with building the sonic screwdriver of social information tools…
Open the Factory Doors, Let in the Breeze and... →
Unravelling
What we wrap most tightly, gains the greatest benefit by being let go.
The act of letting go of ideas here each morning has brought much peace and energy into my…
The Potential of the Net is far more than today’s... →
The Hook.
It just cost you two seconds to click through and the page to render. A majority of browsers will click back or kill the tab, leaving 15% of social web referrals still…
Security is not the product of rules based... →
Anxious Dreams
A merchant class manor lord had taken over my parents home and I am no longer welcome. I flee to an old neighbors back yard and a strange truck comes down the…
Why Investing Resources in Web Apps is Good... →
Long before starting a company I firmly believed only field veterans or geniuses were capable of creating compelling products, and the even more impressive feat, breathing life into…
Computation: How deep does the rabbit hole go? →
Wikipedia, a Trap for the Curious Mind
I lost track of a couple of hours yesterday going down Wikipedia’s bunny trail.
It all started innocently enough with a self emailed post…
Great software is measured by how little it... →
As most of you are well aware, there are fanatics on both sides of the feature fence. Microsoft is known for spooky bloatware, while 37 Signals holds minimalism sacred*….
Deciphering Reactions to a Change of Plans →
While exploring the relation between change and response, I struggled with how best to frame such a general idea. My thoughts gravitated to the floor decision making framework of…
King for a Day or Sustainable Marketing →
Do writers recognize when their work is going to catch on like wild fire? The recent Old Spice viral video series has caused a wave of gut busting chaos induced hilarity.The…
Hot Word: Virome
underpaidgenius:
Brandon Keim, Virome
It’s not just the bugs in our guts that are surprisingly friendly. It’s our viruses, too. After slowly coming to appreciate the importance of symbiotic bacteria for running our bodies, scientists have wondered whether viruses also help. Now a gene-hunting expedition in the gut has found it teeming with highly personalized viral communities.
“Viral...
“What will we see coming out of App Inventor? Probably lots of junk, but does...”
– word
App Inventor and the culture wars - O’Reilly Radar (via bijan) (via fred-wilson)
Refinement →
Much of modern labor brings the abstract into socially valued products, the remainder providing direct services. Automobiles are designer’s dreams long before we drive them. Smart…
Even Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks, Rethinking... →
Epiphany
After many years of designing software to implement a wide variety of algorithms, late last year I was about to experience a drastic change in thinking that I could never…
Even Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks, Rethinking... →
Epiphany
After many years of designing software to implement a wide variety of algorithms, late last year I was about to experience a drastic change in thinking that I could…
When it comes to Startup Tasks, there can be only... →
Six months ago we tracked our startup’s work tasks with a combination of lighthouse milestones, dozens of tickets and a metric ton of emails per day. In addition a Google task list,…
First Post from Android, a Taste of Freedom →
It feels like a lifetime ago when I decided to make my next mobile an Android phone. I picked up a Droid X Thursday and unfortunately I am once again on a platform which I don’t…
How I cleaned up my music collection with 22 lines... →
I’ve got a fairly sizable collection of music. It’s more than I need, and certainly more than I want to worry about. I decided before nuking it to make one more effort to clean it up…
What Walmart, Facebook, and Credit Cards Have in... →
If you thought Mark Zuckerberg buying a Walmart with his 5 billion dollar limit credit card to setup a giant trampoline arena for padded sumo suit wars you’re close. If you thought …
I’m a Founder First →
Sharpening Round Edges
I’m not an engineer
I’m a filthy hacker trying to Macgyver my way to a first product
I’m not a designer
I desperately dream up just enough flow to keep…
GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS: Why... →
The Ruby community, according to some data I am making up, has the strongest test-driven development attitude. Not all of us TATFT; not all of us test most of the time; and not all of us test ever—but those who do test make up a larger proportion than they do in, say, the Java world.
But why?…
Purpose Driven Meetings – New Metrics →
A leader with clear purpose conveys meaning with little confusion or wasted energy. A gathering with a clear purpose focuses the attention and energy of participants towards a…
Event Horizon →
Miller: Oh. My. God. What happened to your eyes?
Dr. Weir: Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.
Miller: What are you talking about?
Dr. Weir: I created the Event Horizon…
take a moment to clear your mind →
Like Clockwork
The ceaseless rhythm of life gives little time to consider breaking the slave clock. The master is our ambition, the slave is our flesh. The product is our…
The relationship between Startups, Tech Bloggers,... →
Credit for inspiring this riff goes to Marshall Kirkpatrick for his brief cinchcast covering the relationship of Tech Bloggers and Startup Founders. I’m both of these,…
Cheers, where everybody knows your name →
You Win When Visitors Memorize Your Domain
How many domains do you know by memory? For me this number may be higher than average, and I see every one of these domains as a brilliant…
The Rise of Net Nations and Political Mobility →
I’ve often wondered why I’m subject to the higher taxes of social democrats, while also forced to obey the restricted individual rights of conservative republicans. It is the product…
