November 2008
2008-11-30 07:09:35
My friend Steve Kane left an interesting comment on yesterday's post about analog dollars and digital pennies. In it he noted the following: any case, i'm not sure what comscore is counting, but most other measurements services give youtube roughly...
2008-11-29 23:27:10
Agile development was made for tough economic times, but does not fit comfortably into the research-heavy, iteration-focused process designers trust to deliver user- and brand-based sites. How can we update our thinking and methods to take advantage of what agile offers?
2008-11-29 22:29:40
IA is about selling ideas effectively, designing with accuracy, and working with complex interactivity to guide different types of customers through website experiences. The more your client knows about IA's processes and deliverables, the likelier the project is to succeed.
2008-11-29 10:12:51
Jeff Zucker, head of NBC Universal, was famously quoted earlier this year warning that the media industry had to work so "that we do not end up trading analog dollars for digital pennies." It's a great line and an even...
2008-11-28 13:57:48
We had a bunch of people over yesterday for thanksgiving and at one point my daughter and a friend of ours started talking about their Blackberry Bold phones. They like them but sort of miss their older blackberries. My friend...
2008-11-27 09:23:18
One of the things I've been saying recently on this blog is that the Dow is full of tired companies and tired stocks. I think the Nasdaq is much more representative of the current american economy than the Dow. And...
2008-11-26 08:49:13
I've spent a lot of time reading about what went wrong in the financial markets in the past year. A lot of the best stuff has come in the form of letters and presentations from hedge fund managers who have...
2008-11-26 03:50:24
Yesterday I saw (and twittered) a comScore report on online spending this holiday season. So far this holiday season (comScore calls Nov & Dec the holiday shopping season), $8.2bn has been spent online which is down 4% versus the same...
2008-11-25 06:58:50
I have been slammed with people asking me for invites to Boxee. I've tried to comply with every request so far and have given out easily 250 invites in the past week. Now the folks at Boxee have done something...
2008-11-25 05:04:40
Soren and Howard have been busy building out stocktwits and today they sent me a link to a firefox extension that makes twitter a bit smarter. When you add the stocktwits extension to firefox, a stock tweet will look like...
2008-11-24 08:29:41
Those of you who are using Boxee on Apple TV know that the new AppleTV firmware (v2.3) broke Boxee. That's been fixed and the details on are on the Boxee blog. Also, I've been inundated with requests for Boxee invites...
2008-11-23 21:47:29
[floe] wrote in to tell us about his multitouch based thesis work. While many projects have focused on the hardware side of multitouch, TISCH is designed to promote the software side. TISCH is a multiplatform library that features hardware abstraction and gesture recognition. This takes a lot of weight off of widget developers since they [...]
2008-11-23 21:07:31
RIM has decided to venture into the touchscreen phone market with the new BlackBerry Storm. Unlike other companies’ offerings, the Storm has a touchscreen that clicks when you press it. phoneWreck disassembled the Storm to see what magic was involved in the device. There’s not much too it, it’s just a big button. pW notes [...]
2008-11-23 20:42:29
The target release date may be over five months out, but the Ubuntu team is already pushing the first alphas of Jaunty Jackalope out the door. The new release is not for the weak and is intended solely for people who want to vet bugs and contribute to the project. The release is designed to [...]
2008-11-23 19:44:38
Working as quick as ever, the iphone-dev team have updated the PwnageTool and QuickPwn to work with the new iPhone 2.2 firmware update. The trouble with the new firmware is that it updates the baseband of the phone, which could potentially undo any progress made towards an iPhone 3G unlock in the future. If you [...]
2008-11-23 19:19:44
The Texas Advanced Computing Center has built one of the largest tiled displays ever. They arranged 75 30inch Dell displays in a 5×15 pattern. The overall the system has 36GB of graphics memory and 108GB of system memory. They intend on using the system to display very large data sets. If you think the size [...]
2008-11-23 17:51:27
[RyeBrye] has been trying to get multitouch working on the Android based T-Mobile G1. He hacked the Synaptics touchscreen driver so that it would dump raw event info to a character device. The demo above is using example code from Google for a fingerpaint program. Polling the device is not the fastest method, but [RyeBrye] [...]
2008-11-23 16:45:35
A team of five UC Berkeley engineering built this impressive Rubik’s Cube solver. The CuBear is a giant transparent cube with a servo attached to each face to rotate the cube’s six faces. The user can either scramble the cube using computer controls or show the faces of a scrambled cube to the onboard webcam, [...]
2008-11-23 06:12:52
Just over a year ago, I wrote a post explaining that Techmeme was moving from highlighting the work of individual tech bloggers to the work of professionally produced tech blogs. In that post, I bemoaned the fact that I had...
2008-11-23 05:20:17
One of the best posts I read this week was from Fortune's Andy Serwer. In it, he noted: At the end of 1999 the Dow was around 11,400. Today the Dow is at 8,400, which means the index has fallen...
2008-11-22 21:00:17
Advanced Beauty is a collection of 18 “sound sculptures” pairing artists and programmers to create a collaborative work visualizing sound. The styles run a broad range from fluid simulations to manipulating cell animation. The demos were built using Processing. While all of these were built using human input, we see potential for them to help [...]
2008-11-22 20:30:56
[Mario Mauerer] and friends were commissioned to build this 2m persistence of vision display (translated) for a party (in a hight-voltage lab no less). Dubbed “Display from Hell”, it uses 100 blue SMD LEDs to generate the POV images. They’re connected to an ATMega64 via shift registers. Their target speed is 600rpm for a flicker [...]
2008-11-22 20:00:54
File this one under: “Wow, that’s even possible?” xbox-scene hacker [RDC] has been hard at work converting his Xbox 360 to slot loading. To start, He removed the slot loading drive from a blueberry iMac G3. The loading mechanism is the top half of the drive. He split this off and married it to the [...]
2008-11-22 19:18:54
Reader [Julian von Mendel] and his team built this tennis ball fetching robot for a competition (translated). The first version used distance sensors to locate the tennis balls for pick-up, but they changed to a camera based approach. The robot has three omniwheels and is designed to calculate the shortest path to the ball despite [...]
2008-11-22 18:00:59
I won Nanowrimo! 50,005 words done. Yay! (PS - my hair is red now. Willie says hi.)However, it ain't even close to being done. Feels more like half-way done. I don't hate it, even though it's a first draft. There...
2008-11-22 18:00:03
We’d never discount the beauty that is the SpokePOV bike wheel kits, but if you want to just turn your bicycle into a blinding blur, [depotdevoid] has the solution for you. He had a CCFL tube left over from an abandoned LCD monitor backlight repair, and decided to see what it would look like as [...]
2008-11-22 17:19:59
Here’s yet another robot hoping to dominate the human race through the power of ROCK. Cythbot was built to demonstrate Cyth Systems machine vision systems. The device uses a camera to watch the Guitar Hero monitor and identify notes for button presses. The strum bar is then triggered after a delay. The notes are identified [...]
2008-11-22 15:44:56
oomlout has posted some interesting plans for a simple robot. It’s based around an Arduino and is a platform similar to the Parallax Boe-Bot. The Arduino sends PWM signals to continuos rotation servos that drive the two main wheels. All of the structural components are laser cut from acrylic with slots to hold standard hex [...]
2008-11-22 10:41:52
I've given out over 250 invites to Boxee in the past few days. I will keep giving them out as long as there is demand. Please leave a comment to this post and one will be on its way. Boxee,...
2008-11-22 09:51:01
2008-11-22 09:17:05
Earlier this week I was reading my brother's blog and he listed his top 10 Clash songs on it. I thought, "gee it would be nice to have them as a playlist." So just for kicks I went to MySpace...
2008-11-21 19:00:17
There is no doubt that [Johnny Lee] is the authority on Wiimote based projects. So, when he compiles a list of his favorite Wiimote projects, we definitely pay attention. He’s organized the list as a progression of the unusual. By the time you get to ‘Chicken Head Tracking‘ at the bottom, you’ll be adequately prepared. [...]
2008-11-21 05:01:08
In the past week, I've had two different discussions with readers of this blog who wanted in on one of our deals. One reader wanted to invest in Twitter, the other in Boxee. I told them both it wasn't possible....
2008-11-21 03:29:24
Back in July, I wrote a post about browser extensions and wondered if you can build a meaningful business by simply extending the browser. I got a ton of great comments on that post that has shaped my thinking on...
2008-11-20 21:40:29
2008-11-20 20:14:03
A coworker approached us today wondering if they could get a performance boost using Samsung’s newly announced 256GB SSD. Most of their work is done in browser, so we said “no”. They’d only see benefit if they were reading/writing large files. Their system has plenty of RAM, and we decided to take a different approach. [...]
2008-11-20 15:33:44
Tellart turned an iPhone into a duiPhone with its latest Sketchtools kit. Combine a 3G iPhone, an ordinary store-bought breathalyzer, and the NADA Mobile, which consists of a communication board, sensors, and actuators, and get a useful iPhone application. Blow into the mouthpiece, and the iPhone will inform you if you can safely drive, or [...]
2008-11-20 15:28:47
2008-11-20 14:30:26
Lala brought something home from work for me yesterday. A blanket. Made for me by readers who love me. Started for me when Mom died. It's one of the most perfect, gorgeous presents I've ever received. I am completely undone...
2008-11-20 14:13:10
German designer [Michael Schoner] of NL Architects turned an ordinary street bench into a public sound system that can be accessed by passersby with iPods and cellphones with Bluetooth. Boom Bench features 60 watt co-axial speakers, two subwoofers, and a bass shaker in the seat that’ll allow you to feel the vibrations of your music [...]
2008-11-20 14:13:02
Add lights to your graphing calculator. Do it now. [Sil3ntP8nd8] added some, and seems to have done a decent job. They are spread around the back, supplying a nice even light on, well, on whatever is under your calculator. It may be difficult to see too much detail though on account of the water marks. [...]
2008-11-20 13:30:21
2008-11-20 13:14:25
[Lynne] had this crazy idea to build a piece of clothing that would give you feedback about your surroundings using sonar. She started with a carefully selected thrift store jacket. She wanted something that looked good and also provided plenty of places to hide electronics. She used the LilyPad system, with a vibration pad and [...]
2008-11-20 12:56:46
NASA just completed the first deep-space test of what could one day become the interplanetary internet. Images of Mars and its moon Phobos were sent back and forth between computers on Earth and NASA’s Epoxi spacecraft. Instead of TCP/IP a new protocol, named “Disruption/Delay Tolerant Networking” (DTN) was used. Information is only sent once with [...]
2008-11-20 04:51:18
Slideshare is doing a contest to pick the top credit contest slideshow. There are a bunch of good ones. Here's my two favorites. Creditcrisis 30slides Final View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: capitalism mortgage) Credit Crisis to Collaborative...
2008-11-19 21:00:48
Curious Inventor pointed out a cache of training materials provided by IPC. IPC is a trade organization that publishes standards for producing and evaluating electronics. They’re great looking full color guides that most hobbyists will probably never get their hands on. They have low resolution video demos as well. Go snag them now in case [...]
2008-11-19 20:30:54
Peripheral manufacturer Datel has been hard at work attempting to crack the PSP 3000 since its release. They’ve developed the Lite Blue Tool battery to force the PSP into service mode so hackers can run any arbitrary code they want. According to MaxConsole, Datel performed a silicon level investigation of the PSP’s chips to determine [...]
2008-11-19 19:38:04
The iphone-dev team has officially stated “all that remains is implementation“. They’ve developed all the pieces they need to perform a software unlock for the iPhone 3G, now it’s just a matter of putting them together in user friendly fashion. They’ve managed to run unsigned code on the baseband, developed custom AT tools, and are [...]
2008-11-19 19:10:12
Digital Pictures Interactive has put together a great augmented reality demo. Unlike many others, it’s entirely Flash based, so there’s no install necessary. Print out the custom symbol and try it out for yourself in your browser. Augmented reality refers to any mashup that combines computer generated content with a live video stream. We see [...]
2008-11-19 16:17:57
We’re always excited to get a new chip or SIM card to interface, but our enthusiasm is often dampened by the prototyping process. Interfacing any chip usually means breadboarding a circuit, writing code, and hauling out the programmer; maybe even a prototyping PCB.
A few years ago we built the first ‘Bus Pirate’, a universal bus [...]
2008-11-19 15:20:32
[Jeremiah Grossman] and [Eric Lawrence] will be presenting on clickjacking and browser security in an online seminar tomorrow. Clickjacking allows an attacker to transparently place links exactly where a user would be clicking, essentially forcing the user to perform actions without their knowledge. This method of attack has been known for a few years, but [...]
2008-11-19 14:25:54
In a bold move, Silicon Graphics has decided to see how much crap many cores they can shove in one box. The Molecule is 10,000 core rackmount machine designed to leverage low cost consumer CPUs like the Intel Atom. It emphasizes high memory bandwidth and throughput between CPUs. While this sort of space efficiency is [...]
2008-11-19 05:10:07
That's a question I used to get all of the time in the early days of this blog. I don't get it so much anymore. Because slowly but surely people are wising up to the fact that blogging is work...
2008-11-19 00:15:31
http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0811/19/idwfeb.htm
There's the conclusion to After The Fall, the start of Aftermath, Smile Time #2 and the Spike: After The Fall hardcover.
2008-11-18 20:59:47
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/ncis/exclusive-interview-with-liza-24614.aspx
She is also starring in Dexter, NCIS, and the new Fast and Furious movie. She is new to me, but it seems like she will be known to everyone within a year.
The Dollhouse stuff is toward the end of the interview.
2008-11-18 20:00:01
[Anupam Pathak] knows how jarring it can be to wake up to a traditional alarm clock. He decided to hack an alarm clock so that it would open the shades in his room to allow in natural light. He found the pin that went high when the alarm was triggered and used that to signal [...]
2008-11-18 19:41:37
http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=8549
Check out all the details on our former Mr. Harris' new horror comedy "Blood on the Highway."
2008-11-18 19:25:30
Hacking at Random, an international technology and security conference, has just announced the dates for their 2009 event. The four day outdoor technology camp will be held August 13-16 near Vierhouten, Netherlands. HAR2009 is brought to you by the same people who held What the Hack, which we covered in 2005. They’ve done this every [...]
2008-11-18 18:18:23
I've always wanted to type that title. In writer-speak, getting The Call is not God urging you to become a priest. It?s when your agent calls you to tell you that an editor wants to buy your book.I've been DYING...
2008-11-18 17:43:18
Google recently updated their Google Mobile App with a couple new features. Voice Search automatically starts listening when you raise the phone to your ear. Just say what you’re looking for, and it will poll Google and return the results. The app leverages Google’s voice recognition engine, which they’ve been training with Goog-411. [Andy Baio] [...]
2008-11-18 16:49:41
I have SO much to tell you. I had a very full day yesterday, very full indeed. I think I'm just going to slap the pics in here and then narrate them, because otherwise, I have no idea where to...
2008-11-18 16:11:21
http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/2008/11/map-of-the-verse/
A stunning piece of work. Kudos to the people behind this.
According to the Firefly Ship Works Ltd website:
The Map will be available for the first time next weekend at the Creation Serenity Convention in Burbank, CA and then shortly thereafter on the QMx website.
And just for comparison, there's also an impressive unofficial map of the 'Verse as well.
2008-11-18 15:59:41
The Guardian’s technology department hosted its first Hack Day last Thursday. Developers were freed from the drudgery of their everyday jobs to make fun toys and tools. Many of the hacks that developed played around with the website, like the Guardian commenter blocker, or the Guardian Button integrated into the Google Toolbar. We liked the [...]
2008-11-18 14:34:10
[Brian] made this really cool LED keyboard. He started with a Deck Legend Fire. When he got it, he realized that every key had its own LED, but the entire unit was either on, or off. He just couldn’t live with that and decided to start hacking into it to make each light individually controlled. [...]
2008-11-18 14:16:44
http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,7273-850-60475,00.html
Doug Jones (one of the Gentlemen in the Buffy episode "Hush") returns to Ball State to give a presentation with a Q&A session following.
Doug Jones is most often listed as playing Faun in the movie Pan's Labyrinth, but he was also one of the Gentlemen from the Buffy episode "Hush" and Abe Sapien from Hellboy. He graduated from Ball State and recently returned to make a movie entitled "My Name is Jerry" with 50 other Ball State students. His presentation is at 7:30pm at the Emens Auditorium on November 19th (tomorrow).
This is where I graduated from, so I have to say I'm proud of who's come out of the acting school at BSU.
2008-11-18 13:57:15
http://spoilertv.blogspot.com/2008/11/dollhouse-promotional-photos.html
Spoiler TV posts some more promotional photos released by FOX. A couple have been seen before, I think, but at least three of them are new shots of Eliza in various identities.
Late edit bonus: Photos from Dollhouse filming today on location.
[ edited by The One True b!X on 2008-11-18 22:54 ]
2008-11-18 11:57:59
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/081118-diamond-sales-october.html
Buffy didn't come out last month but Angel: After The Fall and Spike: After The Fall entered the top 100 at nos. 66 and 88 respectively. ETA: Estimated sales figures available over at ICv2.com.
2008-11-18 11:09:28
http://www.ifanboy.com/content/articles/Whedon_Speak__Angel__After_the_Fall
iFanboy evaluates the "season 6" comic book adventures of Angel.
2008-11-18 10:57:05
http://fraggmented.blogspot.com/2008/11/storytelling-engines-firefly.html
John Seavey looks at the ideas that make up Joss' third show. Oh and if the premise sounds familar, it's cause there was a similar entry for Buffy and Angel back in August.
2008-11-18 09:36:24
[Mark] had a broken TI-83 graphing calculator and an overwhelming urge to play Pokemon in math class. The solution to his predicament, obviously, is to hack a GameBoy color into the body of his TI-83. He gutted the calculator and connected the front buttons to the contacts on the GameBoy. After some cramming and taping [...]
2008-11-18 08:57:39
I wrote a post about our most recent investment, Boxee, today on the Union Square Ventures blog. Boxee founder and CEO Avner Ronen wrote a post on the Boxee blog about the investment. I encourage you to click on those...
2008-11-18 07:29:32
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu6KQ0CJJCMUAURRXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB2OGNlaW1rBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA01BUDAxOV8xMTc-/SIG=11srufr8j/EXP=1227104784/**http%3a//www.azcentral.com/rsslinks/817881
while also calling out rocker Gwen Stefani's choice of baby names. Short but fun.
2008-11-18 03:23:38
http://www.seanharry.com/T1/index.htm
If you live in dear old Blighty and fancy seeing the likes of Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, Amy Acker, Felicia Day, Georges Jeanty, Jonathan Woodward and Clare Kramer then you might be interested in this upcoming Starfury event.
Adam, Summer and Jonathan will also be appearing at Fedcon in May.
2008-11-18 01:45:00
2008-11-18 00:30:01
2008-11-17 22:09:38
http://www.cliqueclack.com/tv/2008/11/15/is-supernatural-as-good-as-buffy/
CliqueClack asks the question and tries to find the answer.
2008-11-17 20:41:04
Our fascination with multitouch is fairly well known, but it expands even further to cover all sorts of man machine interaction. Embedded above is a tech demo of g-speak, a spatial operating environment. The user combines gestures and spatial location to interact with on screen objects. If it seems familiar, it’s because one of the [...]
2008-11-17 19:25:36
Tinker.it has published plans for building a software synthesizer using an Arduino. The Auduino uses granular synthesis to create a truly unique sound. The grain is constructed from two triangle waves. Each one has adjustable frequency, decay rate, and the repetition rate can be changed too. The Arduino just needs five potentiometers attached to the [...]
2008-11-17 17:43:52
Google just announced the release of SketchUp 7. SketchUp is a 3D modeling program with a fairly robust free version. They’ve added quite a few features and the one that caught our eye in particular was dynamic components. Dynamic components have behavior specific to the object. The example in the video above shows a staircase [...]
2008-11-17 15:44:58
[Cameron Adams] recently appeared on a panel about JavaScript libraries. He represented the hard working coder that still wrote everything from scratch. He wanted to make something mindblowing for the audience. He ended up creating the JS-909 drum machine entirely in javascript without relying on libraries or flash. While he makes no claims of compatibility, [...]
2008-11-17 14:20:53
[googfan] sent us in his latest project. He has made a shirt with a circuit sewn in. It is crude, and probably won’t last long, but the end product is pretty cool. You can see a stencil of the functioning circuit on the front of the shirt. He has threaded wire in, along the circuit [...]
2008-11-17 13:29:33
Adding LEDs makes everything better. Watch this video as a regular old DS gets turned into one of the most awesome things on the planet. A ton of LEDs were added, some to the body, some to an extra cartridge, some behind buttons. Parts are wired into the speakers, so you get nice effects to [...]
2008-11-17 13:02:50
A new breed of tire has been developed that won’t go flat, even if it gets bombed. Resilient Technologies L.L.C. has started making these decidedly cool looking tires for the military. The honeycomb of stiff but flexible plastic acts as a shock absorber just as an air filled tire would. Unlike a normal tire, it [...]
2008-11-17 07:52:05
The post of the day comes from Andy Finnell who writes that iPhone app developers must abandon the $0.99 price that many apps are selling for these days. Andy calculates that a developer who wants to make a living off...
2008-11-16 21:30:52
When we created our backpack strap WiFi detector for Engadget, we embedded soft switches to control the device. They used two sheets of aluminum foil separated by a layer of foam with holes punched in it. [Plusea] has taken a similar approach but has replaced the aluminum foil with conductive fabric. The end result is [...]
2008-11-16 20:30:55
[Deviant Ollam], lockpicker and beverage cooling contest host, was recently in Vienna, presumably for DeepSec. While there, he stopped by the Metalab hackerspace and checked out their RepRap rapid prototyping machine. You can see video of his visit above. He had them construct a custom fitted cover for the flash of his point and shoot [...]
2008-11-16 09:07:04
I started this discussion yesterday with my observation that Obama ended his weekly address with the point that "in this nation we rise and fall as one nation, one people." But that doesn't ring true to me. I think we...
2008-11-16 08:44:26
Tomorrow, Saturday, is the day you can do something about California's Prop 8, even if you live in another state. There will be a protest near you in the ACLU's Nationwide Join the Impact Protest. I'm going to be at...
2008-11-16 05:52:12
Last month I attended the New Business Models For News Summit and found myself running the "revenue" breakout group. We talked quite a bit about generating revenue from local merchants. There are a bunch of companies working on this problem,...
2008-11-15 13:56:17
It's interesting to me that he starts with the recognition that the only way out of this financial mess is a coordinated global action and ends with this comment: In this country, we rise and fall as one nation, one...
2008-11-15 07:17:48
When broken links frustrate your site's visitors, a typical 404 page explains what went wrong and provides links that may relate to the visitor's quest. That's good, but now you can do better. With Dean Frickey's custom 404, when something's amiss, pertinent information is sent not only to the visitor, but to the developer?so that, in many cases, the problem can be fixed! A better 404 means never having to say you're sorry.
2008-11-15 05:18:09
The Gotham Gal and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire last night. It's a great movie about destiny, poverty, class, survival, gumption, and above all, love. Go see it.
2008-11-14 13:23:17
I have a friend Charlie who is a serial entrepreneur and he says that venture capital "values capital over people". That's a criticism that has a ring of truth to me (as opposed to much of what Adeo said the...
2008-11-14 07:15:17
As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take to support the human and legal rights of hearing impaired web users? It just might take the law, says Joe Clark.
2008-11-14 05:27:29
One week ago, last friday morning, I wrote that I was waiting for the fill on three "good to fill" orders I had placed weeks before. They were: $AMZN at $40 $GOOG at $320 $AAPL at $90 I got my...
2008-11-13 07:00:57
Our portfolio company Zynga quietly released Live Poker yesterday for the iPhone. Live Poker is the same Texas Hold'em game that over 1.4mm people play every day on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. Now you can have it on the...
2008-11-13 06:25:33
Don't forget, I'll be reading this Saturday night. I hope you can come. I really do -- I'm pretty darn nervous about it. It won't be long, just 15 minutes each for the three of us, and I've heard a...
2008-11-13 05:11:32
I've been reading a bunch of posts recently suggesting that the VC model is broken. But guess what? It's always been broken. As Jeff Nolan points out in a short and sweet post: there is a permanent structural imbalance in...
2008-11-12 16:55:37
I'm half-way through the Nano challenge, and it's only the eleventh. Yay! That's good stuff. Boy, am I writing the worst novel in the whole world. But it's so fun to go at breakneck speed -- the plot twists in...
2008-11-12 05:30:07
Bustup not bailout should be our rallying cry. Once upon a time busting up big companies was a populist movement. Its time for that movement to rise up again. Not so much to rid our society of monopolies but to...
2008-11-11 20:04:14
I've been LOVING my Kindle lately. Did you see Oprah tout hers the other day? I know she got criticized for pushing an expensive product, in these days of the slumping economy, but to be fair, she made it very...
2008-11-11 04:20:58
You'd have thought we would learn our lesson with stock options. Back in the post-bubble era, I spent a lot of time on boards talking about granting new options to employees who are underwater. When the value of a company...
2008-11-11 03:50:24
Our portfolio company outside.in announced on their blog yesterday that traffic is up 400% ytd and scaling, performance, and reliability are becoming key concerns for them. And so they also announced they are looking for a CTO who can help...
2008-11-10 06:27:45
When I was a kid we used to watch movies on TV and they'd have commercial breaks in them. That was when we'd run to the kitchen for a drink, head to the bathroom, or just chill out for a...
2008-11-09 16:51:41
Lookee! I've been knitting! It's the Cade sweater, for the book. The pattern is as yet unavailable, but it will be someday, promise. In other news, I've been writing. Nano is fun, but I'm tired, and I'm out of words...
2008-11-09 14:41:15
Our friend Jeff Jarvis has a book coming out shortly called What Would Google Do? Jeff was kind enough to give me a pre-galley and I am reading it now. I will blog some quotes as I read it as...
2008-11-09 09:51:28
Nick Carr takes offense to Mark Zuckerberg's "second law of social media" which Saul Hansell describes as: ?I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will...
2008-11-09 09:31:11
For the past 2 1/2 years, we've been using Sonos as the primary interface to music in our home. It started when Sonos did an advertising deal on this blog and as part of that campaign, I did a long...
2008-11-08 12:06:31
(How many blog posts are titled that this morning?)My agent said last night in Brooklyn there was dancing in the streets. She went out and danced (I adore her) and said that it looked like Fame: literally people dancing on...
2008-11-08 05:38:21
Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things. Umair Haque - Seven Lessons...
2008-11-07 14:13:54
I did this interview several months ago as part of a Federated Media campaign that may run on this blog at some point. I like how it came out even though I look exhausted in the video. It's roughly 8...
2008-11-05 02:06:18
Oh, HELL yeah. I cried through that whole thing. And the noise in Oakland was great. So happy. Welcome back.
2008-11-05 01:22:12
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001734/
Mr. Shimerman appeared as Principal Snyder in 19 episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
"Summers, You Drive Like A Spaz!"
2008-11-05 00:56:37
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=61914
The show is slated to debut in July 2009, with the pilot which was penned by Jane Espenson, who left the show earlier this year.
David Simkins who was an producer in Angel during the first half of the 4th season, serves as one of the Executive producers of the show.
2008-11-05 00:13:04
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WwPpfyPUC8
Should give us something to talk about.
2008-11-04 23:17:59
Within the next hour, we can expect Obama to hit 270 electoral votes. We're on the brink of history.
2008-11-04 22:22:44
2008-11-04 20:06:03
2008-11-04 18:34:49
http://persephonetravel.com/
The Persephone Interstellar Travel Agency has started a "Travel Blog" to share stories and deals.
They also have a Twitter account.
2008-11-04 16:05:19
http://www.tboblogs.com/index.php/motherhood/comments/teen-pregnancy-and-tv/
A newspaper blogger discusses how she talked to her teens about sex in "Buffy." The blog references a study about kids being more likely to have sex if they watch certain shows.