I wanted to share funny story from Friday. After WebVisions, I headed over to Beer and Blog, a weekly Friday gathering of local bloggers at a local brew pub here in Portland. The brainchild of Justin Kistner, these working sessions are as much social gatherings as they are instructional workshops, and that’s how we like… Read More
Tag: op-ed
Bugs in the Matrix
My wife introduced a theory to me years ago. She observed that certain odd themes tend to repeat themselves in high frequency over the course of about a week, then disappear back into obscurity. Her theory was that if you apply numerology to these coincidences, you could translate chance into good fortune, e.g. using the… Read More
The Emotional Nature of Software
We’ve all felt the extreme frustration that using a computer can cause. Maybe you spent several hours updating a Word document, assuming it was autosaving, only to have Word collapse in a heap, erasing all your changes. Maybe your IT department has an antivirus scan scheduled to run weekly that mysteriously starts in the morning.… Read More
Eight Cell Phones in Ten Years Part 2
Yesterday, I started a nostalgic trip down cell phone lane, recounting my first four cell phones. I think that took me from 1997 to 2003. By that time the Zoolander Nokia had a cracked screen, and phones were starting to get really cool. The Off Brand Freebie Phone The carrier I had at the time… Read More
Eight Cell Phones in Ten Years Part 1
On the flight back home from SFO last Friday, I got to thinking about cell phones. I was fiddling with my iPhone, listening to music, wondering if it would get a signal if I took it out of Airplane Mode, then paranoid that it might crash the plane. Luckily, I didn’t have an Airplane mode… Read More
SoCal Fires: Why New Web isn’t Trivial
One of our readers pointed me to this mashup created by KPBS in San Diego that combines critical evacuation information like neighborhoods affected, closed roads, nearest evacuation center, etc. Yahoo News has a story on the mashup too. This post has two points: 1) To spread the word about the mashup to anyone affected by… Read More
A Can of Worms
If there was any remaining doubt that this blog has slipped into Seinfeld territory, I am sealing the deal by blogging about the comments on a seemingly innocent post from Friday called “Bloggers at OpenWorld“. The issue at hand is about providing recompense for time lost/expenses incurred for attendees. Here are the arguments in no… Read More
Decision 07: (more…) vs. More
Funny thing, Rich has a draft in WP called “Time to Give Jake a Break”. You’ll notice it hasn’t been published yet. We are really buried preparing for OpenWorld, so keeping this blog going has been tough. The title put me in mind of the trucking term Jake Brake. Signs like this one have puzzled… Read More
Remember Rockwell?
Some of you may remember Rockwell, a.k.a. Kenneth William Gordy, the son of Motown Records head Berry Gordy, and his only hit, “Somebody’s Watching Me“. Released in 1984, the song featured Michael and Jermaine Jackson singing chorus. I always liked that song, and thanks to the Long Tail of music, this one-hit wonder gem lives… Read More
TiVo Gets 2.0 Makeover
I love my TiVo. The Fall 2007 Service Update that loaded the other day gave the grand old UI a New Web makeover, which I really appreciated. In typical New Web style, there are shadows and gradients, softer and darker colors, etc. As with the NFL, TiVo is embracing the stylings of Web 2.0, which… Read More
More on Workspace Design
So, I’m sitting in our divisional all-hands meeting, virtually of course, and one of the questions is about a remodel that’s going on currently in Building 300 on the Redwood Shores campus. For those not in the know, 300 is the tallest silo with the big old “ORACLE” across the top floor. I used to… Read More
Moar Power!
Because it’s been a slow day, topic-wise, I figured why not blog my response to Billy’s response to my post on his post. This is how the blogosphere stays alive, feeding on itself. Plus, I don’t trust the comments. Billy’s making nice, saying the right things, e.g. “This misses the point or maybe my point… Read More
I Have Firehose A.D.D.
Rich pinged me over IM this morning with some interesting articles comparing hedge funds to software companies. See here and here, really interesting stuff, possibly worth a blog post later, but not the focus here. I got through O’Reilly blog post pretty fast; it’s about 400 words. I started the NYT article, but once I… Read More
How Do You Feel about Your Workspace?
I’ve come across some interesting thoughts on productivity, creativity and physical space lately. First, there’s this bit from Lifehacker about how ceiling height affects your thinking. The central finding of the research is that higher ceilings tend to foster abstract thought, whereas lower ceilings tend to encourage detailed thinking. Pretty cool. Then today, there’s another… Read More
Time for Questions
So, I noticed tonight that Google Reader was displaying a more accurate number of unread items for each feed and folder. To be exact, it was a factor of ten more accurate, showing 1000+ and true counts for everything less than 1000. Then, while writing this entry, it went back to the old style, 100+… Read More
Yahoo! The Sleeping Giant
Last week, screenshots of Kickstart, Yahoo’s lastest foray into social networks surfaced. Not surprisingly, Kickstart is targeted at recruiting, helping college student find an “in” at companies where they want to work and helping companies recruit students. I like this approach, as long as they can keep it clean by ensuring the students are really… Read More
Brake for Geeks
Wow, I read this blog post (via FSJ, with whom I have yet to break up) about a woman’s iPhone-Genius Bar experience and found myself experiencing wide range of emoticons. I mean emotions. It’s off-topic, but then again, what topic do I usually follow? Read the summary FSJ gives or the full post, then come… Read More
Spot the Hoax
After slogging through a full week’s worth of feeds and fighting the urge to use the Mark All as Read button several times, I have a fun idea. Despite this being a no-fun zone for a while, I want to play a round of spot the hoax. The game is simple. I’ve listed a handful… Read More
Fake Steve Jobs Outed
I was so sad to hear the news that FSJ had been outed by Brad Stone of the NYT. Apparently, Daniel Lyons, a writer for Forbes, no less, has been moonlighting as FSJ. Why does this make me sad? Let me count the ways: I have to assume you read FSJ. If you don’t, you… Read More
My iPhone Review
After a month, the torrent of iPhone reviews has begun, so who am I to miss a chance to jump on the bandwagon. Actually, a reader suggested that I blog about the iPhone as a business tool, and I know that a lot of people out there either have one or are sorely tempted to… Read More