02/28 US Politics don’t have a left? — An interesting international perspective on politics: > “…So, believe me, US politics don’t have a Left. Looking at the presidential candidates, I am frankly appalled. None of them would be a viable politician in Sweden. They all support the death penalty, none advocates strict gun control and all make frequent mention of their religious beliefs in public. These are extremist stances. Not even the tiny Christian Democrat party mentions God publicly in Sweden, for fear of alienating the pragmatic rationalist majority….” (from Aardvarchaeology)

02/27 Aaron Swartz: continuing developments — In the continuing stories around Aaron Swartz and events that led to his tragic suicide recently: > “Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution, motivated by anything/everything from Aaron’s effective campaigning against SOPA to his run-ins with the FB...

02/26 Yay! Coffee is good for me (again) — Well these stories appear from time to time, either saying it’s good or bad for you. What’s an addict to do? > “Coffee isn’t just warm and energizing, it may also be extremely good for you. In recent years, scientists have studied the effects of coffee on  various aspects of health and their results have been nothing short of amazing.” (from Lifehacker)

02/23 I love sriracha sauce, do you? — Just tonight I squirted a few shots of Sriracha on my multi-layered-grilled-vegetable parmigiana. And now there’s an article about Sriracha in Business Week! “…Like ketchup, sri...

02/23 Negotiating your startup offer — Pretty good review of a broad topic: Negotiating Your Startup Offer

02/21 Kluge: Is that an obsolete term? — I was amazed today when in a group of 25 undergraduate engineering students, only three had heard the word kluge. When I explained what it was, it still did not ring a bell. When I asked how they refer to an ugly, clunky, scotch-taped solution, inelegant and embarrassing, but which basically works, they came up with “hack”. Query: Is the word “kluge” becoming obsolete among the geek community?

02/20 “The Lean Startup” doesn’t have the word “market” in its index — I am a really big fan of the book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. So much so that I am using it as a “textbook” for the Entrepreneurship course I am teaching at Olin College. Oddly enough, I couldn’t find the word “market” in the index.

02/19 Galapagos article from one my my fellow travelers — Last year we went with National Geographic to the Galapagos islands for an amazing journey of discovery. The Galapagos are a set of islands, part of Ecuador, that I had heard about all my life, but never thought of as somewhere I could actually visit. Well, you can. We could. It was a wonderful trip. Here is an article about that trip to the Galapagos was written for the Sidney Morning Herald by one of our co-travelers.

02/17 Are smartphone apps “applications” or “features”? — Andy Payne wrote an interesting analysis about the future of the “software industry” or whatever we should call it nowadays (e.g. is Amazon a software company?) Not long ago a classic “put down” of a business idea was: ...

02/14 Looking for eRoom — Long time ago I worked at a company called eRoom Technology where we developed a product called… eRoom. It was pretty successful and it was bought by a company called Documentum, that in turn was bought by a company called [EMC](http://www.emc.com/i...

02/14 How to be a star engineer! — We all want to be star engineers, right? Here’s an intriguing article from about ten years ago engineers from top companies helped to [dispel the myths about star performers and uncover the surprising secrets of stellar achievement for engineers.](http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/Research/Advice/star_enginee...

02/11 Did someone actually have to invent that? — A really charming article about John Karlin who was one of the first UX guys...

02/10 Patents: Innovation Nation — An interesting view on patents from Judge Posner: > “In Posner’s view, many patents are unnecessary. Patents, he believes, are important for drug companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars bringing a new dr...

02/08 Loomio: Collaborative Decision Making — Loomio is a new app looks quite cool and worth checking out: > “Loomio is a collaborative decision-making tool. Loomio reduces the cost of participation in decision-making, making it easy for any group to translate online communication into real-world collective action….C...

02/06 Awesome: Big Blizzard Coming —

02/05 Snow Planet Winnipisaukee —

02/03 Zero Dark Thirty — I saw this movie last night and really thought it was great. I had read somenegative commentary about Zero Dark Thirty: > “At the same time, a number of journalists and public official...

01/31 Amazing: 400ms makes a difference — Under the header “Natural Gas News Leak” (funny) there’s a story about how the securities market reacted 400ms before a bit of news came out of the government and they reacted by trading on the news. The article has lots of charts and graphs which may say whether or how much money was made or lost. The article says:  > “It is worth pointing out that the EIA Natural Gas Report comes out weekly (every Thursday at 10:30) and the market reacts within a few milliseconds. This is because the report centers on one number which makes it easy for machines to process and take action.” (from Nanex.net)

01/29 N.E.A.T. Product from Gruve: Fact or Fiction? — There’s something about this Gruve product that bugs me: > “The Gruve Solution is a new, completely revolutionary approach to weight management that incorporates the landmark discovery of N.E.A.T. (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) which is al...

01/17 How do you fit a 365 day calendar on an index card? — [](Y.Squarespace.Utils.lightboxAsset()I designed the calendar to the right to help me keep track of my piano practice. As you know, maybe, to learn piano you need to practice every day. Well ...