Blog Posts

Negotiating your startup offer

Pretty good review of a broad topic: Negotiating Your Startup Offer

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?

“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.

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.

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: ...

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...

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...

Did someone actually have to invent that?

A really charming article about John Karlin who was one of the first UX guys...

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...

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...

Awesome: Big Blizzard Coming

Snow Planet Winnipisaukee

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...

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)

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...

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 ...

What do pig intestines and squid have in common

This is just funny. Ok it’s also a little scary as I love Calamari! > “Calamari is on one side of the plate, sliced hog rectums are on the other. Which is which? We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgangers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass.” (from This American Life)

Get someone to clean your gutters for you

I am not being metaphorical, in fact, I am talking about gutters on your roof. A few years ago I wasn’t regularly cleaning my gutters and had a close call with roof leaks when we had an extensive period of rain and freezing that caused ice dams and all kinds of ugliness to many New England residents as well as friends of mine. I had a scare and since then I’ve been paying someone to clean my gutters each year. Here’s a far more 2013 solution to the same problem. Yes, Robots are no longer just for sweeping your living room!

Aaron Swartz Links

If you are in the tech community you’ve likely heard that Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York. I didn’t know him but I was in the same room with him, at conferences or conversations a few times about 10 years ago. I certainly knew of him. I’ve read many things about him in the last...

Harvard Business School: No Women Entrepreneurs

I was surfing around preparing for my class and happened to look at this page on the Harvard Business School web site. The page is called “Entrepreneurs” and it says, among other things: > “A video archive that captures insights from learning members of the...