Blog Posts

April 2012

• 2012-04-24

  New Book: Founder’s Dilemmas

  This book looks good: “Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup”. I came across it in the “Startup Lessons Learned” Blog, which may be the best blog about leann startups.

  This excerpt talks about a common scenario with startups, where the founders assume that they way they chose to split equity on day 0 will continue to work for them as time goes on:

  “How should founders deal with such developments? In short, by assuming when they do the initial split that things will change, even if the specific changes cannot be foreseen, and therefore structuring a dynamic equity split rather than the static splits used at Zipcar, govWorks, and many other startu...

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  #business #culture
• 2012-04-18

  Must See: “Luck of the Irish” at the Huntington Theatre

  If you are a theatre fan I strongly recommend a play I just saw last night. It’s called “Luck of the Irish”. From a review on Boston.com:

  “… It’€™s one of numerous instances in Greenidge’s superb, beautifully realized new play — now receiving its premiere in a Huntington Theatre Company production directed by Melia Bensussen — that illustrate the playwright’s sure grasp of the nuances of race and class and her insights into the complexities of human nature.” (from Boston.Com)

  Run, don’t walk to see this play at the Huntington Theatre in Boston!

  #places #culture
• 2012-04-17

  New York Times Grammar and Style

  Listen, I love the New York Times. I read it cover to cover (or pixel to pixel) every day and have it delivered in dead-tree format to my doorstep each morning.

  But so often I come across an awkward sentence which I have to read and re-read several times to understand.

  I’ve been noticing this for a long time now and it makes me wonder whether it’s a stylistic thing or a that they have had to lay off their best editors.

  At any rate, I don’t have the same impression when I read he Wall Street Journal (which I admire but don’t love.)

  Here’s a recent example:

  “LAGOS, Nigeria — In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people — a population about as big as that of the present-day United States — will live in a country roughly the size of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.” (from NYT)

  What do you say, am I crazy?

  #culture
• 2012-04-16

  How far does idealism get you

  David Brooks of the New York Times, in an article about (my interpretation) the limits of idealism:

  “It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it.

  That’s a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievem...

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  #politics
• 2012-04-14

  Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

  Ok, I don’t agree with all of “Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone”:

  “Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.”

  but there are some good lessons and reminders in it:

  “Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.”

  I think it’s worth reading.

• 2012-04-07

  Do you finish books?

  I love this article. It’s by an actual authortalking about whether it matters if a reader reads a book through to the very end.

  He starts with the basics, claiming that serious (‘mature‘) readers don’t feel self-imposed pressure to read a book to its very last syllable:

  “It seems obvious that any serious reader will have learned long ago how much time to give a book before choosing to shut it. It’s only the young, still attached to that sense of achievement inculcated by anxious parents, who hang on doggedly when there is no enjoyment. “ (from Why Finish Books)

  Agreed.

  He then ...

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  #culture
• 2012-04-07

  Why You Want To Be A Learn-it-All

  A provocatively titled article (Why Youth Has an Advantage In Innovation) argues that to innovate you have to be an omnivorous and promiscuous consumer of new stuff. Try this list on for size, does it fit?

  When a new device or operating system comes out do you rush out to get it as soon as possible – just because you want to play with the new features? Or do you wait for the dust to settle so that you don’t make a mistaken purchase. Or because you don’t want to waste your time. Do you use LinkedIn for all of your recruiting, or do you mistakenly think that LinkedIn is o...

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  #business #education
• 2012-04-06

  Americans Elect: Another Opinion

  A month or two ago I read an article by Thomas Friedman introducing Americans Elect, an innovative concept for bringing a third major presidential candidate to the table for this year’s Presidential contest. I liked it so much I wrote about in on my blog.

  So it is with great interest that I came across this recent article by Gail Collins totally hating the Americans Elect concept:

  “But it’s too dangerous. History suggests that this election could be decided by a small number of votes in a few closely contested states. You do no...

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  #politics
• 2012-04-04

  Email Rookie Mistakes

  I’ve watched some people struggling with some email blow ups and frustrations over the years and I was just thinking about some of the ways I’ve developed to avoid them. I am not going into the best salutation or the best conclusion but more touchy-feely things. Here are my guidelines:

  Write the email as if it might show up on the front page of the paper tomorrow morning. Because it might. Or it might be forwarded to the wrong person. Or you may accidentally send it to the wrong person. Worse, to a long mailing list of the wrong people. Don’t include anything that you would be embarrassed or worse, ashamed, to have to explain. ...

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  #internet
• 2012-04-02

  [GEEKY] Sublime Text surpassing TextMate?

  I’ve been doing some more coding these days in Ruby.

  I’ve had great success and fun (especially when debugging) using RadRails, which is an Eclipse based IDE for Ruby and Rails. It’s quite nice.

  With introduction of RVM, bundler, and so on, I’ve gotten a feeling that RadRails maybe too much. It seems to get contexts confused and create more hassles. I am not sure yet, but it’s caused me to go back and use TextMate, which I’ve always had in an honored spot in my toolset.

  Poking aroun...

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  #programming

March 2012

• 2012-03-28

  “We might as well have a good time while we’re here, don’t you think?”

  This is from a play we saw last year at the Huntington Theatre. The play is Prelude to a Kiss by Craig Lucas. It production was quite good but this particular speech struck me as the best part of the play. Don’t read it as depressing just as really good writing and really true.

  

  #places #culture
• 2012-03-27

  G+ Where Art Thou?

  Here is a a really good commentary on Google Plus (G+).I have to say that analyzing such a large system and a phenomenon involving millions of users is kind of a fools errand. (Remember “Everything is Obvious”). Still if you are interested in the evolution of social networks it is a good read:

  “Is this Google’s swan song? Of course not. But it is almost certainly their biggest failure by a good distance. And it’s not a Flubber-like experimental miss like Orkut and Wave and the many Labs projects snuffed before their time. It corru...

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• 2012-03-27

  Whoa! Big Brother just rearranged the furniture

  That’s my Gmail window. The black bar is Google’s toolbar.

  

  What does that PLAY button do?

• 2012-03-22

  [GEEKY] Capistrano Colors

  A random, highly specific and geeky tip:

  If you’ve used Capistrano before, you’re familiar with the large error logs. Finding errors is, well, a hassle. You’ve got a whole slew of text, some just saying what command it’s going to execute next, sometimes errors, sometimes just output from Bundler or whatever it’s running. (from Rails Tip #8: Capistrano Colors)

  Just follow the link to Rails Tip #8: Capistrano Colors) and your Cap life will be a little better.

  #programming
• 2012-03-15

  Paul Graham: Fear and Startup Ideas

  Paul Graham’s new essay is “Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas.” From my reading of it, it talks about great startup ideas, fear and cynicism. The meat of the article is a series of shall we say audacious startup ideas, most of which you’ve had yourself and in each case you may have thought: “You’d have to be crazy to try this!”.

  I once read, “If you’re not a little bit nervous, you’re not pushing yourself enough”. I like that mantra. It works for me. This essay is related to that thought:

  “One of the more surprising things I’ve noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are.” (from ...

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  #business
• 2012-03-15

  Art in Willemstad

  An annual event, the streets of Willemstad (Curaçao)are covered with art by well known artists:

  http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

  (See: Willemstad Word Gekleurd)

  #places #culture
• 2012-03-13

  Why doing design for Facebook is a thankless job

  A friend of mine hates, HATES, the new Facebook timeline. She wants to turn it off, but can’t. I happen to think the timeline is really cool, well designed, useful. On occasion it even gives me goosebumps. But. She. Hates. It. Wants to turn it off. Can’t.

  I was thinking, Facebook has something like 700,000,000 users, right? I don’t know the right number or how many are online every day. But there are many.

  So imagine you are responsible for the design of this important new Facebook feature called the TimeLine. You need to invent the look and feel of the new Facebook Timeline. You design your little heart out. You have user tests, A/B/C/D/E tests. Hundreds of people and thousands of dollars later you release your baby.

  95% of the users love it. Success right?

  35 million people still hate the design.

  Bummer.

  #design #blogging
• 2012-03-12

  Now that’s a nice metaphor

  I love this metaphor – or is it a simile – or a malapropism – who knows:

  “It’s the cloud within the sterling silver lining” – Frank Bruni in the New York Times

  See what he did there? It’s inside out and upside down. Cool. Forgive me, the article is ok too, but that quote jumped out at me I had to spin up the ole blog machine.

  #culture
• 2012-03-08

  Launch Conference, Day Two

  Yesterday was great. The buzz in the place is unbelievable. This place is the Launch Conference. Organized and run beautifully by Jason Calacanis (who has become much more warm and fuzzy than I remember). Here is Rafe Needleman’s summary of day one.

  And with all due respect to Boston and Scott Kirsner in particular, I cannot see a gathering like this happening in Boston. There just are not nearly enough interesting startups to pick from. Now, no, I don’t claim to know anything like all of them. I am sure there are lots of great proje...

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  #places
• 2012-03-07

  Launch Conference: Day One

  The Launch Conference is starting today. It is descended from many venerable conferences, particularly like Demo. I was a fairly regular attendee at the Demo conference over the years, and so far, Launch seems to be continuing that heritage in a very impressive way.

  Basically this conference is about Products, Products, Products. Particularly software and web and mobile products. There’s a really good energy in the room, like the start of another gold rush 🙂 It is overlaid with the usual Silicon Valley attitude and posturing, but that’s ok, I kind of like that.

  Each launching company is given 5 minutes to demo/p...

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  #business