This post was inspired by a Fwd from my wingnut uncle, whose steady stream of fear and conspiracy mongering usually goes right into my trash bin. I’m not sure what made me look this time. The email began with a story about an old woman who goes into a grocery store. She forgets to bring…
There have been a couple of interesting developments in news media in recent weeks. The first development is the mostly symbolic vote by the House of Representatives to “defund” NPR. I’m a big fan of NPR, but I’m divided on this. I can’t say philosophically that I believe the government should be in the news…
James Dyson was not happy with his vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t powerful enough, and he determined that the problem was the bag. The bag’s purpose was to catch the dirt, but as it filled up, it quickly compromised the suction. So he set out to create a bagless vacuum cleaner, and through much trial and…
As promised. The second article I alluded to in my last post is really a series of articles ars technica ran last month. It’s an absolutely riveting tale of how the CEO of a well-known Internet security firm stirred the wrath of a loose collective of hackers known as “Anonymous” and paid a heavy…
This is intended to be the first of seven (possibly more) posts on game-changing business ideas. It’s often difficult to recognize when something changes the game. A few months or years down the road, you can usually trace a trail of copycats and wannabes back to the original idea, but even then, sometimes it’s not…
In my last post I attempted to list the things I found especially resonant last year in media, entertainment, art and journalism. I say “attempted” because I didn’t keep track of this stuff very well during 2010. In lieu of keeping track, I retroactively scoured my bookmarks in places like delicious, Instapaper and Evernote, and…
It would probably be better not to say anything. Advertisers won’t like it, and publishers who depend on ad revenue will like it even less. If this sort of thing catches on, there are only two possible endings, and they’re both bad. I’m talking about two services that rescue online content from the twisted carnival…
Better late than never, a list of things I enjoyed in 2010. In the interest of time and space, these are just the things that really stood out (in a good way), with little commentary… Books I read a number of books this year, but these are the few that especially moved me… Fiction Let…
The latest highly-publicized, hotly-ridiculed move by my adopted city of San Francisco was to ban the Happy Meal. And so once again we have lobbed a softball to conservatives and libertarians across the nation, who relish any opportunity to point west and say, “See? See the nanny state? See those people who are too dumb,…
Don’t misunderstand. I believe in the Internet. It’s deeply embedded in my life. It makes so many things so much easier than they used to be. It’s the source of my paychecks. But the Internet is a bubble. Still. Most of the people I deal with on a daily basis would laugh at that thought,…