I have a somewhat irrational affection for Costco. The selection is good, the prices are low. They have a generous return policy (my friend just returned a printer he bought there four years ago and exchanged it for a new one). The folks who work at the one in San Francisco always seem to be…
I just finished watching the second season of Mad Men, and I’m left with a familiar bittersweet feeling. The same one you get when you finish a great book. I don’t often get this feeling from a TV show, so I’ve begun to reflect a little on what it is that makes the show so…
[Disclaimer: The following post is partly a reprise of one I wrote last year] March Madness is almost here, and my workplace productivity is bound to suffer a little (don’t worry Kyte crew — I promise I’ll get all my stuff done). Selection Sunday is this weekend, and then it’s all about bracketology. I always…
There’s no shortage of ideas for how the newspaper industry might save itself – by adopting new business models, distribution strategies, etc. The other day, my friend Ben suggested a new twist on subscriptions that would work something like cable television. Others hint that newspapers should push for mass adoption of the Kindle. Still others…
In the tradition of The Giant Pool of Money, its spinoff Planet Money and this fine piece of writing by Henry Blodget in the Atlantic Monthly, here’s a nice piece of animation that explains how we blew up the economy: The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
Remember CD-ROMs? Remember how cool they were and how for a brief moment in the early 90s it seemed every possible thing was being CD-ROMified – from children’s books to topo maps to baseball cards? CD-ROMs were briefly so cool that people would pay $200 a pop for the latest and greatest titles. Then they…