Saturday, December 15, 2012

Some poor fools think I'm an authority on startups

Photo
Photo (Photo credit: Jay Garmon)
Here's me getting profiled by Insider Louisville, which characterizes me as...
"[A]bout as close as Louisville has to a start-up nomad. That specie of homo technicus so common in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is vital to creating, then sustaining, any city’s entrepreneurial culture. The swashbuckler who jumps from big corporation to start-up, start-up to big corporation. At the Louisville level, it’s extremely rare because there aren’t that many viable startup-to-corporate-to-startup opportunities."
It goes on from there. I'll be over here wondering who the heck they're actually talking about, 'cause surely that can't be me.

Monday, December 03, 2012

Twitter's 43 favorite links from Nov. 2012

Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos (Photo credit: Dunechaser)
Below are the 43 links I shared on Twitter in Nov. 2012 that subsequently earned at least 100 clicks.
  1. "Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas." (1373)
  2. Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election (1319)
  3. 25 Entrepreneurs Tell What They Wish They’d Known before Founding Their First Startup (1071)
  4. Open Source Entrepreneurship (729)
  5. Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web - The Oatmeal (703)
  6. Defining engagement by clicks, likes & shares works for Google’s search engine, not for a social network (549)
  7. 5 APIs that will transform the Web in 2013 (442)
  8. Don't Fall For Fake Facebook Privacy Notice (434)
  9. It's an amazing time for things that aren't quite traditional laptops (424)
  10. Follow the goal creep by David of 37signals (365)
  11. The startup founder's lie about "comfort zones" (335)
  12. Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works (312)
  13. What the Research on Habit Formation Reveals about our Willpower and Overall Well-Being (304)
  14. The truth about the "friend zone" (295)
  15. Why you should take your 20′s seriously (291)
  16. Want to create a new habit? Get ready to break it. (288)
  17. The perfect email (273)
  18. 50 Startup Lessons Learned in 12 months (258)
  19. Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years (256)
  20. Q: "How much does an app cost?" A: "About as much as a car." (255)
  21. 512 Paths to the White House - Winning Scenarios for Both Candidates (246)
  22. I Am A Terrible Programmer (243)
  23. Why art is hard (236)
  24. Startups: How you can do it alone (220)
  25. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson's Law to Kick Procrastination's Ass (218)
  26. A billion dollar software tech company is founded every 3 months in the U.S. (215)
  27. This is why I’m not backing you on Kickstarter (215)
  28. Sorry, No Calls (200)
  29. Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama? (193)
  30. Entrepreneur’s Don’t Think Enough. Here’s What You Can Do About It (193)
  31. Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained (192)
  32. Google Launches Ingress, a Worldwide Mobile Alternate Reality Game (158)
  33. Einstein's list of demands for staying with his wife (158)
  34. "It’s better to have a few fantastic things designed for you than to have many untrustworthy things poorly designed" (153)
  35. 2512 (149)
  36. It's fine to get an MBA but don't be an MBA (142)
  37. Triumph of the Nerds: Nate Silver Wins in 50 States (137)
  38. "How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting." (136)
  39. Programming is a Pop Culture (133)
  40. Jeff Bezos attended 60 investor meetings to raise $1m from 22 people, just to get Amazon started (133)
  41. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC)and our Napster is Udacity (121)
  42. If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month (119)
  43. Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech (117)
Stats gathered via Buffer.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Holiday gift ideas: The hard sci-fi starter kit

ringworld
Hard science fiction is often code for "sci fi that requires the reader to do math" -- it's a label that turns off not just non-sci-fi fans, but even devout but nontechnical science fiction fanatics. Are there hard sci-fi books that not only overcome this label, but might imbue a nascent love of the subgenre?

The SF Signal Irregulars say yes (in podcast form).

Patrick Hester, Jeff Patterson, Paul Weimer and (sadly) me build a reading list to tempt even the staunchest hard sci-fi doubter. And, yes, Ringworld makes multiple appearances.

[BONUS: We stop mid-podcast to disabuse Patrick of the notion that The 13th Warrior is a good movie. I may have instigated this intervention. I also haven't been invited back to the podcast since. Coincidence? I think not.]

If you're looking for the nerdiest of all possible holiday gifts, this podcast is an ultra-geeky idea factory. Take a listen.

As always, my rap sheet of past SF Signal podcast transgressions is available here.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

The 33 best stories, pictures and ideas of Sept. 2012

Kickstarter
Kickstarter (Photo credit: Scott Beale)
Below are the 33 links I shared on Twitter in Sept. 2012 that subsequently earned at least 100 clicks.
  1. Black Swan Farming (890) 
  2. Things I’ve quit doing at my desk (692) 
  3. "The truth is that if your company sells hardware today, your business model is essentially over." (560) 
  4. The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code (491) 
  5. "A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup." (490) 
  6. 29 Things I, as a designer, wish more tech startups knew (453) 
  7. Cosmo, the Hacker 'God' Who Fell to Earth (424) 
  8. "PayPal have all the power of a bank and yet none of the responsibility." (412) 
  9. Everything's broken and nobody's upset (376) 
  10. xkcd's Click-and-Drag megacomic in a zoomable map interface (330) 
  11. Web Design is 95% Typography (326) 
  12. The only 2 ways to build a $100 million business (316) 
  13. The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. (309) 
  14. "Statistically, one third of all [PINs] can be guessed by trying just 61 distinct combinations!" (281) 
  15. Be nice to those that serve you (238) 
  16. Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect (224) 
  17. Stanford announces 16 free online courses for fall quarter (218) 
  18. The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) (215) 
  19. What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology (187) 
  20. The Difference Between Apple & Amazon In One Chart (187) 
  21. Let Shit Happen (159) 
  22. Neil Gaiman's 8 Rules of Writing (158) 
  23. Meeting A Troll... (How the Anonymous Web Enables and Disguises Sociopathy) (154) 
  24. Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Wikipedia (153) 
  25. Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama (146) 
  26. Solving Gen Y's Passion Problem (141) 
  27. Dear Programmer, I have an idea (135) 
  28. Marissa Mayer Tells Yahoo Employees Products Must Ship In 6 Months, Or Don't Bother (123) 
  29. "NoPassword means you don't need a password or a complicated OAuth scheme. Just email." (122) 
  30. Infographic - How big is our own solar system? (119) 
  31. Working From Home? You're a Better Worker (117) 
  32. Kickstarter Is Not a Store (111) 
  33. Amanda Palmer's Million-Dollar Music Project and Kickstarter's Accountability Problem (103)
Stats gathered via Buffer.