Monthly Archives: March 2009

As we give up land-lines for cell phones, there’s still one useful purpose for the plain-old telephone:  providing a number for the entire “household”. There are a bunch of cases where a household number is needed:  giving an emergency contact … Continue reading →

Recent discussions about bailouts and regulations have got me thinking. Corporations enable capitalism.  The main feature is limited liability, which limits owner’s losses to their original investment and employee’s to losing their jobs.  In other words, if a corporation has … Continue reading →

With the proliferation of public computers (e.g. libraries, hotel business center, etc.), we need a browser with a lockable “public computer” mode, unlockable only by the computer administrator. In this mode, no passwords are stored, and auto-complete for form fields … Continue reading →

The venture capital business is in the middle of a shakeout. For too long, venture’s been over-funded and over-staffed with homogeneity:  the same kinds of partners, operating with the same fund model, looking at the same investments, in the same … Continue reading →

Why do we need Twitter and Facebook?  (esp. after Facebook’s redesign, making it much more Twitter-like) One reason:  tweets are 100% public, Facebook status updates are (generally) not. As such, the collective tweet-stream is a great source of near-real-time information.  … Continue reading →

I thought Douglas Bowman’s recent post about his departure from Google was interesting.  As a visual designer, he felt Google’s data-driven culture was “paralyzing the company” and “preventing it from making any daring design decisions”. Ten years ago (before I … Continue reading →

Brad Feld’s recent blog post on “Investment vs Speculation” is recommended reading for every entrepreneur. Brad’s writing as an investor, but the points apply to entrepreneurs working on new opportunities. Is your idea an “investment”:  do you see an opening … Continue reading →