Slides from a recent talk I gave on design trends that are shaping product development: Designing Great Products Lots of wonderful apps provided as examples – thank you to the folks that created them.
Designing Businesses: A presentation by Manu Kumar
A few weeks ago marked the second occasion of the new Designers + Geeks Speaker Series, a monthly event that features notable speakers from the worlds of design, tech, and all manner of geekery. Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures gave the keynote, leading a discussion on how to form great businesses from innovative tech. Manu [...]
More Amazing Bike Stunts From Danny Macaskill
I love these Danny Macaskill bike stunt videos. His first video made the rounds a few years ago, clearly setting his skills apart from most of what you see in stunt videos. I love the singularity of focus that his skills must require. I mean, the guy must do little besides ride bicycles. It’s kind of [...]
Thoughts On “The Shareable Future of Cities” (TED talk by Alex Steffen)
Just watched Alex Steffen's TED talk on "The Shareable Future of Cities." He weaves together a number of interesting concepts that I've been thinking about lately: Urban / city design that naturally lowers emissions and fights climate change. Collaborative consumption of what he calls "urban surplus" – the classic example of a power drill that [...]
Simple HTTP Server For Local Website Development
In my experience, one of the most difficult steps in learning to be a web programmer is getting your local server and development environment setup. Getting Django, MySQL, Rails, WordPress/MAMP, or your other configuration of choice working can be a huge stumbling block for beginners. I recently learned that Python provides a really simple way [...]
Good Ideas Have Lonely Childhoods (So Do Startups)
I focused my career on the Internet nearly six years ago, and have been on the “founder” side of the startup equation for the last year and a half. This is one of the few quotes that has stuck with me: Good ideas have lonely childhoods. As far as I know, the quote originated with [...]
HackerTable Featured In 7×7 Magazine
I’m pleased to say that one of my side-projects, HackerTable.com, was featured in 7×7 Magazine’s “Best of the City 2011″ issue. Here’s the excerpt from the magazine and their website: Best Last-Minute Reservation: Hackertable Everyone knows that dining at French Laundry isn’t exactly an off-the-cuff event. Now parties of two or four with a little [...]
Education Is Ripe For Technology
EduTech always seems to be a category that the tech community loves to dismiss. The sales could be codenamed “Mission: Impossible” and the industry moves incredibly slowly when compared to the typical investment haven – tech. But it’s a critical industry, and one that seems to be on the brink of crisis (if not already [...]
A Parable Of Pottery And Coding
A developer friend once told me a parable about a pottery class, the moral of which can be applied to programming methodologies. The story has stuck with me and influenced my thinking about coding, so I thought I’d pass it along here: The Parable Of The Pottery Class There was once a pottery teacher who [...]
Stats About Smarthphone Use For Shopping
A few weeks ago, Google published a fantastic study titled “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users.” It covers some general usage statistics, search behaviors (surprise surprise), ad performance and use of local information. A few of the stats that stuck with me: 95% of smartphone owners have looked for local information 77% have contacted a [...]