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How I Got the Google Voice/App Store Story Wrong
Over the weekend I’ve exchanged a few emails with my source, so that I can explain what happened.
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Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 1: Are Those My Initials?
In my 21 years of startups I’ve had my ideas “stolen” twice. Once it almost mattered. This is about the time it didn’t. Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not ju…
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Closure. "I had the only farm capable of nuclear weapons design."
For those that know me, I’m kind of a “life is too short” kind of guy. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back. However, in catching up with the VP of Sales of Ardent last night, I was rem…
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This shouldn’t be the image of Hack Day
I love hack days. I was working in the vicinity of Chad Dickerson when he organised the first internal Yahoo! Hack Day back in 2005, and I’ve since participated in …
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The trouble with non-profits
In the 1990s, a group of psychologists began studying what made experts expert. Their first task was to see whether experts really were expert — whether they were particularly good at their jobs.
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Joel on Software: "By installing Java, you will be able to experience the power of Java"
Just because there’s room on the dialog box, doesn’t mean you have to put something there. The Java installer starts off with a dialog box that manages to repeat the word Java six times without rea…
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Jason Calacanis: What to do if your startup is about fail
Find your domain name at HugeDomains. Start using this domain right away.
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The Founder Visa Ignores Immigration Reality
My fearless readers are, no doubt, already familiar with the fact that I'm an American born and bred, but transplanted here to blighty to fa...
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How Pinball Ate itself: The Economics of Pinball
Will…You…Play…Black Knight Again?? There is a reason I live in Winnetka and not in Evanston. And it’s not because, as Sandeep would put it, I like to get up 30 minutes earl…
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If you find yourself competing with the Internet, find a way out.
In October 1994, at the dawn of blogging, I wrote a piece that actually shook the software world. At the time, the idea of a mere software developer expressing an opinion in public, unedited, in his own words, without the help of a major publication, was unheard of. It had never happened.
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Help save MySQL
I, Michael "Monty" Widenius, the creator of MySQL, am asking you urgently to help save MySQL from Oracle's clutches. Without your immediate...
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Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?
In the past many SEOs have called organic search results the results on the left side of the page and the pay-per-click / AdWords results as the results on the right side of the page. As Google has grown more aggressive with promoting vertical/universal search I think a better way of defining the portions of the…
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Burn Baby Burn
Note there is additional new material at the end of this column -- Bob I am old -- so old that when I was a college freshman there were dormitories filled with men and others filled with women but no dormitories at all filled with both men and women, at least not where I went
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Planet Calacanis
I’ve seen a lot of people quoting and linking to Jason Calacanis’ recent article, The Case Against Apple—in Five Parts , in a positive light. But I can’t. It’s ridiculous.
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Starting a business isn't as crazy and risky as they say
If you're thinking about starting a new venture right now, you need to understand the risks, but you need the real risks. The truth (as always) lies between baseless off-hand remarks about how "95% of businesses fail" (false!) and those startup blogs that show only the rosy side of things.
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Steve Jobs on why Apple doesn’t do market research
An Interface and Product Design blog by Joshua Porter
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The 75% answer
People often ask what I refer to as non-questions. What programming language should I learn? That’s not a real question. You need to probe further to figure out what they are really asking. Is it your first language? Do you want to get a job? Do you want to bend your brain?