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Why I'm Rooting For Google+
The day Google+ launched, I sent a friend at Google who was involved in building the service an email requesting an invite. I got the invite late that day and started playing with the service. Here's my profile. I'm not sure if this page is public or you need a Google+ login to see it. […]
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Free Kindle This November
[Translations: Japanese] In October 2009 John Walkenbach noticed that the price of the Kindle was falling at a consistent rate, lowering almost on a schedule. By June 2010, the rate was so unwavering that he could easily forecast the date … Continue reading →
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Why Microsoft bought Skype
There is so much to write about but I’ll begin with Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion. The pundits are debating whether this move by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes good business sense, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. The better approach is to wonder what would have happened had Microsoft not
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Mainstream Failure
The media’s telling of the Japan story has been inexcusably bad. I can’t count the number of pieces about confinement breaches and radiation surges; where they are not information-free they are wrong, and where they are not wrong, they bypass what matters. Here are a few specifics.
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Insight From Dropbox: Failure Is Not The Worst Outcome, Mediocrity Is
Lesson from the success of Dropbox. Should entrepreneurs abandon current ideas to shoot for something bigger?
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How cold calling (properly) works better than AdWords
How cold calling succeeded where AdWords failed, producing a 100% conversion rate and all the information needed to create a scalable business.
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Simple Truths Smart People Forget
Some of the smartest people I know continuously struggle to get ahead because they forget to address a few simple truths that collectively govern our potential to make progress. So here’s a …
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An Idea for the Economy that will Freak Out a lot of People
The US Treasury is currently borrowing money at a Negative Real Yield . In any normal environment, if you can borrow money at a negative rate you should borrow as much as you can. The premise is that any idiot should be able to earn a return of greater than zero with the money. That’s a premise that should make the…
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Facebook is a Ponzi Scheme
Quill Grid: The Starlink for AI becomes a network. An optional, opt-in distributed AI grid where idle Quill One devices share spare capacity, earn credits, and donate AI hours.
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37signals sent me a gift for pwning their leaderboard
This year I took an AK to the Answers leaderboard at 37signals , mostly answering Highrise questions. The Answers board is the best place to learn how to use Highrise because if you have a question there’s a good chance someone else has already asked it. I scoured it during our implementation in April, 2010 and…
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Hacking Google for Fun and Profit
At the end of last year, Google announced their Vulnerability Reward Program which rewards security researchers for reported security and privacy holes in Google properties. This sounded like an interesting challenge, and I set out to find security holes. I found three, got paid, and am now in the Google Security Hall…
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Flickr is dead
You know what? It doesn’t matter. It’s totally irrelevant. The Google one looks far better, but that’s so beside the point at this point.
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Facebook Ads: The Cheapest Traffic You'll Ever Buy
Whenever people talk about Facebook Ads (or even more generally "Can Facebook justify their $50bn valuation?") the conversation always tends to swing around to how poorly Facebook Ads perform. ...
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Meanwhile, just East of Silicon Valley, in Tupelo Mississippi...
I did an unvacation in Tupelo, Mississippi this past week. An unvacation is my new M.O., in which I travel to someplace fun but don’t take significant time off while there. My old friends Henderson and Rebecca live in Tupelo, and it was a really special opportunity to spend some time with them. One of the many great…
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How to beat Apple
In the near term, companies making iPhone and iPad competitors are never going to beat Apple at their own game. Apple has supply chain advantages, a massive num
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Phil Haack quit Microsoft for GitHub
.hubot stache me
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Daring Fireball: The iPhone 4S
This is the easiest product review I’ve ever written. The iPhone 4S is exactly what Apple says it is: just like the iPhone 4, but noticeably faster, with a significantly improved camera, and an impressive new voice-driven feature called Siri.
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Why Palantir Makes My Head Hurt
While I've blogged before about Palantir Technologies (e.g., Beware the Spectacular B-Round Valuation), this will probably be my last post about them because, since leaving MarkLogic, I am no longer terribly involved in the Intelligence Community space nor engaged against them as an indirect competitor. I initially
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Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India
[UPDATE: To all those who got here by clicking a link entitled “Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India”, that title has been retired as an unfortunate misfire on my pa…
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