Archive for December, 2006
Web 2.0 narcissism and geeking out in Northeastern Wisconsin
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m in Appleton, Wisconsin for the holidays and aside from chilling out after a really amazing year, I wanted to see what was going on around here from a tech perspective. Back when we were putting together Open Hack Day, I got an email from Bob Waldron [...]
Living it up in Wisconsin
I am currently visiting my soon-to-be in-laws in Appleton, Wisconsin, which happens to be the home and burial place of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the self-proclaimed birthplace of Harry Houdini (he was actually born in Hungary), and home of the first enclosed shopping mall in the United States. Appleton has roughly 75,000 residents and the [...]
James Brown: 1933-2006
On Saturday night, I was hanging out with some friends when we started talking about music legends we wanted to see while they were still alive. I talked about how Nancy and I saw Buck Owens play at his restaurant in Bakersfield less than a year before he died, and my companions said, “Have [...]
Five things you didn’t know about me
Cody got me.
Here are five things you probably didn’t know about me, with some extended commentary for some of them:
1. My sophomore year of high-school (circa 1986-87), I formed a hip-hop (or “rap” as we called it) group and entered the high school talent show with some friends. We laid down some beats with [...]
Investing in people: microcredit and Kiva.org
Inspired in equal parts by Greg Cohn’s experience with Kiva.org and the awarding of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their work in micro-credit, I decided to make a couple of small loans to enterpreneurs in the developing world. For those who are not familiar with the concept [...]
Widgets are the ringtones for the MySpace generation
Today, I was thinking about widgets and marketplaces like the Wallop Modder Network that allow for the buying and selling of widgets. The over-30 curmudgeon in me wondered, “why would anyone ever buy and sell silly little widgets for their blogs?” Then I remembered the always-surprising (at least to me) ringtone market, and [...]
Predictive markets microconference at Yahoo!
My Yahoo! colleague Chris Plasser has put together a really impressive (and free) event at Yahoo! on Wednesday, December 13, the first installment of a new series called confab.yahoo. Here’s the description:
Join us for a public “how to” session on prediction markets** moderated by James Surowiecki, New Yorker columnist and best-selling author of The [...]
What was your first Amazon order? (and why George Jones matters)
I was logged in to Amazon tonight checking an order and followed the link to “orders by year.” The first order in my history was placed on December 23, 1997 and appeared to be a last-minute Christmas gift for my mother. I ordered these two books:
Kay Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind: a look at [...]