The most inspirational songs of the 80’s
For a fun diversion take a look at Cracked.com‘s list of “The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational 80’s Songs“. Don’t know that Danger Zone or You’re the Best (Joe Esposito?!?) would be on my personal list. And how can you possibly leave out Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is (which, in a true highlight of my life, I was able to see performed live by Foreigner about 5 feet from the stage at a conference I was attending)? For that matter, how can Wanted (Dead or Alive)] not be at the top of the list – it blows the rest of the group away without a doubt! …
December 12, 2007· 1 min read
Skinny Songs!
My partner and friend Heidi Roizen has just gone public with her new venture. No – it’s not another tech start-up. It’s Skinny Songs – a collection of music that she wrote and produced as a soundtrack to inspire those trying to lose weight. Its part country, part rock, all attitude and extremely catchy (there are sample tracks on the site linked to above – my personal favorite is I think I’ll go to Saks). …
December 11, 2007· 1 min read
I’ve given up on IM
Someone asked me today if I use IM any more – the answer is a resounding NO. Make that NO WAY. I used to think that IM was useful for short conversations but have completely changed my view on it and dropped using it altogether about 18 months ago. Here are some of my reasons for jumping off the bandwagon: As the number of connected devices I use increases, it became harder to keep my ‘status’ up to date. At any given moment I have at least one laptop online (sometimes two), my office tower and a mobile device. With my IM client on each of these, 1) it always looked like I was online somewhere and 2) I seemed to be locked into some kind of display algorithm where conversations would apparently be randomly rotated from device to another. I like the phone. Like many people, I was using IM to replace just picking up the phone and having a quick conversation. For something that should be done by text, I prefer email (see below) and for a real conversation I prefer talking live. IM was the unhappy medium between the two which turned out to be unsatisfying for either. I don’t need yet another interruption. While I freely admit that I’m an easy target to interrupt, IM is a little too in my face. There are plenty of other ways to get my attention quickly. If I’m on IM, I’m on email. If I’m on IM, I can be reached directly through Twitter. Plus there’s always the phone, or Skype if you insist on something that has a little more technology appeal. ‘Nuff said…
December 11, 2007· 2 min read
Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit
You know your software has problems when you have to offer a tool like the Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit. The WSPBTK, like its name suggests, stops Windows Update from automatically installing new service packs (and presumably entering into the endless Vista shut-down cycle in the process). Brilliant! Hat tip to Ross for the pointer.
December 11, 2007· 1 min read
Explicit Behavior
Atul Gawande has an outstanding article in this week’s New Yorker entitled “The Checklist” (full article available) that describes how explicitly defining the steps in complex processes (and then following those steps religiously) significantly reduces errors in certain intensive care procedures. Creating explicit checklists of steps for common ICU procedures resulted in far fewer infections and other complications and an unbelievable amount of money and time saved (not to mention the number of deaths averted). It’s truly mind boggling and a great example of Occam’s Paradox, which I wrote about a few years ago on this blog (for those of you who don’t want to link through, Occam’s Paradox is the idea that while the “challenges we face in life and business [may often be] complex – the solution to those challenges generally are not”). It’s a reminder that in many cases making behavior explicit rather than relying on memory, intuition or guess work ultimately saves time and results in greater accuracy. As the article point out, airplane pilots figured this out a long time ago. Doctors are apparently just waking up to the idea. Perhaps it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about it.
December 10, 2007· 1 min read
The missing social network
Facebook trying to co-opt the web into Facebook highlights for me how backwards the social networking world is today. I’m a fan of the platform idea, but the more I think about this, the more I come to the conclusion that the world already has the greatest platform yet developed at its fingertips – the Web itself. I understand why Facebook is trying to enable the reporting of external content all over their site but what would really be great is if rather than trying to port the net into my social network, my social network extended onto the net. When I’m in Facebook, I don’t really care that much if Brad just bought Book A or if Chris just purchased movie tickets. When I really care is when I’m on Amazon looking for my next read or when I’m at Fandango about to buy tickets to see a film. More generally, when I hit a site, I’d love to know who else I know who has been there, where they surfed to afterwards and what other related sites I should be checking out based on the behavior of my network. When I’m on a blog, I’d love to see who I know who has left comments, how they’ve rated the content and if I’m reading something written by someone that’s a few degrees of separation from someone I know. I’d like all of my networks (my contacts, my LinkedIn connections, my Facebook friends, etc.) to be a part of this extension of the web and for it to inform and enhance my surfing. …
December 7, 2007· 2 min read
Widgets are s-l-o-w-i-n-g m–e d—o—w—n
The great thing about having a bunch of widgets on my blog is that every time my site slows down I have my choice of people to blame. Shame on me for having so many widgets, I guess, but really – there has to be a better way of managing this. From start to finish, the experience of inserting a widget on my blog is unsatisfying. I have to configure each separately (so it’s hard to make them consistent in look and feel); I have to manually insert the javascript on my blog; to change attributes or location of the widget I have to mess around with the code again or have to go back to the site where I created the widget in the first place; I can’t create a library of widgets and turn them on and off at will; and my widgets are constantly breaking something on my site (apologies for those using my Lijit search last week, which I managed to inadvertently disable when I was moving a few things around on my sidebars). And because I use advanced templates in Typepad everything that’s designed to make at least some of this easier doesn’t work. …
December 6, 2007· 3 min read
Life in the spotlight can be tuff
The thing about being the current platform of record is that all eyes are on you. So when you do something stupid, like co-opting information from around the web into everyone’s Facebook feed without a user’s explicit permission, you get called on the mat for it. Mark Zuckerberg had it right today in his apology for the Beacon debacle when he said: _Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it. _ …
December 6, 2007· 2 min read
BioWest with a ‘Vue
One of the best parts of being a part of TechStars this summer has been watching the companies make their way onward and upward now that TechStars 2007 is fading into memory. While most are still in some form of beta (meaning that their sites don’t tell you much about what they are up to) a good handful are making real progress. A great example is EventVue (also still in beta), which provides conference attendees a way to interact before, during and after a conference (which is really the main reason anyone attends a conference in the first place). BioWest just announced that they would be using the platform to support their upcoming conference and my friend Adam Rubenstein (who writes a blog about the Colorado life science investing) has a nice post up on why BioWest went with EventVue. Go TechStars Go!
December 4, 2007· 1 min read
When you know it’s not right . . . it isn’t
_“When you know it’s not right, it isn’t.” _ A fellow board member said this to me a few months back and I wrote it down as something I wanted to remind myself of every once in a while. She was referring to the human tendency to act slowly in the face of clear evidence and in particular to venture capitalists’ reluctance to be decisive. While I don’t fully subscribe to the “Blink” theory on decision making, I find it excruciating when decisions are drug out unnecessarily. Don’t do that.
December 4, 2007· 1 min read