“Everything in moderation” is perhaps the worst advice to let govern your life. The people who have changed & shaped this world were very focused & single-minded individuals. They didn’t moderate the output of their passion, they opened their throttle full-bore and intelligently applied themselves. If you want to

thegongshow [http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/861156426/gaming-and-education]: > Speaking about gaming in general, to play a video games is to make many small decisions in a short window of time and instantly get feedback on those decisions.  In that respect I think gaming helped my analytical skills in the

infoneer-pulse [http://pulse.infoneer.net/post/798671780/the-creativity-crisis]: > roomthily [http://roomthily.tumblr.com/post/798514160]: > Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But

performableblog [http://blog.performable.com/post/660238926/revisiting-cialdinis-6-principles-of-influence] : > A great resource over at Online Marketing News: An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence & Persuasion [http://onlinemarketingnews.org/an-illustrated-guide-to-the-science-of-influence-persuasion] If you’ve never read Robert Cialdini’s Influence, you should run to a book store, buy it, and

(For those unaware of the dilemma, read Christensen’s excellent book [http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business-Essentials/dp/0060521996] ) It should go without saying these days, but tech companies wishing to take insurance against decelerating internal innovation and growing competition ought to be producing robust APIs against their core offerrings / value.

infoneer-pulse [http://pulse.infoneer.net/post/358148791/the-apple-ipad-first-impressions]: jeffrock [http://jeffrock.com/post/358130186/the-apple-ipad-first-impressions]: David Pogue [http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/the-apple-ipad-first-impressions/]: > At the same time, the bashers should be careful, too. As we enter Phase 2, remember how silly you all looked when you

Everyday I further piecing together the elements for a “metrics driven life”. Roughly, you can break down your life into three wellness-spheres: Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Happiness though simple to understand, is the hardest to measure, so I’m deferring tracking it (for now). For wealth, there are loads of

Customer Development: According to Steve Blank [http://steveblank.com/], a startup should travel through four distinct stages, 1. Customer Development 2. Customer Validation 3. Customer Creation 4. Company Building Stages one-through-three are about creating your money-making machine, and stage four is about fueling it. The classic mistake Steve rails against

The linking culture of the Internet has a nasty habit of rewarding round-up posts that are nothing more than superficial tours of technologies and products. These ‘articles’ offer up hollow conclusions, regurgitating the body of text like 7th graders in english class. Writers: take a stance. If your conclusion doesn’

http://icantdeci.de retires today. It was a fun ride!

“May you live to 120”  - an old, Jewish phrase. I’ve learned a lot from my Grandfather, a man who has worn many hats: father & husband, navy man, cartoonist, businessmen, astrologer, and teacher. During our family’s Passover Seder, we talked about the different phases of life. I

What’s the future for all media? Here’s my list of expectations, which I present as irrefutable axioms, followed by a few thoughts. Media content will be consumed digitally. This includes music, movies, news, and books. Any type of media that isn’t consumed digitally will be a toy,

I’m calling out the techno-nostalgics: you people are luddites, counter-productive, and blind to this reality, and the coming-reality. Get constructive, or get lost. What is a techno-nostalgic? Here are a few ‘warning’ phrases: * “the Kindle can’t work, it can never replicate the smell and feel of real books”

In my left hand, a Kindle, in the right, an iPhone. All times, in all places, I have access to experts and the world’s body of knowledge, but it is still not enough. If you look back two years, “ubiquitous computing” (via the iPhone, for me) has definitely impacted

These days I’m about as deep into the web world as it gets, but I have some nuggets of C/C++ awesomeness still trapped in my head. If you program with these languages, and you’re looking to snag a job, I've absolutely turned heads during Microsoft

> Fail often, succeed once.

Fears & Delusions: 1. When I was fairly young, I read physics books voraciously. Most were above my level, but I managed a dangerously tenuous grasp on Isaac Asimov’s “Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos”. This book instilled a deep fear of cutting things, especially Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches,

(If you’re not a programmer, or a particularly good programmer, you may skip this post and still lead a fulfilling life…) Object Orientation is a joke. It does not solve as many problems as it ends up creating. Collectively, programmers could work on improving abstraction & problem solving skills.

If you’re not learning on the job every single day, either you’re a robot, or something is terribly wrong (and let’s be brutally honest with ourselves, even robots can learn). And, if you are a technologist working at a startup, particularly in the social gaming space, there

Even before I had a budget, it had a loophole: I was free to spend as much as I wanted on books so long as I read them. Fast forward: I have a wide knowledge base, and a lot of books. My concern is that as a child of a

Technology and the internet bring us a million little hacks and tools to make us more efficient. After two minutes of googling, you can shave seconds off of any task, no matter how meaningless it is. There’s an allure to tackling small things, putting quick triumphs under your belt.

I have a pet-peeve, and it’s consultants. I don’t have issue with them as people , nor with the job they perform. I have a problem with the words “I am a consultant” (networking in Boston produces these words often). It’s a conversational road-block. Consultant? Whom do you

My philosophy with blogging, and the social web in general, is this: if you are one of the more interesting personalities in your peer group, then you’ll entertain an even larger group online. The math is simple: your probability of entertaining another human is already marginally higher than others,

Chris Brogan wonders [http://www.chrisbrogan.com/who-cares-advertising/#comment-146002] if “America’s Favorite!” or “#1 Brand!” on canned products actually influences our grocery shopping decisions. I’ll flatly assert, yes. Both messages are indicators of “Social Proof”, one of the ‘big six’ influencers on behavior according to research done by

First let me call ‘bullshit’ to those that say Web 2.0 is 'dead’. It is not, nor will be, much like Web 1.0 will always have a place. Having gotten that out, let me share where the web has been, and where I think it’s heading.