MickW

Um, seriously Microsoft? You can’t even get your buttons...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:34:27 -0500

Um, seriously Microsoft? You can’t even get your buttons straight on this popup.

"The easiest way to tweak the bizknobs is to ask them whether “Sense of Entitlement” was a first or..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:25:22 -0500

“The easiest way to tweak the bizknobs is to ask them whether “Sense of Entitlement” was a first or second year course in their program. Those that laugh tend to be the ones you want to work with and the ones that get pissed off are the people to avoid like the plague. This tweaking, however, is grounded in the most base kind of jealousy – the Wharton grad has the affirmation the Imposter craves most.”

- A personal history from a relatively new financial blogger I’ve come to really respect.

Impostor Syndrome « Interloper

How to tell HTML5 from HTML

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:09:11 -0500

How to tell HTML5 from HTML

"I heard the stuff about perks and gifts were “the tip of the iceberg.” Do ad sellers have to..."

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:39:42 -0500

“I heard the stuff about perks and gifts were “the tip of the iceberg.” Do ad sellers have to literally buy attention from agencies?
Yes. You wish everyone agreed not to do it, but the traditional media side takes people to the Super Bowl, the Oscars, etc. Why would digital be different?”

- Don’t ask what goes into the sausage of online advertising, you don’t want to know (jeans party!).

Confessions of an Ad Sales Exec | Digiday

RoiCarthy.com: CodeBlue - The Israeli Hacker Academy

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:36:17 -0500

RoiCarthy.com: CodeBlue - The Israeli Hacker Academy:

Oh this is great - a terrific initiative from roicarthy:

Hackers. The topic I have a conversation about at every industry event I attend. It’s always same conversation. And it’s been going on for at least three years. Hackers.

Or rather, the lack of hackers in the local market.

Put simply, our Startup Nation has been heading down a dangerous path…

A very religious person, obvs.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:49:05 -0500

A very religious person, obvs.

"according to a friend in retailing, the average Facebook woman updates her relationship status to..."

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:59:00 -0500

“according to a friend in retailing, the average Facebook woman updates her relationship status to “Engaged” within two hours of the guy actually proposing…so Facebook sells that relationship status information to retailers who have bridal registries. As my pal told me, “We’ve been looking for this for fifty years””

- I’m with Jeff on this one… FB has a good shot at becoming a more powerful marketing platform than even big G.

Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up: Is Facebook Killing Google? No, But…

"I am convinced that the education market is going to be upended in the next decade and that the new..."

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:44:45 -0500

“I am convinced that the education market is going to be upended in the next decade and that the new model is going to do to universities what Amazon has done to brick and mortar retailers.”

- I think he’s right, and this is a course I’d like to take.

Musings on Markets: My small challenge to the “university” business model

HT Chanie

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:40:38 -0500

HT Chanie

Heh. (via Medievalists.net)

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:46:38 -0500

Heh. (via Medievalists.net)

"I wouldn’t think we created a big enough profile to spawn a malicious deed like this,” said Mr...."

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:09:00 -0500

““I wouldn’t think we created a big enough profile to spawn a malicious deed like this,” said Mr. Goldberg, the congregation’s president.”

- That’s the way my grandparents’ generation thought. I didn’t think that twisted if-we-just-lay-low-and-act-like-real-americans-everything-will-be-ok attitude, with its concomitant if-they-abuse-us-it’s-our-fault was still around. Hoping the reporter took Mr. Goldberg’s statement out of context. (HT Abbi)

Molotov Cocktail Thrown Into the Home of a Rabbi - NYTimes.com

"Chen claimed that he mistakenly sold those Occam shares while trying to sell shares of Cisco, even..."

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:12:06 -0500

“Chen claimed that he mistakenly sold those Occam shares while trying to sell shares of Cisco, even though Cisco’s ticker symbol in no way resembles Occam’s ticker symbol. Chen dismissed the trade as a fat-finger error. He testified that he trades by clicking a mouse on small symbols and not by typing in ticker symbols—and that he probably clicked the wrong spot.”

- Oh that’s a good one - I clicked on the wrong ticker!

Hedge Fund Legend Michael Steinhardt Sanctioned For Improper Trading - Forbes

Kids fall asleep in the darndest places, under sofa edition.

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:02:59 -0500

Kids fall asleep in the darndest places, under sofa edition.

Get my drift?

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:27:00 -0500

My British colleagues have an endearing way of ending a statement with: “Does that make sense?”

This is the equivalent of the Israeli: “Hevanta?’ (Understand?!)

There’s a lot to be said for Israeli candor, but in this case I prefer the British way. If something isn’t clear, the speaker implicitly takes responsibility for that. And if you think you disagree with what was said, the speaker has signaled that she’s open to discuss it - and that your disagreement may merely be a misunderstanding. It invites continuing the discussion from the point of the speaker’s statement.

The Israeli approach suggests that a lack of clarity or a disagreement is the listener’s fault. Ya tembel!

I think she’s scaling down - and hope she doesn’t...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 11:17:26 -0500

I think she’s scaling down - and hope she doesn’t take anyone with her. Sheesh, is this legal?!

Books should be web-enabled

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:25:00 -0500

I don’t read as many books as I once did. I still make my way through two or three at a time and have a pile I’m waiting to begin (like Pooh Bear, I always like to know where my next pot of honey is coming from), but my pace is way slower than it was years ago. Part of this is having four kids and a demanding job, but part of it also is that I enjoy reading quality material online. I love well-written hyperlinked prose and I appreciate what strong visuals and design add to well produced web content.

But a good book can take you to another place, and I don’t love reading long-form material on my iPad. It just doesn’t feel quite right to me, so I don’t order many books for instant download. Count me among those hoping the physical book lives on for a long time to come.

Yet right now I’m reading Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography in physical form, and I find in certain sections the work suffers from a very real weakness of not being web-enabled. For example, Isaacson gives a lot of ink - as he should - to the great 1984 Mac Super Bowl commercial. He describes the drama of how it came to be, and many details of the video itself. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in whipping out my iPhone at that stage to Google and watch the video again. Of course you want to watch it once you learn more about its history! So why doesn’t the book contain a QR code to the video alongside the text in that section? Or, better yet, why don’t publishers come up with a more elegant book-to-web function than those ugly QR codes?

This would in no way lessen the experience of reading the book as a book - it would obviously be optional to smartphone off to YouTube, and the visual interference on the page would be minimal. It would add a near-immediate experiential dimension that brings an important additional layer of meaning to the text. It’s a natural extension of what the author of a non-fiction work is trying to achieve, a tool that at this point should be in their kit.

I hope my kids are still reading non-fiction books when they’re adults, but I also hope those books are web-enabled in a way that grants them greater insight and understanding of the ideas they address.

We are not morning people. It’s clearly genetic. (Taken...

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:30:41 -0500

We are not morning people. It’s clearly genetic. (Taken with instagram)

"So the problem is not that the E.C.B. can’t act but that it won’t. The obstacles are ideological..."

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:25:00 -0500

“So the problem is not that the E.C.B. can’t act but that it won’t. The obstacles are ideological and, you might say, psychological.”

- So basically the whole European debt crisis is a large scale re-enactment of our near nightly discussions of how to respond to a misbehaving kid - teach them consequences or let this one pass. Germany has the kids stuck in their room for hours sweating it out awaiting their final decision.

Italy, Spain, and the European Central Bank : The New Yorker

Epic review of the Galaxy Nexus from Joshua Topolsky. Would love...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:40:51 -0500

Epic review of the Galaxy Nexus from Joshua Topolsky. Would love to try it out… interesting they went to three hardware buttons at bottom. (via Galaxy Nexus review | The Verge)

Continuations: Sharing: One Network (To Rule Them All) or Network of Networks?

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:00:26 -0500

Continuations: Sharing: One Network (To Rule Them All) or Network of Networks?:

continuations:

Yesterday, Techmeme was ablaze with posts about sharing on Facebook’s Open Graph. A CNet post by Molly Wood with the title “How Facebook is ruining sharing” appears to have kicked it all off. In it she argues that the automated (“frictionless”) sharing via Open Graph apps results in a lot…

Makes sense in principle but most folks don’t want to build and actively manage multiple communities at this stage - will probably change over time.