Do you happen to know if there’s wifi available in the Lebanon Coop? There is not. I have asked for it a few times over the years. Being board president doesn’t pull any weight on this, believe it or not (due to a personality-minimizing governance structure which is long-term good and specific-issue annoying).
March 21, 2006
Top ‘O The Morning
I like the brand-new Google Finance for its page layout and information density. Lots of Ajaxy goodness throughout – check out that slider under the long-term graph! Billmon exposes the hypocrisy that is John Snow, Bush’s Treasury Secretary, standing in for arrogant overpaid CEOs the world over. Not that every CEO is arrogant and overpaid, […]
March 19, 2006
Official Phone of 37signals & Ruby On Rails
The next Internet trend: Ruby and Rails geeks buy the Motorola PEBL phone because David and Jason both raved about it. Less Phone, that sort of thing.
March 17, 2006
Not So Much To Release The Sorrow As To Embrace It
Dave Pollard posts a letter from organizational development consultant Roger Harrison, “A Time For Letting Go” – parting thoughts on the occasion of his retirement. Via Jon Husband.
March 16, 2006
Oil Barrels Price Translation
This is freakin’ awesome! A web browser plug-in that converts all prices from U.S. dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil. When a user loads a webpage, the script inserts converted prices into the page. as the cost of oil fluctuates on the commodities exchange, prices rise & fall in real-time. ‘OilStandard’ […]
March 16, 2006
Short-Term Economic Future
If you want to know what the big driver in the upcoming recession will be, start here, and then read the follow-up. Summary: During the next 20 months, over $2 trillion of adjustable-rate mortgage debt will be up for interest rate resets. And those rates will go up. Consumer discretionary spending will be cut by […]
March 14, 2006
Me want, not.
Baseball’s Best Burger: “A thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut…. ‘We are excited to work with the Grizzlies this season on Baseball’s Best Burger,” said Tina Bryan, Vice President of Marketing […]
March 13, 2006
Usefulness and The Banality of Business
Umair hit one out of the park with his post on Usefulness and The Banality of Business. There’s this curious notion in America: everything must be useful. This is why, at heart, there’s little, if any room, for thinking; for the long-term; for the creative. It’s the naive culture of the market taken to an […]
March 13, 2006
Hot Tip For Online Electronics Buying
I ordered a new CD/DVD player this weekend. I’ll spare you the ridiculously obsessive materialist consumerist research process, even though it might make for a good blog entry. The bottom line was, once I knew what I wanted, and the eBay bidders outbid the value of a used one, and the authorized B-stock eBay sellers […]
March 13, 2006
Server Down?
That’s the sort of email subject line people like me dislike seeing first thing in the morning. After verifying that, in fact, the servers are unreachable, suddenly you have a fire drill. Whatever morning plans you had are shot. Yoga? I don’t think so. Finish that systems diagram from last night? Maybe later today. Instead, […]
March 12, 2006
Mail Bombed
Notio is getting emailed bombed, or something. In the last couple of hours I’ve received over a thousand emails like this: From: Philomena Astle (Every return address is different.) Subject: Re: POtharamacy news (Lots of variations on this.) Hi, Do you want to j O l V f E d R r P k A […]
March 9, 2006
ActiveSalesforce
Wow. Salesforce.com is now offering a connection adapter for Rails. ActiveSalesforce (ASF) is a Ruby on Rails framework connection adapter that provides direct access to Salesforce.com managed data via AppExchange Web services API and Rail’s ActiveRecord model layer. Standard and custom objects, standard and custom fields are all automatically surfaced as active record attributes, simplifying […]
March 7, 2006
A Good Example Of A Dilettante’s Progress
I Googled “dilettante” to find the correct spelling (used in the phrase above) and in the right column I found a sponsored ad that eBay purchased for that word!! They don’t think their customers are dilettantes, do they?
March 2, 2006
Hotel Marlowe, Cambridge, MA
While I was in Boston (Cambridge), I stayed at the Hotel Marlowe; first time. The Marlowe is part of the Kimpton Group boutique chain – “Every hotel tells a story” – found in all the upscale cities you’d expect. It is very close to the SoL offices, and attached to the Cambridgeside Galleria mall. I […]
February 26, 2006
Herman Daly’s “Beyond Growth”
Interesting post from Catallaxis on the limits to growth, the ecological dimension of economics, and the reconciliation of sustainable and physical growth. As I see it (Figure 3), the physical dimension of the economy, which can be measured in terms of the scale of material, energy, chemical, and biological throughput, does indeed comprise an economic […]
February 21, 2006
Three Things About Pivot
Very exciting. Chris Boone wrote a brief review of my website management system, PivotCMS. [Man, do I need to do some marketing work – the product far outshines the marketing, especially the currently-lame website.] He calls out three important design decisions we made early on, and learns how they impact his day-to-day work with clients. […]
February 20, 2006
Monday Biz Links
A couple of interesting items from lunchtime browsing: Stowe Boyd: Advisory Capital: A New Basis For Strategic Involvement. Argues for a new model of funding startups. Makes sense to me – the VC route is filled with potholes and speedbumps. There has been a great deal of discussion in the tech community about the changing […]
February 16, 2006
37signals Launches Campfire
It took me a while to realize it, but the essential business plan of 37signals is taking modern technology tools and specializing them for business. They do this by 1) stripping generalized options and leaving only the core functionality; 2) creating a good UI that’s obvious (low training and support) and fun to use (easy […]
February 15, 2006
GTI Project Fast Phase 3
The final installment of the VW Project Fast marketing campaign has landed: To those who participated in GTI Project Fast, we thank you for your input. Through our research, we learned a great deal about your fast, including what it looks like. If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to visit projectfast.com: http://e.vw.com/a/tBD8lCNAQU8iiActCSXAHVDnp7H/fasturl And […]
February 14, 2006
Corporate Spin, I Mean, PR, Defined
Here are some excerpts from an email Sleepycat Software sent to me this evening. I’m pleased to announce today that Sleepycat Software has been acquired by Oracle. [They showed me the money!] By joining the leading database company in the world, I expect that we will be able to serve our customers and the open […]