I’m excited to share ForceRank , an app to make group decisions simpler. Think of it like “ doodle for priority setting.” It aims to avoid the pain of spending too much time in a meeting hashing out what is the next important thing to do. Built by Jeff Dwyer and myself, more details can be found on the launch post . Personally I’m interested in the emergence of lightweight, team interaction tools,…
It is time for the annual new album roundup! This is the one thing I consistently write about it seems. The following are the new albums I listened to most in 2013. I made a Rdio playlist of selected songs from them as well. Like 2012 I purchased zero albums and listened almost entirely via Rdio (and sometimes in Spotify “private” mode when too embarrassed to share a pop obsession). We added a…
More often blogs and content sites are de-emphasizing the temporal nature of what they publish [1] . In broad terms they are moving to be a collection of published articles, and publishing timely content on social networks. Winer’s original definition of weblogging was: “A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML…
I’ve been a fan of George Packer’s writing for a while so I was interested to read his newest book “The Unwinding” . It is a non-fiction narrative telling the individual stories of Americans navigating a time when they are more on their own. It is an upsetting but worthwhile read. Through the people he follows Packer explores the last 30 years of America where institutions have faltered, and left…
Last week I decided to update the design on this (rarely updated) blog for a few reasons: Changing the design is fun, and often easier than actually writing . I wanted a mobile-friendly, single column layout. I read a lot on mobile/tablet and a lot of sites/blogs format poorly. In the last couple years I've come to really like photos shown as large as possible regardless of medium. I think so many…
Despite my lack of writing in 2012, traditions must be respected . Outside of the music itself it was another year where I effectively only listened (and paid) to music from Spotify (some Rdio, etc), and bought a Sonos Play 3 in part to more easily stream Spotify to home speakers. Below are a few of the albums I enjoyed most in 2012, and a Spotify playlist of selected songs from them. This year…
This weekend included software failing because of bugs handling the leap second correctly (thanks tidal friction !) and disrupting many popular sites with it. A single change that feels small was able to shatter what had previously felt so stable. That property has always fascinated me about software. In one momement software can feel like it is made of steel, silently cranking away. You have the…
In keeping with tradition , here is a quick summary of music I’ve loved from the past year. In past years I’d used iTunes playcounts as a barometer for my enjoyment but this year I mostly switched to Spotify so have less data to pull from. I published a Spotify playlist of some of the best songs from the albums included. 10. Real Estate, Days - Definitely sleepy but pretty and at its best feels…
@rseanlindsay Sean Lindsay There are companies that will fail and look back and wish they'd attended tonight's @FounderMentors customer acquisition event #fmcustomers Nov 18 via Twitter for iPhone Favorite Retweet Reply Last night Founder Mentors’ hosted an excellent event called “Customer Acquisition in Practice” at Dogpatch Labs in Cambridge. Understanding effective customer acquisition is…
Photo by notic If you’re like me and enjoy both startups and ping pong then you’ll love Startup Ping Pong ! The objective is to bring together players of any level who the enjoy the epic game of ping pong. And if you need convincing that ping pong is indeed epic, check out the Penny Arcade series, “Paint the Line” . Currently I’m pulling together the ones in Boston and Ajay of Groupme is running…
Everyone knows startups are hot. Fueled by a strong seed funding climate and several well-publicized successes there is seemingly a rush to start your own company . I’m a big proponent of young folks (i.e. early 20s) joining an early-stage startups for a slew of reasons . Joining an existing startup is a great way to learn whole business works, have much more responsibility with influence on how a…
Yesterday NPR’s All Things Considered aired a segment titled “For Software Developers, A Bounty Of Opportunity” that included an interview with me (and my daughter cooing in the background). The point of the story is that in even an overall weak job market there is strong demand for software developers. Since much of my interview with Curt Nickisch didn’t make it into the final piece I wanted to…
+ I’ve been with oneforty for 2+ years from early days at TechStars and learned an enormous amount from great teammates, investors & advisors as well as from being in the startup trenches. It has been a time of successes, challenges and every other part of the startup roller coaster. I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity and support that I’ve been given. Today, I’m happy to share that oneforty…
Photo by aerokev When I was young I played a lot of chess with my father, who is a competitive player, and in several tournaments (gee, big surprise I ended up as a technology nerd). While I was never going to be Bobby Fischer or Magnus Carlsen I learned lot from playing beyond just the game itself. I’ve found that several lessons from chess apply to running a startup. Focus on the Middle Game In…
[This originally appeared as a guest post on Greenhorn Connect ] I was born and raised in the Boston area so the most recent dust up about Boston vs Silicon Valley has me comparing it to Beantown’s previous long-lived case of self-flagellation - The Curse of the Bambino . For the Red Sox it was the trading of Babe Ruth, while for Boston web startups, it was the loss of Zuckerberg and Facebook to…
It’s that time of year again when the music I’ve loved from the last year is rounded-up to be recorded for posterity. There is some faux-science involved using iTunes playcounts to keep me honest about what I actually listened to, and not what I think I should have. In reviewing the list of albums that were most often in my headphones I was surprised how many there were. 2010 was a good year for…
Babies come with hats.
Twitter is increasingly being described as an “information network” rather than a social network or “fun-like-ice-cream” novelty. That seems accurate, but the challenge is that Twitter is currently designed like a social network. Even with its innovative asymmetrical following relationships what you follow on Twitter are accounts [1] not “interests”. As a result, it is difficult to consume…
I'm pleased to share that Flowtown has acquired the technology behind WhoShouldiFollow , a Twitter friend recommendation engine that my friend and I created. Xconomy has a good writeup on today's news. Flowtown is a social marketing platform aimed at helping businesses engage with their customers. What is particularly exciting to me is that the WSIF engine can help Flowtown deliver actionable…
The best advance in my life as a software developer recently is having to spend less time building (and re-building) plumbing. Much has rightly been made of the move to cloud computing and the virtualization of computing/storage, but in the last year the trend has continued up the stack to include all sorts of services. The benefit to developers is spending more time focused on your product, and…