Archive for Aug 2011


Reading: Longitude by Dava Sobel

A while back Craig Burton recommended Dava Sobel's book Longitude to me. The book is a fascinating and easy to read tale of the problem of finding longitude and how a self-educated clock maker named John Harrison finally succeeded in building not one, but four time pieces with sufficient accuracy. Like any good story, there are twists and turns in the plot--even an antihero. Sobel brings the history to life. I found myself picking up the book any chance I got to find out what would happen next.
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Curation in the Small: Personal Event Networks and Getting Things Done

As enterprises become more social they will necessarily start to give customers access to information that allows them to curate their own interactions with myriad systems and services. Building systems that use and respond to this information will greatly enhance how we interact with service providers. Personal event networks can play a role in making the interoperability and orchestration of these system scalable and affordable.
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When It Comes to Ecommerce, Most Retailers Don't Get It (or Why Amazon is Winning)

Amazon has consistently captured a greater percentage of my retail dollar year after year. With policies like the ones Eddie Bauer and Jos. A. Banks employ, I'm confident that will continue.
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Help Build Legal Sidewiki

Not many people take the time to understand the terms and conditions of a service they want to use and if they do, they're likely confused and overwhelmed. I'm looking for someone to build a Kynetx browser app that would let legal experts add commentary to these documents to guide users and let them know what they're signing up for.
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Eric Schmidt's Commerce Fantasy

Eric Schmidt's vision of ecommerce in the future lines right up with the anonymous ecommerce application that I wrote last month.
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