February 2010
18 posts
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Senators Kerry & Lugar Introduce the Startup Visa... →
From StartupVisa.com, today Senators Kerry & Lugar introduced the Startup Visa Act in Washington, DC:
This would enable immigrant entrepreneurs who are creating new companies to secure visas to come to the United States, if there is investment capital available from a sponsoring US venture capital or angel investor of at least $100,000 in an equity financing of not less than $250,000.
I...
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Shaun Inman's "Mimeo and the Kleptopus King"
Shaun Inman talks about his upcoming game, Mimeo and the Kleptopus King:
At its core, play, and by extension video games, is learning. Call it discovery or mastery but a good game introduces new ideas (teaches), leverages existing ones (reviews) and layers them to create unique challenges (tests).
The concept and images look great, but it goes beyond that:
In addition to creating the...
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Readings highlighter
I have already professed my love for Instapaper. Below, three recent articles I enjoyed:
Interview with Mark Pincus, Adam Bryant
One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.”...
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Choose Wisely, browser chooser app →
Similar to the shareware Choosy (which I use), Choose Wisely is a minimal, freeware app, which you set as your default browser. When you click on a link, you get the above dialog to choose where to open it.
Web site is in german, but nothing Google Translate can’t help out with.
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#FreeWebVe will be a trending topic soon
Liza López, from El Nacional (in Spanish), writes:
The reform to the Telecommunications Law, left in a drawer since 2008, establishes a single, state-controlled access point, as in Cuba, China and Iran. The presence of cuban vice-president Ramiro Valdés, known as the censor in the island, and congressmen statements over the terrorist character of social networks, have unleashed suspicions.
...
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Twitter, rebel with a cause
On recent weeks, three related items have caught my attention:
My girlfriend asked me about the best Blackberry Twitter client
Hugo Chavéz called Twitter a terrorist tool
Twitter Co-founder said they are looking at ways to bypass country blocks
I know what you’re thinking, a Blackberry? Still, two of the above items are no big surprise.
The fact that a President, obsessed with...
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The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration →
Although the video has too talking heads to be truly enjoyable (it’s only missing a synergy comment), Chris Anderson, provides some technical details in the article:
Although the Wired Reader starts as an AIR app, Adobe has created tools that allow us to easily convert it for major tablet and mobile platforms. In Barcelona this week, Adobe announced that AIR would run on Android, and...
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Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy →
Derek Sivers gave this short talk at TED this week :
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.
If you have 3 min, you should really see it.
/via Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
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Side effects of developing for yourself →
Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper:
If I let users steer product decisions, the result would be a massive codebase producing a bloated, cluttered product full of features that hardly anyone used at the expense of everyday usability and polish on the features that matter.
I’ve mentioned my love for Instapaper for the iPhone and the Kindle before.
Personally, I struggle on product...
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Windows Phone 7 Series announced →
Kudos to Microsoft for doing the brave thing: Starting over. The new Windows Phone 7 is a complete departure from its Windows Mobile and Pocket PC past. Not only is the software not backwards compatible, but it also introduces a whole new interface.
At first look, I’m not a fan.
However, watching the videos and screenshots I get the feeling my dislike has more to do with taste, rather...
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Steve Jobs working on biography with Walter... →
Brad Stones, on the NYTimes.com:
The book, which is in the early planning stages, would cover the entire life of mr. jobs, from his youth in the area now known as silicon valley through his years at apple, these people said.
Walter Isaacson wrote Einstein: His Life and Universe and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. I’m more than half-way through the Einstein one, and it’s...
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Introduction to Square →
I’ve said it before, Square and other similar services, are going to be huge.
It’s not because it allows everybody to carry a Point of sale (POS) or checkout device. It’s because it makes the concept of POS irrelevant.
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Microsoft’s Creative Destruction →
Dick Brass, a former Microsoft VP, gives ab insider perspective on why we don’t get see the innovation that actually happens inside on this NYTimes Op-Ed, Microsoft’s Creative Destruction:
But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like...
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On iPad Punditry and Curmudgeons →
Rui Carmo, from Tao of Mac, has some good points on why closed systems -like the iPad- have nothing to do with the end of tinkering, in On iPad Punditry and Curmudgeons:
Now, my take on the people who think the iPad and the degree Apple’s closed it down to work like it actually should (i.e., as a personal computing appliance) is somehow going to perform mass lobotomy on the next generation of...
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Obligatory iPad brainfart
Every time Apple has an event in which they announce a new product, I need about a week to get out of Jobs reality distortion field1 and be able to process information on my own again.
Mind you, the post-event week is not easy on us geeks. It’s an emotional and intellectual roller coaster. You go through euphoria, disappointment, hope, financial analysis and inner-discovery in a short...
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Notational Velocity now syncs with Simplenote →
Notational Velocity, the fastest and most minimalistic notes app for the Mac, now has native syncing support with Simplenote, the best notes app for the iPhone.
It works through the the cloud. So no WiFi syncing nonsense.
Notational Velocity is free/OSS and Simplenote is free with ads (with a Premium version available).