Archive for the 'Technology' Category
YCombinator Application Guide
July 20th, 2008YCombinator, a kind of mini- venture capital firm, invests tens of thousands of dollars ($$$) into very early seed stage start-up companies run by smart technology hackers.
I applied to YCombinator two times. The first time, when I applied with my friend Mason for the Summer 2007 round, I arrogantly presumed that Paul would lavish on [...]
TipJoy ingeniously simplifies and enables micro-payments
April 20th, 2008I have already written about my distaste for advertising.
Sometimes, however, these newspapers and blogs manage to make something of value. A particularly hard-hitting expose in a newspaper, or a particularly helpful guide in a blog, offers to people real value. Nobody can create this kind of content every day, or probably even every [...]
Make your own chimes
April 17th, 2008I just bought a Mac Mini. I love it. Apple spent a lot of time polishing OS X.
I configured OS X to create a chime, a 21-st century chime. In the Date & Time settings, I selected it to tell me the time every hour. At 6pm, a voice from the computer says, “It’s 6 [...]
How to check email two times a day
April 15th, 2008Tim Ferriss popularized the idea that you should limit the amount of time you spend checking email every day. He espouses a philosophy of life called the low-information diet. By following these guidelines, you get more done and, more importantly, feel less stressed.
One of his suggestions about email spread across the blogosphere very quickly because [...]
Untenable advertising
April 8th, 2008Ads annoy me. Ads annoy everyone.
More importantly, I cannot envision building a serious business which depends on these kinds of banner ads, or even text-link ads. But many websites do: TechCrunch, Project Wedding, Reddit, MightyQuiz, Justin.TV, Scribd, Loopt, and so on.
I use many websites online every week. Many provide a lot of [...]
Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series (now on your iPhone!)
April 5th, 2008The Stanford Technology Ventures Program runs a well-developed incubator for tech businesses at Stanford University.
STVP offers some very cool resources free to the world. For example, I have been listening to their Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders audio podcast. The program brings in some of the greatest entrepreneurial forces in Silicon Valley today. Some [...]
Learn 100 digits of pi at lightning speed
March 14th, 2008Learn 100 digits of pi at lightning speed.
In a previous post, I wrote about the Secret to Pi. I wrote about the method I used to learn 100 digits of pi in under an hour and remember them days later without extra practice.
While memorizing the digits of pi using this method, I realized that I [...]
BankOfAmerica.com > Mint.com
February 5th, 2008A recently-launched startup, Mint.com won the TechCrunch40 award for best new startup. TechCrunch raves incessantly about Mint.com. I had used Microsoft Money a couple of years ago, and I liked that I could sync up with some of my banks and credit cards. Unfortunately, the process was tedious, Microsoft Money did not [...]
ASUS Eee PC
November 23rd, 2007ASUS recently released their Eee PC. It is a laptop that emphasizes computing for everyone. It is small (tiny), unbelievably light, energy efficient, cheap, and it runs Linux. Actually, it can be all of these things because it runs Linux. A Windows Vista computer would require more big and heavy energy-sucking [...]
Amazon Kindle Nearly Perfect
November 22nd, 2007Amazon recently released their Kindle eBook reader, and it’s nearly perfect.
Imagine that you have a 6″ small, unusually light, paperback in your hand or backpack everywhere you go. Instead of that paperback just being a single copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, it’s truly magical. Flip the page, and you can [...]