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Venkatesh Rao reviews/summarizes Portfolios Of The Poor, a book about the Financial Planning strategies of people in extreme Poverty ($2/family/day). (more)

term from Bobos In Paradise (more)

Phillip J Eby explains his favorite way to handle tree-oriented data in SQL: what he calls a "closure table". (Handy to consider in my MongoDb experiments...)

Andy Campbell has started a No Book blog about the idea of writing without aiming for a Printed Book, nor even an EBook. Imagine thinking about words as non-static objects, with more power than just the images they can conjour up alone in a readers' mind - words with amazing new visual and interactive attributes; words that can slide seamlessly in and out of (or exist alongside) other media such as video and audio, creating entirely new hybrid fiction reading experiences that bypass the whole concept of dragging 'books' and their paper-based histories into the digital world altogether. HyperMedia/Multimedia?

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is a commission created in 2010 by President Barack Obama to identify "…policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run." The commission first met on April 27, 2010. In other words, it's designed to deal with the Budget Deficit/National Debt. (more)

king of the Url Shortener-s? (more)

Using Django with MongoDb (on MacOs X for dev) (more)

Thirty7 Signals has built an internal app called Iterations for 1) managing our internal requests about which features/bugs to work on next and 2) helps us create teams/iterations to get them done (using our team-based way of working (2010-01-10-37signalsTeamStructure)). (I'm pretty sure I remember them saying in the distant past that you don't need an Issue Tracker because you'll keep re-thinking about what actually matters.)

Ash Maurya explains hows he builds a ProtoType. He goes straight to building in his production technology (Ruby On Rails)! (He uses a Feature Toggle to hide it from real people.) (more)

Google appears to be favoring its own properties (e.g. Google Finance, Google Health) in Search Engine results. I think it needs to make such situations clear, like a House Ad.

Patrick McKenzie is blogging his process of building Appointment Reminder. (more)

MichaelIdinopulos of SocialText "debunks" the Social Software Enterprise GrassRoots Adoption Life Cycle myth. Here’s one way to put it: Content grassroots good, technology grassroots bad. I Commented: The Joe story is less harmful than the “don’t bother Joe, IT will get to it eventually” story. If no Joe ever tries to get something going, than it will probably be that much longer before IT considers the possibility. If no Joe ever tries and fails, then when IT gets around to selecting a system, the decision will come down to the colors in the brochure (or, rather, the quality of the steaks and hookers). Yay Joe! (more)

Google has changed its Terms Of Service so justify blocking FaceBook from its integrated "find your friends" feature, until FaceBook makes its Social Graph data equally available to outsiders. (more)

There are growing protests against TSA's use of Full Body Scan-s and Enhanced Pat Down-s. Full-body scans were implemented after an attempted bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called Underwear Bomber (of the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 plot), after he tried to hide explosives in his underwear. Some 385 scanning units are in use at 68 airports.

AirLine station (more)

About.com was originally founded in 1996 as The Mining Company. The site was launched on April 21, 1997 by Scott Kurnit, owner of General Internet; Bill Day; and a group of other entrepreneurs in New York City... The company was acquired by PRIMEDIA in 2000 in a deal that valued About at $690 million. In February 2005, The Ny Times Company announced that it was buying About.com, a purchase that was completed in the first half of the year for $410 million. Google along with Yahoo!, Ask.com, and AOL were reportedly among the other bidders. (more)

Eric Schmidt has clarified that Google Chrome is for devices with Keyboard-s (e.g. NetBook and bigger), while Android is for mainly-touch devices (e.g. Mobile or Tablet) (even though they might include a Keyboard).

Slide Rocket is moving to HTML-5, at least for playing Presentation-s. This is to better support Mobile (esp Flash-challenged) usage. The Slide Rocket mobile player includes integrated video playback, full 3-d transitions and all the builds and animations that users enjoy on the web version. Slide Rocket are also timing this release with the release of a survey that found that around a quarter of business travellers frequently leave heir laptops at home and are beginning to rely on mobile devices for their business needs while on the road – by providing for presentations while mobile, Slide Rocket gains an advantage over other offerings.

FaceBook Email offering. (more)