founder of Press Books (more)

aka Nexus7 (more)

Sort of like a Minimum Viable Product or ProtoType, but emphasizing exploration of the technical risk of an idea.

*Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader and composer.[1] Starting his career with jazz legend Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the MilesDavis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music (characterized by syncopated drum beats). Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success among pop audiences. His music embraces elements of funk and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. In his jazz improvisation, he possesses a unique creative blend of jazz, blues, and modern classical music, with harmonic stylings much like the styles of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. (more)

Just discovered Ward Cunningham's [new](https://github.com/Ward Cunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki) Spike Solution of Smallest Federated Wiki (P2P). The Smallest Federated Wiki project wants to be small in the "easy to learn powerful ideas" version of small. It wants to be a WikiEngine so that strangers can meet and create works of value together. And it wants to be federated so that the burden of maintaining long-lasting content is shared among those who care... This project should be judged by the degree that it can: Demonstrate that wiki would have been better had it been effectively federated from the beginning. Explore federation policies necessary to sustain an open creative community. Ruby Personal Server (not Ruby On Rails). A step beyond WikiWeb, more oriented toward Creative Network Group Forming? (more)

Hurricane Party switched to a Lean Startup process to Pivot to their new Fore Cast tool. (more)

chunk of product functionality distributed to actual users/customers (more)

Kent Beck defines the early Life Cycle of a Start Up, and applies Lean Startup principles to the earlier phases in Unit Test work, the tracking and fixing of bugs (Issue Tracker, Zero Defect) and design. Only some testing and defect fixing serve to reduce latency and increase the frequency and value of experimentation over the short term. Design belongs on the list of activities that need to be responsibly performed in moderation during the takeoff phase. If it's Thursday and you only have enough money to last until Friday at 5, the responsible thing to do is perform another market experiment, not automate a difficult test, fix a random defect, or refactor away duplication... Every startup feels overwhelming from the inside, but every dawn brings exactly one day in which to work. The cellist Pablo Casals was once asked how he had the stamina to play a long passage of blisteringly fast sixteenth notes. "I rest between the notes," was his reply. In a startup you can "rest" between experiments. If an A-B Test takes a day to gather significant results, that's a day you can spend investing in the future without jeopardizing the present. Spend time between crises wisely and you'll have both a system and a business you can be proud of.

Sony is finally dropping DRM for its MP3 distribution. Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com's (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007. ... Worse for the labels, the restrictions ultimately resulted in less control over the paid download industry. Because DRM tended to tie consumers to the store most compatible with their music device, the record labels unwittingly gave much of the power over music distribution to Apple Computer, the manufacturer of the most popular digital music player, the IPod.

Lawyer. (more)

Sony Corporation (ソニー株式会社 Son �� Kabushiki Gaisha?), commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Kōnan Minato, Tokyo, Japan.[3] Its diversified business is primarily focused on the electronics (TV, Computer Game consoles, refrigerators), game, entertainment and financial services sectors.[2] The company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets.[4] Sony is ranked 105th on the 2014 list of Fortune Global 500.[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony

Ken White recognizes he can't blame college students for their anti-FreeDom attitudes too much when our entire Culture has trained them that way. Terrorism, War On Drugs, Free Speech... *I call these young people out for valuing illusory and subjective safety over liberty. I accuse them of accepting that speech is "harmful" without logic or proof. I mock them for not grasping that universities are supposed to be places of open inquiry. I condemn them for not being critical about the difference between nasty speech and nasty actions, and for thinking they have a right not to be offended. I belittle them for abandoning fundamental American values. (more)

applying an Agile Software Development style to Contract design - of Software Development or other relationships (Consulting and other) (more)

ATT Triple Play offering (more)

The ACUMAN ChatBot won "best new bot" at the latest Chatter Box Challenge (Turing Test). (more)

piece of Wolfram Engine

Tim Wu questions the technologists' thoughtless love of Innovation: those who share a faith in the importance of innovation should be sure that what we fight hardest for is not just the abstract beauty of new technologies, but ideals that actually have some connection to human ends. One cool comment - Innovation is a component of Evolution. Evolution and the core of our existence are intertwined. Thus, for people to be who they truly are, the must be allowed to evolve. Otherwise, people will not be allowed to be who they truly are, disharmony and injustice will result and human Happiness will not be achieved. Falls into my Worldview Roadmap.

Ben Thompson explains why Clayton Christensen's predictions (2006-01-10-ChristensenIpodDisruptionProprietary) about Apple Computer's closed products losing to open/modular alternatives keep failing. The theory of low-end disruption (Disruptive Innovation) is fundamentally flawed... Consumers (B2C) don’t buy aircraft, software, or medical devices. Businesses (B2B) do... Consumers aren't rational... In the case of low-end disruption, the rational buyer considers the superior integrated offering and the inferior (but still good) modular offering, decides the latter is “good enough,” and buys it because it is cheaper... The attribute most valued by consumers, assuming a product is at least in the general vicinity of a need, is Ease Of Use. It’s not the only one – again, doing a Job To Be Done is most important – but all things being equal, consumers prefer a superior user experience. What is interesting about this attribute is that it is impossible to overshoot... The business (Enterprise) buyer, famously, does not care about the user experience.

Clayton Christensen believes Apple Computer's IPod needs to break out of the proprietary stage to avoid being wiped out down the road. Look at any industry -- not just computers and MP3 players. You also see it in aircrafts and software, and medical devices, and over and over. During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn't yet adequate to meet customer's needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution -- because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular (InterOp). At that point, the Competitive Advantage of the early leader dissipates, and the ability to make money migrates to whoever controls the performance-defining subsystem. (more)

Kenneth Dickey on and "Extremely Successful" software project. Used Extreme Programming and Common Lisp and CORBA. What gives a best match implementation technology? In our case it was not being up to date. Using the latest technology typically means that engineering effort is spent on tracking technology as it evolves. It also implies a higher learning cost than picking up training materials, well developed practices, and people who already know the technology. It makes sense to do this in areas where the newest technologies give Competitive Advantage in your company's value added area. In our case, we did not see value compelling enough to overcome the costs... You have to be able to update the code on a running server. If you can afford to fail, you can implement the server with any technology. We can't afford to fail... Interestingly, when we checked we found that a number of Fortune 1000 companies were using Lisp in critical applications such as on-line banking and AirLine reservation systems.