So it’s Saturday night and you’re out with friend. Are they the inconsiderate jerk who can’t stop checking their smartphone? Or is that you?

Either way, here’s one way to make dinner a little more interesting.

I’ve seen/heard this described as both “The Phone Stacking Game” and “Don’t Be a Dick During Meals”. It’s been mentioned on a couple of blogs, but a quick straw poll of my friends suggests that it hasn’t become widespread yet, at least on the West Coast. Which is a shame, because it’s perfect for folks in tech.Continue reading →

The New York Times released its latest earnings report earlier this week, spurring another round of discussion about the newspaper’s paywall, which was near the beginning of this year. The consensus: Early signs are positive, but it’s not doing well enough to offset plummeting print ad revenue.Continue reading →

For more than a decade now, the Internet has done a great job of making things in our day-to-day lives more efficient by easily connecting parties who can have a mutually beneficial personal or business relationship. This same idea is now on the verge of disrupting labor and changing the definition of employment as we know it.Continue reading →

Much ink has been spilled these past few days on the Facebook IPO filing. Much of it analyses the details revealed in the S1 initial document. Some of it has focused on revenue and growth; some of it on control and corporate governance, some on valuation and how reasonable or not it is likely to be, and a little on whether or not the IPO represents the end of Facebook’s growth cycle.

So, should you be a bull, and buy? Or should you run as fast as you can away from the bulls?Continue reading →

Change in the air. It’s palpable.

Those of us in the technology world are witnessing a transformation: a buyer-led revolution in how information technology is both produced and consumed. Smartphones and tablets are upsetting the PC order; social applications are impinging on traditional “workforce productivity” and communications applications.Continue reading →

The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — trembled in the face of Facebook’s IPO and all-out war on the open Web, also known as Google. Me, I go back to Bill Gates during the DOJ deposition when he basically said we don’t need no steenkin’ breakup when Google will come along and be invented.

@kevinmarks makes a good college (fitting) try of defending the open schmopen set, while none of us seem to notice Social Spring just keeps on rolling over conventional wisdom. Me, I’m pretty jacked up waiting for what this means for Twitter. Go Giants!Continue reading →

Quick, what’s the second most traded commodity in the world, after oil? Sorry, no: it’s not coffee. In fact, while hard data is scant, it may well be — of all things — carbon. No, really. According to the World Bank (PDF) , the global carbon market was worth a whopping 1.42 Facebooks US$142 billion in 2010.

Mind you, it’s not like container ships weighed down to the gills with graphite are crossing and recrossing the Pacific every week. What we’re actually talking about here is the trade in carbon offsets, ie, the absence of carbon. Very Zen, no? Anyway, techies should be comfortable with this notion; I seem to recall spending less time studying electrons than I did “holes,” ie their absence, while acquiring my EE degree.

Anyway, where there’s a $twelve-figures market, there are startups fighting for a share. In particular, there’s a bit of a war on to see who will be the primary aggregator of carbon-market data. On one side, dominating the market, I give you the Goliaths Point Carbon, a tentacle of the Thomson Reuters kraken, providing “independent news, analysis and consulting services for European and global power, gas and carbon markets,” and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, doing much the same. On the other, I give you plucky little David eCO2Market, a Paris-based startup with an algorithmic sling.Continue reading →

Following in the tradition of “Shit Silicon Valley Says” and other Shit ______ Says memes, August Capital’s David Hornick has made “Shit VCs Say.”

There are some gems in here, including:Continue reading →

I first heard the word “grinfucker” a decade or so ago from a close friend who was a former investment banker. He said, in response to a meeting we were in with a person who was very polite and charming “he’s such a grinfucker.” I loved the word and, as I found out later, it [...]Continue reading →

Leadership guru Warren Bennis asked whether leaders are born or made. When asked if Wall Street would accept a young Mark Zuckerberg in his early 20s as CEO, Facebook investor Peter Thiel said: “Well, we’ll wait until he’s over 25 to file”.  Wise move, considering that Mark’s title on his business cards read “I’m CEO, bitch”.

This week Facebook filed its S-1 to go public.  Mark is 27.  How Mark managed to launch a social networking site after Friendster had crashed during MySpace’s zenith has been widely chronicled.  What’s been less discussed is how Mark mastered the six requirements to succeed, namely Ambition, Vision, Determination, Execution, Luck and Timing.Continue reading →