The scourge of paid prioritization

I received a pair of earmuffs today via Amazon Prime. Great service! They got to New York in just two days, all the way from a Nevada warehouse. ..

What Ricky Gervais doesn’t understand about God

I am not a religious person. I also happen to believe that religious people bear the brunt of more everyday bigotry than most groups. ..

Ben Bernanke’s list of economic participants

Bernanke: “The Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economy’s problems on its own. That will take time and the combined efforts of many parties, including the central bank, Congress, the administration, regulators and the private sector.” ..

A couple of easy wins with SQL indexes

I was lucky enough to watch a great talk by SQL expert Brent Ozar courtesy of Fog Creek. A couple of actionable takeaways that stuck with me are about creating and choosing indexes. ..

Is Fred Wilson arguing for “Content Neutrality”?

Fred Wilson, whom I admire, comments on a recent dust-up where a content provider blocked their programming from customers of a specific ISP. This is the kind of stuff that should not happen on the web. […]I see more signs every day that we need some basic rules governing Internet access. Maybe we shouldn’t call it Net Neutrality. Maybe we should call it a bill of rights for consumers on the Internet. ..

Market share for the taking, or, outrunning the bear

Much of the commentary I’ve seen for today’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 revolves around whether Microsoft can catch up with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Fair enough; feature-wise, they are in the same ballpark. ..

Avoiding “magic strings” in jQuery, C# and ASP.net MVC

The longer I program, the less tolerance I have for “magic strings”. You might be familiar with them — they are strings that have programmatic meaning but are trapped between quotes in another language. ..

Alikewise learnings #1: DIY PR

Thought I would write a few posts to reflect on what I’ve learned with my startup, Alikewise, day jobs, and NYC. This is the first. ..

Sherman’s law of prior knowledge, or, predicting the past

“When a disaster happens, large or small, there is a 100% chance that a headline will be written claiming ignored warnings.” I’ve come to realize, that’s the narrative. It’s always the narrative, and the details of the incident matter little. ..

The busiest people at Apple right now…

…are the ones planning the hardware recall. The second busiest are the ones figuring out how to coat the antenna with an electrical insulator that doesn’t hurt the aesthetics. ..