Last year I posted about my idea for Black Swan Philanthropy, which would be focused on funding projects aimed at preventing or coping with very low probability events that would have cataclysmic outcomes for humanity. The idea has taken on quite a bit more shape since then, thanks to helpful discussions with friends. As two examples, Fred suggested in a comment to the original post the ability to just contribute to an overall fund and Steven Johnson had a bunch of wonderful ideas for how to ...

Last year I posted about my idea for Black Swan Philanthropy, which would be focused on funding projects aimed at preventing or coping with very low probability events that would have cataclysmic outcomes for humanity. The idea has taken on quite a bit more shape since then, thanks to helpful discussions with friends. As two examples, Fred suggested in a comment to the original post the ability to just contribute to an overall fund and Steven Johnson had a bunch of wonderful ideas for how to ...

On Friday at GEL 2009, I met Thomas Deng, a co-founder of DeviceVM which makes Splashtop. Then on Saturday, I noticed a ZDNet story on Techmeme about Presto. Both Splashtop and Presto are so-called instant-on solutions which are essentially miniature Linux distros that boot in a couple of seconds and give you a web browser with Internet access and a few other goodies. My comment to Thomas was something like “that’s impressive” when I found out how many PCs had shipped with Splashtop. But then...

On Friday at GEL 2009, I met Thomas Deng, a co-founder of DeviceVM which makes Splashtop. Then on Saturday, I noticed a ZDNet story on Techmeme about Presto. Both Splashtop and Presto are so-called instant-on solutions which are essentially miniature Linux distros that boot in a couple of seconds and give you a web browser with Internet access and a few other goodies. My comment to Thomas was something like “that’s impressive” when I found out how many PCs had shipped with Splashtop. But then...

On Friday evening the much anticipated WolframAlpha launched publicly. It is great fun to play around with, not only because it has some hilarious easter eggs, but because there is a renewed sense of exploration. At least I found myself coming up with ever new queries to see what it knows (computes) and what it doesn’t. For instance, here are two queries that show off the range of WolframAlpha:how old is Barack Obama? area under x^2 between 2 and 4?One thing is for sure – a lot of homework wi...

On Friday evening the much anticipated WolframAlpha launched publicly. It is great fun to play around with, not only because it has some hilarious easter eggs, but because there is a renewed sense of exploration. At least I found myself coming up with ever new queries to see what it knows (computes) and what it doesn’t. For instance, here are two queries that show off the range of WolframAlpha:how old is Barack Obama? area under x^2 between 2 and 4?One thing is for sure – a lot of homework wi...

In January I wrote a post saying that we need a standard for cloud databases. That post is now the #2 search result on google for “cloud database standards” and there are still no results that even hint at emerging standards. So it will be fun today to moderate a panel on this topic at the Glue Conference with Alex Iskold and Stu Charlton. I am planning on a lot of audience participation as there are a lot of technical folks at the conference. Here are some of the questions I am planning to c...

In January I wrote a post saying that we need a standard for cloud databases. That post is now the #2 search result on google for “cloud database standards” and there are still no results that even hint at emerging standards. So it will be fun today to moderate a panel on this topic at the Glue Conference with Alex Iskold and Stu Charlton. I am planning on a lot of audience participation as there are a lot of technical folks at the conference. Here are some of the questions I am planning to c...

Risk taking has been getting a bit of a bad rap with the banking meltdown. The psychologist Frank Farley coined the term Big T personality to describe people who actively seek risk (sometimes also referred to as thrill seeking). There is a neat little interview with Farley about Big T personality and the financial crisis as part of a longer article on TheWhyFiles about fear on Wall Street. In the interview, Farley draws a distinction between T-positive and T-negative types. As Farley puts it:...

Risk taking has been getting a bit of a bad rap with the banking meltdown. The psychologist Frank Farley coined the term Big T personality to describe people who actively seek risk (sometimes also referred to as thrill seeking). There is a neat little interview with Farley about Big T personality and the financial crisis as part of a longer article on TheWhyFiles about fear on Wall Street. In the interview, Farley draws a distinction between T-positive and T-negative types. As Farley puts it:...

Google announced and released a number of innovations to their core search product this week, including search options and support for microformats/RDFa. What I think is most interesting about this is not so much the specifics of what they have done, but that they continue to innovate in core search. This contrasts with several other big names on the Internet, such as eBay, which for years have not really improved their core offering. One thing this suggests is that Google has in fact built a...

Google announced and released a number of innovations to their core search product this week, including search options and support for microformats/RDFa. What I think is most interesting about this is not so much the specifics of what they have done, but that they continue to innovate in core search. This contrasts with several other big names on the Internet, such as eBay, which for years have not really improved their core offering. One thing this suggests is that Google has in fact built a...

There has been a lot of online commentary on the social media rules imposed by the WSJ. For instance, Fred wrote how some of the rules conflict with what makes for effective online engagement. He got an interesting comment from Peter Kafka arguing that the rules amounted little more than a “think before you write - in any medium” – but then Peter added that “[this is] one of the reasons I enjoy being a contractor." That is where I believe the bigger story sits. Social media is creating a new ...

There has been a lot of online commentary on the social media rules imposed by the WSJ. For instance, Fred wrote how some of the rules conflict with what makes for effective online engagement. He got an interesting comment from Peter Kafka arguing that the rules amounted little more than a “think before you write - in any medium” – but then Peter added that “[this is] one of the reasons I enjoy being a contractor." That is where I believe the bigger story sits. Social media is creating a new ...

Amazon will apparently make some announcement tomorrow (Wednesday) that has been claimed to be a new version of the Kindle aimed specifically at newspaper readers. Until it has an official name, I will call it the Kindle++. My personal wish list for the Kindle++ actually has nothing to do with size of screen. I find that the Kindle 2 already has sufficient real estate. Instead it has to do with how the device is priced and restricted. By packing bandwidth into the upfront price of the device ...

Amazon will apparently make some announcement tomorrow (Wednesday) that has been claimed to be a new version of the Kindle aimed specifically at newspaper readers. Until it has an official name, I will call it the Kindle++. My personal wish list for the Kindle++ actually has nothing to do with size of screen. I find that the Kindle 2 already has sufficient real estate. Instead it has to do with how the device is priced and restricted. By packing bandwidth into the upfront price of the device ...

I have a bit of an obsession with how much probability figures into our lives and how poorly we tend to understand it. Case-in-point is this column in yesterday’s WSJ titled “Swine-Flu Hysteria” in which the author shows a deep and dangerous confusion about outcomes versus probabilities. He is essentially making an argument that runs as follows: the last few times people warned of pandemics (e.g. SARS, mad cow disease) nothing much happened so we should stop worrying about pandemics. I am adm...

I have a bit of an obsession with how much probability figures into our lives and how poorly we tend to understand it. Case-in-point is this column in yesterday’s WSJ titled “Swine-Flu Hysteria” in which the author shows a deep and dangerous confusion about outcomes versus probabilities. He is essentially making an argument that runs as follows: the last few times people warned of pandemics (e.g. SARS, mad cow disease) nothing much happened so we should stop worrying about pandemics. I am adm...

Not really surprised by what the Kindle DX is and is not. I did not expect color or touch as both are only at experimental stages for eInk displays. It is also not that surprising that Amazon is continuing to get the device out there in a direct-to-consumer model. This puts pressure on the NY Times and other newspaper publishers to figure out quickly how to subsidize that via a subscription. So I likely won’t be getting the unfettered connectivity and high quality browser I was hoping for. Wh...

Not really surprised by what the Kindle DX is and is not. I did not expect color or touch as both are only at experimental stages for eInk displays. It is also not that surprising that Amazon is continuing to get the device out there in a direct-to-consumer model. This puts pressure on the NY Times and other newspaper publishers to figure out quickly how to subsidize that via a subscription. So I likely won’t be getting the unfettered connectivity and high quality browser I was hoping for. Wh...