Currently Obsessed

The New York Times recently published a list of 50 fancy words that most frequently stump their readership. They are able to measure this data thanks to a nifty in-page lookup mechanism, which you can try here. Try double-clicking the word “epicenter”.
Since the NYT didn’t include definitions of these words, I decided to [...]

Facebook launched their new Social plugins including the new “like” button, and in case you’re wondering how to add them to your WordPress blog, I found a great post by @ruhanirabin.  Here’s what I did to get it working on my blog.
First, I’m using the Evidens Theme theme, so these instructions might not work [...]

I’m helping a startup founder who is outsourcing the development of a project. Tensions are running high on both sides as the project slips. The CEO is getting about two updates a week, mostly just “it’s ready to test now, the bugs are 80% fixed” and there’s no regular meeting. During the course [...]

In 2006 when we launched Snapvine’s first viral widget and phone app for teens, it went viral overnight. We were overwhelmed with success within 3 weeks: our servers were swamped with signups – 1 million of them within the first 7 weeks. This was one of those “good problems to have” — so “good” in [...]

Last Wednesday I hosted a video-link at WhitePages to the Crowdsourcing Meetup that Dolores Labs put on in the Bay Area at the Samasource offices.  Check Justin.tv/crowdflower for a video of the event (coming soon).
First off, THANKS to Michael Toomim for tipping me off to the event and to Lukas and Zack of Dolores Labs [...]

Complaints can be annoying, but when paired with solution ideas are valuable.  Failure by itself is a negative but when it comes with honest learning is the foundation of innovation.  Ideas by themselves can be worthless but when accompanied by follow-through can be worth millions.
Therefore, next time someone brings you any of these things alone, [...]

Tonight I attended the UW CSE Annual Industrial Affiliates Meeting. As I walked around, I bumped into familiar faces close to the UW CSE and Startup communities. I asked people “how are we doing on entrepreneurship coming out of the department?” Surprisingly, feedback from 3 people very close to the issue was “we’re not doing too well.”

Last week I attended FiReGlobal West as a guest speaker on a CTO Challenge Panel discussing how technology can help increase civic engagement at all levels of government. Here are a few rough notes I took (and my opinions interwoven) throughout the day.