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Things have been quiet on this blog lately, and they will be for a few days more. I have a lot to talk about: * Culture Hack Scotland, which was not just a blast, but a groundbreaking event for both the Scottish cultural sector and its technical community * Impref.me, my
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I really like this quote from 37 signals: Basecamp was done almost entirely without risk. It was completely self-funded. We treated it as a side-product and a side-project until it could pay the bills. And only then did we make it the main focus of the company. I absolutely hate
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Here's one of my favorite places on Earth: It's called the Norrington Room. It sits in the basement of Blackwell's, the oldest bookshop in Oxford (where I grew up), and when it was opened in 1966 it was the largest room full of books
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This article is long, but worth reading to the end: He came home and lay on the couch for a week, confused and a little lost. With the long overdue luxury of time and hindsight (and bed rest dictated by a bad case of bronchitis), he analyzed the past year&
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I was taken by Status.net founder Evan Promodou's post the other day: Hackers make things; entrepreneurs make things that make things. This is a pretty succinct explanation of the difference between an entrepreneur and a hacker, and, I must confess, not one I fully understood when we
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Last week, I said goodbye to decades of tradition and became a Mac user. It's a more emotional decision than you might think. It's just a tool, right? You should pick the product that is going to do the job for you best. But in tech
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For what it’s worth, this blog is now available over on the Kindle Store for the Amazon-imposed price of $1.99 a month. Of course, if you do decide to read it on your Kindle, you’re going to lose the standard form of a blog: the distinctive page
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I’m starting a funding incubator for open source projects. We’re working with a number of high-profile Silicon Valley investors in order to provide comprehensive funding, as well as advice and collaborative office space, for up to 50 open source projects a year. The Libre Fund provides that most
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Time Magazine, March 1995: The main gauge of change in information delivery is the boom in sales of modems, which are expected to grow at an average rate of 17.2% worldwide (22.4% in Europe alone) between 1994 and 1998, and the expanding reach of the Internet and such
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SXSW 2011 was among the best events I've ever attended. It was vital, fun-packed, and hugely educational – I have no doubts about coming back next year. The Interactive Festival is exactly what I want to see from technology: it was optimistic, sociable, diverse and full of really interesting
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Congratulations to all the winners at last night’s Academy Awards. I haven’t managed to see Black Swan yet, but I will before the week is out. So here’s a thought: there should be a web hacker equivalent. No, not the Webby Awards, nor the Crunchies, but a
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I'm stoked to be at this year's South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin. As well as enjoying the talks, attending events and enjoying wandering around one of my favorite cities in the world, I'm appearing as part of two panels: The Why &