Category: Work
-
SmartNews Pro Tip: Save it for Later
SmartNews is focused on today’s news. Because of this the app is optimized for showing you the most important stories of the moment. The idea is to get you up to speed on what’s going on and then on with your day. If we do our job well there, the thinking goes, you’ll be back.…
-
Popping filter bubbles at SmartNews
It’s now just over a month since I joined SmartNews and I am digging into what’s under the hood and the mad science that drives the deceptively simple interface of the SmartNews product. On the surface, SmartNews is a news aggregator. Our server pulls in urls from a variety of feeds and custom crawls but the…
-
Getting the Band Together Again at SmartNews
Following a month off after my unexpected liberation from Gigaom, I started this week as Director of Media & Technology Partnerships at SmartNews. I feel very fortunate to have discovered this company at a time when I believe I have a lot to offer. First, some recent coverage, While researching the company, I was delighted to…
-
Gigaom Search & Alerts
I never got around to writing about the Search and Alerts products I worked on while at Gigaom. Using native WordPress features and extending it just a bit, we were able to build a full-fledged faceted search engine and notification platform at a fraction of the cost of what it cost to do when I…
-
Stewart Brand and the Pace Layer Model
Update: The full audio of the talk is now up on the Long Now blog. I had the good fortune to see Stewart Brand speak the other night with futurist Paul Saffo as moderator at the The Interval, a bar/salon built by The Long Now Foundation. Brand edited the original Whole Earth Catalog (which Steve Jobs…
-
I no longer have a role at Gigaom
Last week certainly was interesting. On Wednesday morning I was abruptly informed that, along with my VP and two engineers, that our services were no longer needed at Gigaom. While unravelling my personal social profiles from the various company pages I had set up for Gigaom, it was Facebook’s robotic bit of micro-copy that really brought it…
-
Robot underlords
In 15 minutes, CPG Grey’s Humans Need Not Apply paints a bleak picture for anyone who thinks that the coming robot revolution will free everyone up for more creative pursuits. Trouble is, poetry and painting don’t pay the rent. Transportation, driving things & people from point A to point B employs millions of people today.…
-
Facebook is Madison Avenue’s new Yahoo
Ever since it began selling ads 10 years ago, Facebook has been combating doubts about its value to marketers. Search engines like Google offer advertisers a direct link to people seeking out particular products, while television remains the dominant way to reach a mass audience. Now, Facebook claims, it can provide the best of both.…
-
True University
Running a start-up can be a lonely. What is glamorized in media are the high points, revenue and usage going up and to the right, the launch party, the high-fives when you close a big deal, the opening of your first office. The reality is more gut wrenching. The late night realization that you may not make…