The Internet has been the ultimate enterprise zone. Just as Hong Kong’s freedom and prosperity contrasted vividly with China’s desperate poverty for much of the last century, the Internet stands out as an island of low regulation and taxation in a broader economy that grows less free with each passing year. The question is whether we will allow Internet-enabled innovation to continue transforming the economy — dramatically reducing the cost and raising the quality of our education and health sectors, for example — or, alternatively, we will allow the Internet’s growth to be choked off by cronyism.
In May, Joplin, Missouri was devastated by a tornado that killed 160 and left the town in ruins. By early July, Debby Guardino was on the scene. In addition to single-handedly raising over $400,000 for schools affected by the disaster, Ms. Guardino traveled to Missouri to teach Joplin teachers how to use DonorsChoose.org to replace thousands of dollars worth of destroyed supplies.
via donorschoose.org
So awesome. You can be sure she's going to be in my book.
None of the travel innovators on this list have captured the market buzz of Hipmunk. With their cute gyrating cartoon character and a healthy dose of attitude, Hipmunk has made a lot of noise and won a fair number of converts.
What’s all the buzz about (aside from the dancing chipmunk)? A new way of ranking flights and hotels. Here, the innovation is not about the search process, or even so much the user experience, it’s about how you present the results of the search.
I've got warm feelings about the Singapore and Southeast Asia startup scene. Singapore is where I decided to become an entrepreneur and wrote a fateful email to Steve talking him into starting a company with me.
If you're like a lot of programmers you may have considered one day joining a startup. But the prospect probably seems a bit mystifying. Most people know what the deal is with working for a big company. What's the deal with working for a startup?
Work at a Startup is a special evening event designed to explain that.
Thinking about it? Do it!
Finding 1: We don’t have an animal behind our back. Yet.
Ah, we know the reason now. It’s the goddamn animal mascot which is your path to glory. It is this creature that takes you in to the big league.
I'm a little bummed the reddit alien and breadpig weren't on there, but so it goes.
BI: So what's next?
ZW: I was doing a talk once, someone asked me how long I plan to do comics. I've considered it, some people are really dedicated to the medium of cartooning, I'm not. I can think of a dozen things I'd be just as happy doing. I'd be just as happy if I were studying science or writing books. I would say I have some other projects I'm working on that are not comic-related. Something that really appeals to me, a person doing research should change careers every seven years. You do something for seven years and you've applied everything you can to it so you ought to switch. That idea does sort of appeal to me.
Mr. Weiner is living the dream.
“Can I choose?”, Beatrix asks. She’s still confused. She thinks this is like home where one can choose from a selection of things to watch. A well organized list of suggestions and options with clear box cover shots of all of her favorites. I have to explain again that it does not work that way on television. That we have to watch whatever is on and, if there is nothing you want to watch that is on then you just have to turn it off. Which we do.
I then do what I should have simply done in the first place. I hook up the iPad to the free hotel wifi and hand it to her. She fires up the Netflix app, chooses a show, and she is happy.
This, she gets. This makes sense.
via minimalmac.com
With no instructions, I order the two items through the Presto. Beautifully lit photos let me see what I'm going to get. The UI is intuitive. Within 20 seconds, I've sent my order to the kitchen. Before we'd even finished eating, I swiped my card slightly awkwardly into the built-in payment slot, added a tip, and settled up. I would not say that this machine will blow your mind with its technical capabilities, but that's exactly the point: It just works.
via theatlantic.com
My years as a Pizza Hut waiter convinced me to invest in E La Carte and it's been one of the gems in the Das Kapital Capital portfolio.
“I think that people have gotten jaded by ‘save the world’ rhetoric, and rightfully so; it’s a big, complicated world out there and treating it as anything less is patronizing to your donors. We’re saying that selling a couple of T-shirts and donating a few thousand dollars here and there can’t save the world, but it can help it suck a little less for someone. And if everyone did that, we’d be in a better place.”
One big giant upvote.
