In the offline world, clichés about first impressions abound. From the oft-repeated “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” to articles admonishing us about body language and the importance of women wearing makeup to appear competent, there’s lots of advice floating around for acing the first in-person meeting. Here are five things …
On the web, what is the job to be done?
While the overall economy haltingly recovers, web and mobile development have resumed at full tilt. Maintenance on digital properties deferred since the 2008 financial crisis is now critical to perform. The growth in mobile device adoption and the proliferation of tablets in multiple form factors are forcing even the desktop-devoted to accelerate mobile development. Vendors …
Stop the Madness: Password Proliferation
The growth of the internet has been blamed for a good deal: the decline of conversation, an explosion of pornography, and even the re-wiring of the human brain. But perhaps the most egregious crime is the proliferation of passwords required to navigate one’s everyday life. From newspaper subscriptions to checking accounts to all flavors of online retail, we’re …
It’s Time to Find the Women in Tech
“Where are all the women?” is an irritatingly common refrain in tech circles. Plenty of executives and investors, male and female, are seeking to advance more women in technology. But how? We need to take a three-pronged approach, bolstering education, opportunity, and visibility for women in technology. Increasing the pipeline of qualified women is a first …
Getting to scale: advancing platforms for online content
These days Software as a Service (SaaS) is ubiquitous. Project management? Got Basecamp for that. Bulk email at scale? See Constant Contact or Mailchimp. And say goodbye to your server logs — Google Analytics has been widely adopted for understanding website performance. The move to SaaS has long been the case for bloggers, who from …
Unpacking the algorithms behind online experiences
Relinquishing human free will to the machines generally gets a bad rap. In the media, all kinds of scientists are nefarious in their data-driven ways — even well-intentioned science yields Frankenstein’s monster far more often than the reasonable paleontologist in Jurassic Park. The Terminator franchise in the 1980s was among the first to introduce the concept …
Is health care next for digital disruption?
Much has been written about the internet’s disruption of longstanding models for education. The success of Khan Academy in K-12, the launch of Coursera, edX and others in higher education, the publicity garnered by the Thiel fellowships, and the aggressive funding of edu start-ups everywhere (EdSurge provides solid coverage) all illustrate the opportunity to take …
More than you wanted to know about your Facebook use, courtesy of Wolfram Alpha
It takes a curious mixture of narcissism, introspection, and discipline to engage in personal analytics on any level, much less dialed up to Feltronesque quantified self. This quick download of my Facebook activity since September 2010 confirms: I use words (189) more than pictures (47), and neglect video (1) almost entirely My friends are a …
Death in the social era
Today marks the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Antietam, whose 23,000 casualties marked the bloodiest single day in American military history. The American Experience film on Death and the Civil War (based on Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering) focuses on the scale of the death, and the corresponding lack of societal structures to manage death logistics …
Forget luck — focus on the final 10%
Digital projects, like all software endeavors, are easily derailed. Developing a site or application is initially seductive — the discovery phase presents a green field where all frustrations about your existing or missing capabilities can be magically erased by the New Thing. The early vision is grand — the stakeholders are picturing the end result …