We Need More Developers
Something about our society is not creating enough developers. We have a glut of MBAs, accountants and lawyers (yours truly included). Where are all the good techies? Truth is being a developer has not been a focus of our society for very long. Even today I doubt many parents are thrilled when their kids come home declaring their desire to be a Python developer. I think we need an all out campaign to make writing code the next great occupation in America.
We Need Grannies for Startups
Montreal’s International Startup Festival is looking for a few good grandmothers.
The event will gather hundreds of the top technology entrepreneurs around the world for speeches, conferences and festive activities.
The festival is also a venue for small-business owners to make pitches to potential investors and be judged on the quality of their presentations.
However, Philippe Telio, one of the festival’s organizers said there are lots of opportunities to have fun even when being judged.
Enter the grannies. Telio said he would like to recruit a few grandmothers to the panel of judges in order to award one lucky startup the prize for the presentation best understood by a grandmother.
This will be one of several awards handed out to participating businesses.
"We always say that your grandmother should understand what your business is about," Telio said. "So we thought it would be fun to have actual grandmothers judging."
Posted: June 6th, 2011
at 11:19am by mnp
Categories: 9th dan,competitions,development,entrepreneurship,innovation
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Who is Joi Ito?
Born in Kyoto in 1966, the internationally educated Ito dropped out of two different colleges and, as early as 1985, became one of the first people to register for and study an online course. This knack for early adoption served him well in later years, and he’s now credited with a hodgepodge variety of ‘firsts’, even having helped kickstart the nascent rave scene in Japan.
Posted: May 31st, 2011
at 6:03pm by mnp
Categories: web,et cetera,development,who is?,philosophy,entrepreneurship,innovation
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10 Myths of Innovation
Innovation is all about ideas
The great leader never fails
Leaders are only fighting the system
Everyone can be an innovator
Innovation happens organically
Can be inside an establish organization
Requires wholesale organizational change
Innovation can only happen in Skunk Works
Innovation is unmanageable chaos
Only start-ups can innovate
The Story of Browser Names
One of the early graphical web browser that got really popular was Mosaic, developed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Some folks from the team, along with SGI founder Jim Clark, decided that it’s worth a venture and formed a company, originally called Mosaic Communication and then later renamed to Netscape Communication.
Netscape’s flagship desktop product was a much more advanced web browser than Mosaic. Jamie Zawinski coined the name "Mozilla", as it was supposed to be Mosaic Killer (Mozilla = Mosaic + Godzilla). At the later stage, the final browser was widely known as Netscape Navigator. For browsing the web, obviously you need a navigator.
Posted: May 30th, 2011
at 9:28pm by mnp
Categories: design,blogs,internets,innovation
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Big Dreamer Sessions: Srivatsa Krishna

Posted: May 30th, 2011
at 5:39pm by mnp
Categories: politricks,development,innovation
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Going Paper-Free for $220
It’s 2011. Personal computers have been around and popular for well over a decade now, and yet we still have to deal with a huge amount of physical paper.
I’ve been wanting to go paper-free for a long time now. The advantages are obvious:
-Paper takes up physical space in our homes that digital files don’t.
-Digital files, if properly encrypted, are far more secure than sheets of paper that could be stolen.
-Digital files can be searched in an instant, while papers have to be laboriously sorted through.
-Digital files can be backed up perfectly and easily.
Posted: May 26th, 2011
at 10:00pm by mnp
Categories: computers,weaponry,development,innovation
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Crowdsourced Gardening
Bhut Jolokia, the hottest pepper plant known to man at over 1 million Scoville units, is also one of the hardest to grow. However, in John Gordon’s basement, the Bhuts have a carefully tuned environment controlled by automated heaters, watering pumps, fans, and lights. The system is all controlled by an Arduino and the data is sent to Pachube for monitoring (John likes to make sure the Bhuts are safe and sound when he’s at work).
Posted: May 25th, 2011
at 4:04pm by mnp
Categories: weaponry,grub,development,blogs,innovation
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What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin transactions are stored in a globally-readable block chain. Each individual block contains a list of transactions, a proof of work (a partial hash collision that depends in part on the preceding block), a timestamp representing the approximate time the block was created, and some additional information. When a new block is created, 50 bitcoins are added to the account that created the block until the pre-defined limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached. Each new block represents a confirmation of previously stored transactions, making it increasingly harder to revert those transactions. Approximately 126,500 blocks have been created to date. (Source)
Posted: May 25th, 2011
at 1:14pm by mnp
Categories: business,internets,what is?,trade,innovation
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