Home

It’s problematic when copywriters write for companies instead of people. It’s important to remember that it’s always a human — not a company — who will be reading your words. This post contains my slides from my speech on copywriting, which was given in my Executive Speaking class.

Leaders show themselves in various forms. There are rhetorical magicians (Barack Obama) and iconic revolutionaries (Steve Jobs). There are also workplace leaders – the silver-tongued employee who can articulate issues several steps beyond what others are thinking, or the clever, diligent coworker whose performance alone encourages others.

Whatever the kind, leaders have three priceless skills: they’re doers, they persuade, and they inspire.

Yesterday, Michael Pope posted an article titled Technical Cofounders Are a Myth. In it he tried to make the case that software engineers don’t finish what they start, and that you’re better off paying a technical person than partnering with one. His frustrations are valid and not uncommon, but his conclusions are way off base for a lot of reasons.

The GPL effectively rendered ArtPal a pro bono project. I was unable to make it a businessworthy endeavor while abiding by the full terms of the license. However while selling ArtPal was not a sustainable business in and of itself, it generated sufficient leads to be well worth my time.

If you’re going to talk about the virtues of failure or any other counterintuitive concept, please follow the Brad Feld strategy of reason, and avoid the Umair Haque strategy of shocking contrarianism.

Writing for people is about cleanliness and brevity. Writing for Google requires clutter and redundancy. Startups should write for their users because companies need to prove their value before they market it. Any startup that’s writing for Google is getting ahead of itself.

I recently replaced my work and home keyboards with the Kinesis Advantage. These are my collected thoughts on it after two full months of daily use.

The trust that Google accrued when it was a smaller company opened doors for many unforeseen consumer products. Every time Facebook uses data in a way that makes its users uncomfortable, it closes those doors a little further.

What I want to see is a mutual recognition of self-interest and codependence between Twitter and its third party developers, and a better understanding of what both sides need to do to make the most of that relationship.

It’s not that Apple doesn’t want “some other company” to establish a higher level language standard; it’s that Apple doesn’t want any company to do that — including Apple. The reasoning is the same: if Apple were to allow developers to write iPhone apps using MacRuby (i.e. Ruby 1.9), there would be nothing to stop those apps from being moved to other mobile platforms that also support Ruby.

Whether you believe Twitter brought 30.5%, 32% or 45% of didtheypasshealthcarereform.com’s traffic, the conclusion remains the same: not only did Twitter win the battle of relative numbers; Twitter drove more total traffic to the site than Facebook did.

There is a widely held belief that you can tell how interesting a Twitter user is by the number of followers that he or she has. This is a flawed line of thinking.

What I love most about working at a startup is how close I am to the people I’m serving. Almost every task I work on directly benefits our customers. And working at a web startup means I can deliver that benefit as soon as it’s built.

A week ago I purchased an Amazon Kindle. These are my initial impressions.

I’m a big fan of Amazon.com. It is far and away my online retailer of choice. I’ve been a Prime member since they launched the program in 2005. Books, computers, videogames, RAM, speakers, … you name it, I’ve probably bought it at Amazon.

But it’s time for some tough love. Amazon, your web site is in dire need of improvements. Here’s how you can make it better.

This is the Facebook app that I propose somebody make for people who engage in socially pathetic trifles:

After many years on Windows, I jumped ship and got a Mac. Here’s why.