START

"Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 22:02:19 -0400

“

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the foul clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

”

- Invictus ~ Unconquered

Book of Verses, Life and Death (Echoes) - William Ernest Henley

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

Sat, 12 May 2012 09:53:00 -0400

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

- Henry David Thoreau

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by..."

Sun, 06 May 2012 01:48:00 -0400

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn’t work out, you had your head cut off.”

- Polaroid inventor Edwin Land on embracing failure, among other insights on what it takes to innovate.

Also see Land on the 5,000 steps to success.

The rise of the Growth Hacker The new job title of “Growth...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:10:06 -0400

The rise of the Growth Hacker

The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.

…

The discipline of marketing is shifting from people-centric to API-centric activities

Written by Andrew Chen
April 27th, 2012 at 8:30 am

"The successful scientist thinks like a poet but works like a bookkeeper."

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:55:21 -0400

“The successful scientist thinks like a poet but works like a bookkeeper.”

- Legendary Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson adds to the best definitions of science. (via explore-blog)

52 Weeks of UX: What Does it Mean to be Simple?

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:57:59 -0400

52 Weeks of UX: What Does it Mean to be Simple?:

52weeksofux:

All designers say simplicity is important, but what does it really mean to make something simple? Most of the time we think it means less, that by removing stuff we achieve simplicity. We think by keeping content above the fold we’re helping people focus, or by using bullets instead of…

"Mr. Morin says he called Mr. Dunbar, a professor at the University of Oxford , to find out more..."

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:19:17 -0400

“Mr. Morin says he called Mr. Dunbar, a professor at the University of Oxford , to find out more about his research and theory. Mr. Dunbar told him that social networks resemble a set of concentric circles: 150 people constitute the outer boundary of friends, 50 is the limit for trusted friends, 15 for good friends, and 5 for best friends.”

- Social Networks, Small and Smaller

This graph below from Visual Economics, which shows the adoption...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:33:05 -0400

This graph below from Visual Economics, which shows the adoption rate of new technologies across the century, is one of my new favorites” via @dkthomp

52 Weeks of UX: Is UX the Key to a Long-lasting Business?

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:52:58 -0400

52 Weeks of UX: Is UX the Key to a Long-lasting Business?:

52weeksofux:

“But what if the firm was driven, not by the goal of short-term profitability, but by the goal of continuous innovation in service of finding new ways of delighting customers? The new bottom line of this kind of organization becomes whether the customer is delighted. Conventional financial…

"If you think of YC as a corporation or a company, it has these characteristics that every big..."

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:14:00 -0400

““If you think of YC as a corporation or a company, it has these characteristics that every big company would love to have… It’s a bunch of smart people working on projects that they love and have upside in. But they are all linked together and get the benefits of being a part of a larger group. YC is effectively inventing a new form of organization.””

- Harj Tagger / YC, On the future of Federated Enterprise

curiositycounts: Nelson Mandela Center of Memory: Beautifully...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0400

curiositycounts:

Nelson Mandela Center of Memory: Beautifully designed, brilliant and ground-breaking on several levels — historically, technologically, socially. Another round of applause to Google for continued support in cultural exploration.

“With the help of a $1.25 million grant from Google, the center digitized thousands of documents and images that illustrate the life and times of South Africa’s first black president. But instead of scanning them and dumping them online for scholars to peruse, the center, with Google’s support, created a virtual museum experience — highlighting certain pieces from the archives, putting them in the context of Mandela’s life and then enabling a visitor to the site to go deeper if they’d like.”

(via)

warbyparker: This real-time wind map is hypnotizing.

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:15:39 -0400

warbyparker:

This real-time wind map is hypnotizing.

"We think that 02138 and 02139 are the zipcodes where new industries will be birthed."

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:03:30 -0400

“We think that 02138 and 02139 are the zipcodes where new industries will be birthed.”

- Hugo Van Vuuren, co-founder of the Experiment Fund, quoted in a Fast Company article on “The Xfund, Harvard, and the Student-Entrepreneur” (via harvardseas)

This film is the fourth installment in our Apolis Conversations...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:21:36 -0400

This film is the fourth installment in our Apolis Conversations series. The aim of Apolis Conversations is to highlight the work of inspiring industry leaders that we are honored to consider Apolis Advocates.

Dan Pallotta is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Journal blog and a veteran of the non-profit industry. “Veteran” may undersell Pallotta’s current position in the industry, “reformer” may be the more apt title. He is a passionate supporter of non-profits and their mission in the world, but believes society’s restraints “undermine their potential.” Pallotta’s 2008 book,Uncharitable, questions why we have “one rule book for charity and one for the rest of the economic world.”

Pallotta’s newest offering, Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World, is set to release in August 2012

Eliot Boat Club circa 1973, Head of the Charles

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0400

Eliot Boat Club circa 1973, Head of the Charles

Proximate - Blog: Birds of a Feather: Why You Network With People Just Like You.

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:31:08 -0400

Proximate - Blog: Birds of a Feather: Why You Network With People Just Like You.:

proximate:

In a great Wired article from January, Jonah Lehrer thinks about events in the context of homophily, or the tendency humans have to seek out social connections where they identify similarities with themselves.

It’s the classic “birds of a feather, flock together” phenomenon, and has…

laughingsquid: Interview With Designer Dieter Rams

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0400

laughingsquid:

Interview With Designer Dieter Rams

Monocle, Happy 5th!

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0400

Monocle, Happy 5th!

Behind The Line: Waxing Poetic

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0400

Behind The Line: Waxing Poetic:

We sat down with the decision makers at Barbour®,

one of our favorite heritage brands that’s world
famous for their waxed cotton outerwear, to find out
a little more about the brand’s past—and their future

How did the initial design of the iconic Barbour jacket come about?
The original…

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:00:06 -0400

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”

- Jack Kerouac, who would have been 90 today, echoes Paul Graham in this omnibus of life advice from the iconic writer. More ways to celebrate his would-be birthday. (via explore-blog)