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“Project Houdini” and the Obama Campaign

Buried deep in Newsweek’s fascinating “Special Election Project” piece is the following nugget: The Obama campaign’s New Media experts created a computer program that would allow a “flusher”—the term for a volunteer who rounds up nonvoters on Election Day—to know…

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Evidence Based Policy and an Obama Administration

That I’m a fan of Barack Obama is not a surprise to anyone who knows me. One of the things that appeals to me most about him is that he seems to be evidence based rather than ideology based. He…

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Summer in San Francisco

Some times are so great, you can tell that they are among the best times of your life even while you’re having them. For me, this summer was one of those times. I spent the summer living in San Francisco,…

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Wow Google Spreadsheets

I’ve long been a fan of Google Spreadsheet. Like all disruptive technologies, it doesn’t meet the needs of most customers of the incumbent product, Excel. I’m no banker, but even my relatively neophyte hands keep trying to hit F4 to…

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Microsoft Points and the Hillarity of Patents

It would seem I am now an “official” inventor. The USPTO has granted, ahem, Method and system for in-line secondary transactions, an element of the work I did on the system that ultimately became Microsoft Points. For the record, I…

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San Francisco Bound

Today I’m heading out to San Francisco for the summer. I’m going to be working for a VC fund. I’ve already done some work with them and I’m super excited. They’re super smart, have a great track-record and seem like…

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PicasaWeb Downloader

In the genuinely useful software dept., here is a little app written in C# (source included!) that will download an entire google web album. Great for grabbing copies of all of your friends photos.

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The (very) end of MSN Music

This week, Microsoft announced that they will be de-activating the DRM Servers that issue new keys for music from the (now discontinued) MSN Music service. In other words, starting June 1st, copying your purchased music to a new PC and…

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“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”

If you haven’t seen them, you really must check out the two videos that will.i.am (of the Black Eyed Peas) created about Barack Obama. They both make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Doesn’t some part…

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Samsung on Failure

Chairman Kun Hee Lee of Samsung Electronics, as quoted in the HBS case on that company: At Sumsung, we reward outstanding performance; we do not punish failure. This is my personal philosophy and belief. We need punishment only for those…

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