NYSEG and RG&E collected customer social security numbers.  To clarify, these companies are do not issue credit cards – they provide gas and electricty.  Why do they need social security numbers?  The simple answer is that they don’t (more on that in a minute).  I am guessing that they collect them so that they can [...]

A personal atomic clock.

Futurama has a series of posters that have a retro look.  I didn’t realize how inspired they were by wold WPA posters until I found this old “Keep Your Teeth Clean” PSA.  I’ve assembled 11 Futurama posters next to (what I think) was the inspiration for them.  Enjoy! If you use this image elsewhere, please [...]

On Monday Aug 15, 2:16pm EDT, I contributed to the PEN TYPE-A on Kickstarter.  Well, tomorrow is February 1st and so that means that it has been roughly five and a half months since I funded the project.  And you know what – that’s fine with me. An hour ago I got an invitation to [...]

BR Venture Fund is seeking applications for the Cornell Venture Challenge (CVC)! The Cornell Venture Challenge (CVC) is Cornell University’s prestigious Business Plan Competition. On April 19, 2012, during the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration event a select group of applicants will get the chance to pitch new and exciting business ideas to a panel of professional investors [...]

It turns out that some people disagree with me Read Part 1 The other day I posted an article about my aversion to using outsourced software development firms for new product development. Well, I got a few private emails and comments (which didn’t make it past my filter) telling me that I was wrong. So [...]

I take a lot of product photos for my work on TubeClockDB.com.  Every product Ir review gets a full set of photos before I even begin to produce the video review.  These are some of my favorite images.

I’m in a textbook.  Yup – one of those expensive things that you’re required to buy, that took three trees to make, and that you will resell for 20% of what you paid.  This particular textbook is called Marketing by McGraw Hill and I contributed to the social media chapter.  I took all of the [...]

Cynical advice to entrepreneurs: Believe it or not, a lot of people want to be involved with a start up.  Of those, most people don’t want to take any of the risk.  Of course, they still want to take all of the credit for success and that creates a problem for you.  You will find [...]

Why I won’t touch a company that doesn’t have in-house development The headline might sound like a bit of an exaggeration but in the last 8 years of my life working on and with startups, I’ve found plenty of examples why fully outsourced IT has failed but no good example of when it has worked [...]