joshuago’s business Bookmarks

Masterminds are capable but not eager leaders, stepping forward only when it becomes obvious to them that they are the best for the job. Strong-willed and very self-assured, they may make this decision quickly, as they tend to make all decisions.

Former design director of the NY Times says it's still too early to tell whether the new paywall will work, but also says that The Times spent too much time and effort on it that could have gone to other innovation.

The last thing you need is some rat bastard fomenting trouble.

An exploration of the glaring shortcomings and perverse incentives in higher education. The symptoms are increased costs without commensurate value delivered. The causes can be traced to an arms race among institutions for higher rankings.

With venture backed endeavors you generally find that during the first several years the numbers in your bank account are perpetually decreasing, giving your company an expiration date. Your VCs have encouraged you to grow fast and spend hard, which makes perfect sense for them, but not necessarily for you.

Being awash in money blinded Yahoo to the fact that their revenue model was precarious and unsustainable. Being ambivalent about being a technology company and considering programmers a commodity led to the hiring of mediocre programmers, which then resulted in products that weren't very good.

The Oatmeal gets a thorough and very favourable treatment by The Economist. It's making money.

A very entertaining and well-written account of how a programmer went from nothing to clients knocking down his doors asking him to work on open source software enhancements. It all started when he figured out how to write a module for nginx.

You may be able to use your position of advantage to get a deal that is one-sided, but why? Why not think win-win? Why not change somebody’s life?

A fun read detailing how Bram Cohen, Shawn Fanning, Justin Frankel, and Jon Johansen changed the world in their own unique ways. Inspiring to ambitious programmers everywhere.