Law Students

Never Hackathon Alone

Posted on January 28, 2012
I gave a brief talk today at the kickoff of DevFest 2012 at Columbia, and everyone was excited and still trying to figure out how to split off into teams.  And I overheard a couple of conversations where people were trying to decide whether to join up with a group, where they might be able to tackle a more ambitious project, or to work on their own, where they'd have more control, ownership, and credit for the finished project...

In Public Markets, Not Everybody Wins a Trophy

Posted on December 10, 2011
This TechCrunch piece on a $155 million round by a Swedish payments processing company notes that the funding is part of an increasingly prominent trend: companies that would have gone public a decade ago are staying private for as long as they can. Facebook and Twitter are the headliners of the trend, which also includes my own Palantir Technologies...

Mike Check

Posted on December 08, 2011

That Old Power Law Magic

Posted on February 11, 2010
Just wanted to pick out one detail of the news that Google is buying Aardvark:86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer.  50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers...

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Snowpocalypse '10

Posted on February 10, 2010
Dear New York,6-10 inches of snowfall over the course of the day?  Please.  Get back to me when you have a day of 6-10 inches an hour.Love,The Sierra Nevada Mountains

What I've Been Up To

Posted on February 06, 2010
See updates on the latest features and changes at The Udorse Blog.As you can see, I've been spending more time on development than on weblog graphic design.  I like to think of our aesthetic as 'charmingly scrappy'.

Unhappy Hipsters

Posted on January 26, 2010
This which adds snarky captions to glossy interior design photos, is the Stuff White People Like for the Twitter age.

Poker Face x4

Posted on January 19, 2010
Poker Face, and three covers of the song, played simultaneously. I think this is the radio edit they play in some of the lower circles of hell:Via Dinosaur Comics

Udorse at New York Tech Meetup Tomorrow

Posted on January 04, 2010
Friends of the Company should come out to the New York Tech Meetup tomorrow at 7 in Haft Auditorium at FIT to watch us present on the big stage.We'll also be making a rare after-NYTM-drinks appearance, so stop by and say hi.

Whither Location?

Posted on January 02, 2010
We spend a lot of time at Udorse thinking about location-based services - which direction we think they'll be heading in, and how best to eventually integrate location into Udorse. I was arguing the other day that we already have a pretty good model for how things will shake out between the various competing location-game clients like Foursquare, Gowalla, and BrightKite: instant messaging...

Udorse Open Beta

Posted on January 02, 2010
After much toil, our new version is live at Udorse.com. We've made the tagging interface much more free-flowing, added a bunch of new ways for users to add pictures (like from Flikr, MySpace, via direct upload, or snapped with your webcam), and rolled out a new rewards system that will be a lot more fun than trying to scrape affiliate network pennies.

High Latency

Posted on November 03, 2009
At Udorse this week, we're experimenting with limiting e-mail traffic to twice a day, to create longer blocks of productive time. From a developer prospective this is fantastic, so I just hope it will work out that we can run the rest of the business that way.

Is Social Gaming Just A Scam?

Posted on November 01, 2009
Michael Arrington's opening salvo against scammy monetization schemes by social gaming companies is going to be a big story. When the founder of Hot or Not calls your business unethical, you have the beginnings of a real scandal.My gut reaction is that this has to be self-defeating in even the medium run - it's hard to measure hits to user goodwill at the margin, but there's a Wile E Coyote point where all of a sudden that goodwill is gone and you can't get it back...

Twitter Updates

Posted on October 21, 2009
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/21/glass-tweet/

The Visual Display of COmplex Information

Posted on October 05, 2009
Chart Porn is on the list of Approved Sources.

Fred Wilson on NY Startup Scene

Posted on October 05, 2009
Fred Wilson At Clickable's Interesting Cafe: What Makes The NYC Startup Sector So Great? from Max Kalehoff on Vimeo.(link

From aurus on tumblr

Posted on October 02, 2009
From aurus on tumblr

The Big Reveal

Posted on September 17, 2009
Now that the conference is over, it's finally safe to talk about what we've been laboring over in secret these three long months. Geoff and I left Clarium to found Udorse, a new kind of web application Geoff calls a 'visual endorsement engine'. The core idea is pretty simple - we give you a platform to tag interesting stuff in your pictures and link those tags anywhere on the web...

The Efficient News Hypothesis Fallacy?

Posted on September 14, 2009
The theory behind the efficient market hypothesis as applied to asset prices was that they would reflect all the information known in the market, and therefore the real underlying value of the priced assets. Trouble is, investors are strategic, and so the more of them know about and believe in the EMH, the more of them can free-ride on the pricing information produced by other investors, and the less true the EMH becomes...

Listia is Pretty Sweet

Posted on August 05, 2009
I got a bunch of mentions this morning to Listia, a cool auctions-for-free-stuff site that makes it easier to coordinate giving stuff away. Users bid on your listing with points from the service (you get a starting balance when you join) so you end up with just one committed donee to deal with, instead of some rabid Craigslist mob...

Dawn Patrol

Posted on July 25, 2009
Invite-only beta goes live in one week. No rest for the wicked.

It's On With Alexa Chung

Posted on July 25, 2009
The office is actually full of enormous televisions, but Big Hedge Fund has them tuned to the financial news all day, so I hadn't seen of MTV's new show until today. Isn't it only like a month old? Because Chung is a complete natural. Someone at MTV deserves a gold star for hiring her...

Best Practices

Posted on July 24, 2009
Got the first draft of our Terms of Service for Udorse back from Big Law Firm - they're ... aggressive. My friends at the Berkman Center would flip their shit. Time for a redraft...

CSS is Awesome

Posted on July 24, 2009
I approve of this product:CSS IS AWESOME by stevenfrank cheap coffee mug on www.Zazzle.com(via BoingBoing)

Original Development Insights #1

Posted on July 23, 2009
IE6 sucks.

The Swipple Stallion

Posted on July 08, 2009
The current Achewood strips, about writing bodice-ripping erotica into the Williams-Sonoma catalog, have me grinning ear to ear.

1:45 Cycle

Posted on June 09, 2009
I am old and slow. That's what I get for only swimming 3 times in the past year. And aging.Must train harder. Only 6 months until the next alumni game!

The Eternal Recurrence of Weblog

Posted on June 09, 2009
Back! Out from under the NDA and in the news. I've left Clarium (the hedge fund that required me to shut this place down for a while) to co-found Udorse. This will allow me to replace my previous content of no posts about the financial markets with new content of willfully obfuscatory posts about software development! Progress!

24 Hours to Go

Posted on July 30, 2008
This seems appropriate:

What We Need More Of Is Science

Posted on July 12, 2008
Water + Cornstarch + Subwoofer = Awesome

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