Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Magic browser plugin for retroactive logins across open tabs
App: Running late
Imagining an app that lets your friends or colleagues know when you’re running late.
Genius grants for inspired groups of collaborators
It would be fantastic if some creative foundation endowed a fellowship program that identified talent clusters: groups of tightly collaborative peers, likely in a single place,but possibly applicable to groups that have very tight, web-supported distance collaboration
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had this site or hashtag?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a site that invited people to complete the sentence, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if….” ?
Hanger card: How to have sex in the shower
Healthcare organizations distribute shower hanger cards that prompt women to do breast self-exams. The same approach could provide handy tips on how to have sex in the shower.
Talk back to Vancouver’s rain on Twitter
Tired of Vancouver’s eternal rain? Talk back to @YVRrain, a Twitter account for Vancouver’s rain clouds.
Unstoppable Timer: mobile app wanted
A timer/clock/stopwatch that disables sleep when active, so I don’t have to turn off my iphone’s auto-lock feature when using my iphone to keep track of time while giving a talk. [EOM]
ClickCentral: a web app for tracking clicks on all tweeted links
I want a single analytics dashboard that shows me click rates for any link I’ve tweeted. Right now I have to look at separate stats for bit.ly, ow.ly, Buffer and alex.loves. [EOM]
Multiplication table app round-up: Blog post wanted
Learning multiplication tables ought to be a lot easier — or at least a lot more fun — in the age of the iPad and iPhone. That’s why I’d love someone to write a blog post rounding up different multiplication table apps.
ShoeCamp: An (imaginary) unconference for the footwear-obsessed
Madeline Stanionis inspired this vision for ShoeCamp, an unconference for the footwear-obsessed.
The Harvard Business Review
Magic browser plugin for retroactive logins across open tabs
App: Running late
Imagining an app that lets your friends or colleagues know when you’re running late.
Genius grants for inspired groups of collaborators
It would be fantastic if some creative foundation endowed a fellowship program that identified talent clusters: groups of tightly collaborative peers, likely in a single place,but possibly applicable to groups that have very tight, web-supported distance collaboration
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had this site or hashtag?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a site that invited people to complete the sentence, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if….” ?
Hanger card: How to have sex in the shower
Healthcare organizations distribute shower hanger cards that prompt women to do breast self-exams. The same approach could provide handy tips on how to have sex in the shower.
Talk back to Vancouver’s rain on Twitter
Tired of Vancouver’s eternal rain? Talk back to @YVRrain, a Twitter account for Vancouver’s rain clouds.
Unstoppable Timer: mobile app wanted
A timer/clock/stopwatch that disables sleep when active, so I don’t have to turn off my iphone’s auto-lock feature when using my iphone to keep track of time while giving a talk. [EOM]
ClickCentral: a web app for tracking clicks on all tweeted links
I want a single analytics dashboard that shows me click rates for any link I’ve tweeted. Right now I have to look at separate stats for bit.ly, ow.ly, Buffer and alex.loves. [EOM]
Multiplication table app round-up: Blog post wanted
Learning multiplication tables ought to be a lot easier — or at least a lot more fun — in the age of the iPad and iPhone. That’s why I’d love someone to write a blog post rounding up different multiplication table apps.
ShoeCamp: An (imaginary) unconference for the footwear-obsessed
Madeline Stanionis inspired this vision for ShoeCamp, an unconference for the footwear-obsessed.
OneZero
It’s monkey see, monkey do over here
And you know, you usually don't let monkeys hack firmware.
The family that hacks together….
Saturday morning at our house: the kids are programming our new Lego Mindstorms robot. I'm installing Xcode on the Mac home media server...step one in the long road to controlling our Mini with our Kinect.
How to use your Facebook restricted list
This step-by-step guide shows you how to use Facebook’s restricted list to control who can see your posts.
Don’t be scared to Facebook your kids: A response to Amy Webb
Amy Webb has written an important but frustrating post on Facebook privacy and kids on the Slate website. Writing about a friend who extensively Facebooks photos and stories about her daughter "Kate", Webb worries that Kate's parents have compromised their child's...
11 things I want to stop learning
There are some things I seem destined to learn over and over again, and gosh, I wish I could stop learning them already. For example: Unplug it before you open it. If you don't want to do it tomorrow, you won't want to do it in three months, either. Just because Apple...
Work Smarter with LinkedIn, published today
Work Smarter with LinkedIn takes you through exactly what we’d cover if we sat down together to get you powered up on LinkedIn. If we had an hour or two together, we’d talk about your near- and long-term professional goals, and then we’d focus on how LinkedIn could help you achieve them.
How BrainPop prepared my son for time travel
Last night's bedtime story was "JCat and the Time Machine for Cats". Like all JCat stories, this one featured JCat traveling to Cupertino with Tim Cook in order to invent something. Happily, I was ready for the request to have a story featuring a time machine, since...
Win my love: The cheat sheet
I know that you are supposed to like or love people based on their character or their soul, but that shit takes a lot of time to figure out. It's much more efficient to quickly categorize people as loveable, likeable or deeply suspicious based on their surface traits....
JSTOR DAILY
It’s monkey see, monkey do over here
And you know, you usually don't let monkeys hack firmware.
The family that hacks together….
Saturday morning at our house: the kids are programming our new Lego Mindstorms robot. I'm installing Xcode on the Mac home media server...step one in the long road to controlling our Mini with our Kinect.
How to use your Facebook restricted list
This step-by-step guide shows you how to use Facebook’s restricted list to control who can see your posts.
Don’t be scared to Facebook your kids: A response to Amy Webb
Amy Webb has written an important but frustrating post on Facebook privacy and kids on the Slate website. Writing about a friend who extensively Facebooks photos and stories about her daughter "Kate", Webb worries that Kate's parents have compromised their child's...
11 things I want to stop learning
There are some things I seem destined to learn over and over again, and gosh, I wish I could stop learning them already. For example: Unplug it before you open it. If you don't want to do it tomorrow, you won't want to do it in three months, either. Just because Apple...
Work Smarter with LinkedIn, published today
Work Smarter with LinkedIn takes you through exactly what we’d cover if we sat down together to get you powered up on LinkedIn. If we had an hour or two together, we’d talk about your near- and long-term professional goals, and then we’d focus on how LinkedIn could help you achieve them.
How BrainPop prepared my son for time travel
Last night's bedtime story was "JCat and the Time Machine for Cats". Like all JCat stories, this one featured JCat traveling to Cupertino with Tim Cook in order to invent something. Happily, I was ready for the request to have a story featuring a time machine, since...
Win my love: The cheat sheet
I know that you are supposed to like or love people based on their character or their soul, but that shit takes a lot of time to figure out. It's much more efficient to quickly categorize people as loveable, likeable or deeply suspicious based on their surface traits....
THE VERGE
How to Protect Your Privacy When Working From Home
Today in the Wall Street Journal, I look at How to Protect Your Privacy When Working From Home: There is, for instance, the loss of privacy when your colleagues overhear you arguing with your children, or see what you read on the bookshelves behind you. Or the loss of...
Today in the WSJ: The key to creating virtual conferences that work
What makes for a great virtual event? Now that all our conferences, workshops and speaking engagements have to take place online, it's a crucial question. In today's Wall Street Journal, I map what it takes to make an online event successful, including: If at all...
How A.I. could change the workplace
What about a system that automatically changes wording in communications to eliminate your co-workers’ unhelpful quirks? This is just one of the interesting ideas in my Wall Street Journal article about how A.I. can help with workplace communications. An excerpt from...
The definitive guide to Google Drive
When the senior editors at Medium approached me about writing the definitive guide to Google Drive, they weren't expecting the Sext-o-matic: a Google sheet that automates the tedious job of sending sexy text messages to your lover. But I couldn't resist building...