If you’re new to this blog, the following posts will give you a feel for the kinds of things that I typically write about. Some of the items below are fairly old, so be kind!
Software / Technical
Project Management
- The danger of lock-in (Many decisions, technical or otherwise contain long-term ramifications that people often fail to consider)
- Evaluating Project Risk
- Managing Multiple Projects
Business Strategy
- The hidden challenges of channel marketing
- Why Failure May Not Always Be Good
- Working for Equity
- Can Yahoo! be turned around? (This is one of about two dozen strategy articles that I’ve written regarding specific companies; these tend to be relevant to particular moments in time though)
- How to Compete With Free (Wrote this in 2009. Got some stuff wrong – like not anticipating SalesForce’s ability to grow through acquisitions – but this article also contains Twitter’s entire playbook for the past six years!)
Economics
- Open peer-to-peer markets (As far as I can tell, this was the first article ever written on this topic, although I’m sure the idea isn’t original)
- Currency as incentivation (The basis for any monetary system contains subtle incentives for particular sorts of behavior)
- All the gold in the world
- Who wants to be a Trillionaire?
- How to Make Money Online (An introductory look at workable business models for the internet)
Futurism / Big Picture
- Open Source Manufacturing: The Implications of a Factory in Every Living Room (Written in 2008/9, the language of this article predates the terminology that we’re used to today; some of the predictions haven’t happened yet, but I’m standing by this one for the most part)
- Addressability – and why it matters to you (Also from 2008/9, this anticipates some of the developments in the Internet of Things over the past couple of years)
- The three phases of the internet
- Interesting developments in addressability
- Another solution for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Not a practical solution, but rather a fun exercise in blue sky thinking; I’ve had a number of interesting conversations over the years as a result of people reading this)
- What will cellphones look like in 5 years time?
- Meta-squared Materials
Inventions
- A better display technology?
- Better way to manufacture clothes?
- 3D Printing Large Items
- Better turnstiles
- Moving past passwords
- Faster 3D printing
- Better tires
The Mars Colony Administrator’s Handbook
2012/2013 – This is the largest series of blog posts that I’ve made on this site, and is probably the widest-read content here as well. The idea was to look at Elon Musk’s large-scale Mars Colony concept, and to illustrate with examples (i.e. what the air plant for 100k people would look like) of what would be involved in actually building it. I’ve received several serious requests to turn the series into a book, but there are already many others on this topic that do the job better than I could.
- Part One (Introduction)
- Part Two (Resources, Water)
- Part Three (Air, Food)
- Part Four (Energy, Raw Materials, People)
- Part Five (Supply Chain Management, Urban Planning)
- Intermission (Some thoughts I had that were outside of the main flow)
- Part Six (Legal Jurisdiction, Economics)
- A bonus post (Some more thoughts coming from conversations I had with readers)
- Part Seven (Manufacturing, Communications)
- Part Eight (Emergency Services, Failure Modes)
- Conclusion (Conclusions, plus some more thoughts on the topic)