Intuitive Stories

I’m fascinated by the ingenuity behind the latest virus to show up on the Internet, malware that targets people who play online poker through Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker. It lurks in the background and when those users are actually playing it spies on their hand and reports what they’re holding to a central server, […]

Movies make it look easy, you just press a pilfered key into clay, both sides, then without any further fuss, you can make as many perfect duplicate keys as you’d like. Slip the original back before they notice and you’re in, free and clear. Problem is, it’s not actually quite that easy to make a […]

Traditional game companies don’t have a corner on the game market like they used to years ago. Mattel, Hasbro, you know the big players with their Monopoly, Clue, Trouble, Candyland, etc. But board games is a much bigger business now and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have completely changed the way that games come to market. […]

When Altius Management managed to land full funding for its Asylum Playing Cards kickstarter campaign, raising $25,146 of its $15,000 goal to create some scary playing cards at $9/deck back in 2012, it had no idea how difficult the journey to fulfillment would be. In fact, by spring of 2013 (after promising delivery to backers […]

When business author Mitch Vandell contacted me, I was intrigued by the title of his new management book “Bargepole Management“. I know what a barge is, I know what a bargepole is by extension, but what does it all have to do with management and career strategies? To find out more, we had a conversation […]

I get a remarkable number of pitches from sales people associated with online marketing companies and in almost all the cases, the only information I have to go on is the message itself. Is it well written? Does it suggest that they have even half a clue about what my business is about? Do they […]

In the category of “it’s always important to think through the actions that your legal team is recommending” I submit the latest in the troubled relationship between Apple Computer and Beats Audio, from the Wall Street Journal: Apple Revokes Monster’s Authority to Make Licensed Accessories. Why is this happening? Because Monster forgot that when Apple […]

When I was sent a copy of the book The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind I decided it’d be more interesting to interview the author, Valeh Nazemoff, than just write about the book itself. Thus this interview… Q: What are the four intelligences of the business mind, Valeh? The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind […]

I don’t smoke. In fact, I’ve never smoked a single cigarette in my life, but my Dad smoked most of his life, though in the latter part of his life he was down to a single cigarette he’d make last through much of a day because he knew of the ill effect it could have. […]

Much ado about the announcement today from Apple of the all new MacBook. Not MacBook Air, not MacBook Pro, just “MacBook”. Okay, that’s not confusing, Mr. Cook. Still, as I’ve been spending a lot of time with the beautiful new Dell XPS 13 Windows laptop, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two […]

Another month, another credit card I have to cancel. This time I had to destroy my PayPal debit card because I was watching my transaction records, as I do, and saw an email about a $105 transaction at the Meijer store in Lima, Ohio. Now I’ve never been to Lima, Ohio so that was a curious transaction […]

It’s been a long time coming, and the company’s been doing poorly for at least a decade, but it’s still sad to see tech gadget stalwart Radio Shack declare bankruptcy today. Rumors swirl around what will happen to the over 5000 stores they have worldwide, with some predicting that Amazon will acquire some as demo […]

I was recently on the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast, interviewed by John Lee Dumas about my entrepreneurial background, the startups I’ve founded, and what I’m doing now. We had a good conversation, well worth listening to if you haven’t heard it yet. As a result of that program, I’ve received some interesting email from other […]

Was just checking my bill on the AT&T Wireless site and was rather surprised to find that I now have a feature called “sponsored data” enabled, without any notification or promotion from AT&T. In fact, I bet you do too. It’s described by the company thusly: This is actually really cool because it means that […]

Jason Del Ray over at Re/Code is reporting that “Buy Now” buttons showed up for a short period of time in the mobile Twitter app, likely as a test. Apparently it’s related to a partnership that Twitter.com has been building with a shopping site called Fancy. Here’s how it looked when it was being displayed […]