The kosher gadget industry — that’s how reporter Dan Levin sums up a niche but growing market aimed at helping Orthodox Jews follow halacha (Jewish legal code) while still staying connected to modern conveniences. In his New York Times piece, Entrepreneurs Find Ways to Make Technology Work With Jewish Sabbath, Levin offers examples of inventions [...]

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There’s been a deluge of blog posts recently examining how companies such as Southwest, Comcast, and Zappos are now using Twitter to improve customer service. Repeated examples point to instances where disgruntled customers send out a snarl of a tweet and get back near-instant replies offering resolution. To be fair, there are also numerous examples [...]

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One of the many, many things we’re excited about is the kick-ass network we’re going to have at LaunchPad Coworking. Apparently some very forward thinking people decided to cover downtown Austin with fiber-optic cable back in the 70s. Since then much of it has been sliced and diced, but a little sleuthing on the part [...]

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Last friday Tina and I drove down to San Antonio for Firecat First Friday coworking session, hosted by Susan Price at the fabulous Firecat Studio. During the lively brown bag lunch discussion about social networking, we were discussing Digital Natives (kids who are growing up with the Net) and Digital Immigrants (adults). Like many of [...]

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I mentioned in an earlier post a study that suggests people are reading less. Personally, I think I’m reading more. Perhaps fewer books but that’s about being busy launching LaunchPad Coworking and not about a waning love of the written word. I read online pretty constantly and get at least as many good ideas from [...]

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In August, 1981, MTV was unleashed upon the world and the first video ever played was a silly song called Video Killed the Radio Star. The song was allegedly inspired by a J.G. Ballard story. It’s a lamentation that with new technology comes the passing of “the good old days of…” fill in the [...]

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I’ve been a gadget slut for years. So of course I ordered a Kindle the minute they became available. In case you haven’t visited Amazon in the past couple of weeks, the Kindle is their entry into the pretty long line of ebook readers that so far have been utter failures in the marketplace. The [...]

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