From what I can tell it appears that Jeff Sandquist’s manager went on vacation and so he decided to gathered a bunch of buddies around and ask, “What would be a cool website we can put together for tech enthusiasts?” and 10 was born.

That probably wasn’t how this site came about, but it’s the type of project that many people would *want* to start but maybe not until the boss took a long vacation. It doesn’t seem like the kind of site you’d see from Microsoft and that’s a compliment.

It sort of reminds me of a virtual water cooler where people chill out and talk about the new gadgets and technology.

Sacred Cow Dung goes well beyond the call of duty and captures a mind boggling number of web 2.0 companies. One could spend days here.

I’ve been waiting for Riya to launch since reading about it months ago. Three words: Face Recognition Technology. Let the hype begin.

I agree with Jason Fried from 37 Signals that it probably is enough for most people. Google doesn’t really need to put together an exhaustive office suite because most people don’t use all the applications found in Office Pro or even the scaled down versions. I use Word, Outlook and Excel everyday. But I don’t use Powerpoint very often and I haven’t used Access in years. I’m pretty sure I could be happy using about any other word processor. But I’m hesitant to use an Excel or Outlook competitor since I know my around those two products quite well.

The other question I hear asked about product like Writely is this: Can I save documents to my machine or is everything I create stored on someone elses servers? It’s one thing to have someone host my email but it’s another thing for them to be responsible for my spreadsheets full of financial data.

Spotted within Seth Godin’s speech at Google titled: All Marketers are Liars

Jeremiah has an excellent summary of this speech.

Now this is different and perfect for my parents.

We’ve got to start one of these at work! No server, no admin, no PHP required. So easy that even marketing can join in the fun.

Source: The Post Money Value

Seth Godin has a great post about how to get your company funded. His short answer? “Don’t”

Most companies are not appropriate sites for VC money. That’s because they’re freelance ventures, not entrepreneurial ones. A freelance venture is one where you work to get paid. An entrepreneurial one is where you can make money while you sleep. Meaning that you work really really hard and you scale and suddenly you own real estate or media properties or technology or a system or a brand that people pay for without you actually doing any incremental work yourself.

Full article

As the influx of newly minted college grads hit the streets looking for jobs I wonder if I were in their shoes and given the chance to work for Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, eBay or Apple which company I’d chose?

Having been in the industry for a while now, I’d choose none of them and probably seek out a small but cool company like the one I work for or something along the lines of 37Signals or Automattic. But if I were just out of school I’d probably head to Yahoo because I like what they have been doing lately and their products, for the most part, are a lot more stable and mature than Google’s. Apple would be the last company I’d chose. They have a lot of hip new products, but they appear so controlling and I wouldn’t be able to blog since they don’t allow it. The right group at Microsoft could be interesting and they allow bloggers.

I’ve been a loyal Costco customer for many years now yet I’ve never made what I’d call a major purchase there. I’ve never bought a TV, kitchen appliance, tires, computer, or treadmill from Costco. I once went there looking to buy a lawn mower but I wasn’t successful in finding anyone who could give me a straight answer as to whether they carried mowers at that time of year.

Yet no matter what I go there looking to buy, even if it’s just paper products, I end up spending more than $300. I don’t know how to explain it except to say there must be a mysterious force at work here because no matter how hard I try, I can’t get through the checkout without dropping three Franklins.

Kim and I were in Costco this past week and kept our purchases to only food and paper products. No books, DVDs, expensive toothbrushes or random toys for the kids. The most expensive item we bought was probably the box of Tide detergent at $18. As I was putting all the items on the conveyor belt I couldn’t help but think this might be the time to finally put an end to the $300 rule.

The friendly checker handed back my Costco membership card along with my receipt and yet there it was again: $328 on my Amex.