Marketing with The Four-Hour Work Week

The Four-Hour Work Week is full of interesting ideas that distill business down to its minimal essence. I had <a href=”http://www.m

The Best Advice I Ever Got

Excerpts from Fortune,

The Role of Discretion

One area I have struggled with in my work life is the role of discretion. In some work environments, we are expected to follow instructio

max_allowed_packet on Mac OS X MySQL

While developing a Ruby on Rails application that supported attachments, I ran into an error to the effect, "size exceeds max_allowed_pac

The Search for Project Management Software

I’ve been looking for project management software to help run my consulting business. I have a small number of customers and a larger number

Marketing Is Everything

A friend recently asked me what books I had found useful in learning about product management.

I mentioned <a href=”http://www.milindspandi

The Marketing Funnel and the Sales Pipeline

Sales and marketing professionals imagine a funnel or pipeline. Leads enter the process when they are generated. They are thrown out of the

Inspiring Commencement Address

The Commencement Address to the Class of 2009, University
of Portland
, May 3rd

Portland Code Camp Presentation 1: Agile Really Can Satisfy the Suits

Click here to download a PDF version of my

Deep Disappointment with Drupal

When I first built a web site for my company, Now Interactive LLC, I chose a content managemen

Enabling PHP on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

I didn't see a simple solution, so here it is.

  1. Start the Apache web server as follows
    1. Bring up System Preferences.

Changing User Agent Strings

An increasingly important web site requirement is to present different pages for mobile browsers. Although it’s possible to purchase a large

Opportunity?

This APM Marketplace article described the need for

Entrepreneurship Part VII: Your Target Market

One of the most thought provoking chapters of the book The 4-Hour Work Week is the one on product development. One  reason it i

Entrepreneurship Part VI: The Sustainable Alternative

Many entrepreneurs believe there is no choice but to take venture capital. How are they going to build the product otherwise? There are alte

Entrepreneurship Part V: The Entrepreneur's Response

Unfortunately, uncertainty about the hurdle rate only inflates the effective rates of return that entrepreneurs strive for. In order to attr

Entrepreneurship Part IV: The Invisible Hurdle

Now, if every investor walked around with their hurdle rate tattooed on the

Hot Chocolate Progressive, Anyone?

The weather is cold, the economy is tight, and Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Gourmet hot chocolate is a relatively inexpensive thrill the who

Entrepreneurship Part III: The Most Important Hurdle

Venture capitalists are investors, and all investors have a hurdle rate</em

Entrepreneurship Part II: Dangerous Capital

In December, a small group of current and prospective entrepreneurs gathered to discuss internet product development. I was invited to parti

Entrepreneurship Part I: What If You Are Laid Off?

In November of last year, the company I was working for laid off 15% of its workforce. Although I was not affected at that time, I started t

Update: Staying Positive

A friend and former colleague pointed out this Busines

Staying Positive

A friend recently sent me a PowerPoint show entitled “Staying Positive”. Due to extreme hokey-ness, poor grammar, and confusing spelling, it

Tips on Interviewing for Jobs

A couple of people have sent me tips on interviewing, so I thought I would pass them along:

<a href=”http://dev.fyicenter.com/Interview-Que

Accessing Jazz

Our local NPR affiliate yesterday rebroadcast Neal Conan’s discussio