These are all symptomatic of the growing “experience economy”, which has evolved out of a culture of mass affluence. With our basic needs satisfied — the disposable income of Britons is double what it was in 1980 — we are becoming increasingly choosy about how we spend our money.

Rather than upgrading our car or television, we’ll spend the cash in coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, sports clubs and theme parks. We’ll splash out on European city breaks or walking the Inca trail. Experiences, in other words.

Are you experienced? - Times 2 - Times Online

Sources close to the company have confirmed to The Enterprise Software Observer that recent outage problems at Salesforce.com are being caused by the on-demand company pushing its Oracle database to its limits. This raises a number of questions about the company’s future direction that investors are likely ask at tomorrow’s 5:00 pm eastern quarterly earning conference call.

No one gets fired for buying Oracle?

esofto: Database Problems behind Salesforce’s Woes

Want to learn how to use some of the best Python programming tools out there, including the supercharged IPython interpreter and the great free editor SPE? Or maybe you want to see how easy it is to create great-looking, powerful graphical user interfaces using wxPython. If so, follow the snake...

Welcome to ShowMeDo

I first heard of Benford's Law in connection with the IRS using it to detect tax fraud. If you're cheating on your taxes, you might fill in amounts of money somewhat at random, the distribution of which would not match that of actual financial data. So if the digit "1" shows up on Al Capone's tax return about 15% of the time (as opposed to the expected 30%), the IRS can reasonably assume they should take a closer look at Mr. Capone's return.
...
That got me thinking...can I use the distribution of numbers in these post timestamps to detect my cheating?

Catching cheaters with Benford's Law (kottke.org)

I should really buckle down and try writing a PHP app because, at the moment, I have an attitude problem. I know that IBM now officially loves it, and Tim O’Reilly’s been charting the upcurve in PHP book sales, and everyone’s saying that Oracle’s going to buy Zend. If you want your ears bent back, have a listen to Zend CEO Doron Gerstel; he’ll tell you that half the websites in the world are powered by PHP and that there are 2� million developers and that the war is over and PHP won. So here’s my problem, based on my limited experience with PHP (deploying a couple of free apps to do this and that, and debugging a site for a non-technical friend here and there): all the PHP code I’ve seen in that experience has been messy, unmaintainable crap.

ongoing · On PHP

Megite is the newspaper for anyone interested in what's happening right now by intelligently uncovering the most relevant items from auto discovered news sites and weblogs.

Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now

The MooBella System, a virtual ice cream shop in the space of a vending machine, mixes and instantly freezes fresh ingredients to produce a delicious scoop of ice cream within 45 seconds. Consumers can select from 96 combinations of flavors and mix-ins. Designed initially for food service operators, the system increases sales per square foot; automates inventory and portion control; and captures sales and operations data in any location with wireless capability.

I believe.

The MooBella Ice Cream System - MooBella, LLC.

Someone put what some of us already know on a piece of paper. Googlers browse, AOLers BUY.

Ever sat down with AOL and wondered how anyone puts up with the excessive amount of advertising, the number of pitches you have to go through for basic site navigation? Apparently, it is self-selecting, and this is why Google would buy in to AOL. Maybe.

AOL Gives the Best Conversion Rate! | Threadwatch.org

A venture capitalist's observations of the consumer internet, information security, entrepreneurship, and science.

Practicing the Art of Pitchcraft

Commenting on an earlier post of mine, Sridharan suggested that my four year old son’s simple and clear presentation of his thoughts is “a management lesson…Stick to the point and say it in a single sentence.”

I know it sounds a little crazy, but indeed I’ve come to agree that a clear, compelling elevator pitch is essential to growing a business. (And I’ve paid dearly for the evidence.) So after attending a board meeting yesterday in which the management team struggled to succinctly describe their business, I resolved to blog my agreement with Sridharan. Just in time, too, because Nivi’s been bugging me to answer the question: What makes for a good elevator pitch?

Who Has Time For This?: Practicing the Art of Pitchcraft

To my mind the most interesting aspect of a JBoss acquisition is likely to be the Fleury effect.

Marc Fleury and Larry Ellison working together would be a sitcom I would pay very big money to see. Marc is a maverick. He makes Scott McNealy look like a company man.

James Governor's MonkChips: Other implications of Oracle OSS deals: blue sky thinking