Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • Execution is Everything

    With the premise that execution is everything and that without execution ideas are worthless, the participants of Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA program have produced 999 business ideas free for the taking. The majority; worthless. A few; excellent. Although I think we can still state: point proven.

  • Physiognomy and Looking Creditworthy

    Using data from the person-to-person lending company Propser.com, research is starting to show that—when it comes to analysing creditworthyness—the once discredited science of physiognomy may be valid. In other words, people may be able to tell if we are actually trustworthy just from looking at our facial features. Science proceeds by trial and error. The successes…

  • Visualising the News (The Guardian & New York Times APIs)

    The New York Times Developer Network is the media outlet’s “API clearinghouse” offering details of how you can get access to the extensive data they have released (from stories dating back to 1981). Using this API, Jer Thorp has created some visualisations of NYT trends using Processing (a language I keep promising to take a…

  • Observations on Dining

    Ben Casnocha compiles a list of grievances and observations on “restaurants, tips, and bread baskets”. For example: If I were a restaurant manager I would spend 30 minutes with each of my waiters explaining the research around how to maximize tips from patrons. For example, leaving a mint with the bill or drawing a smiley…

  • Models of Racial Segregation

    Tim Harford—the FT’s ‘Undercover Economist’—has produced a video demonstrating Thomas Schelling’s theory of racial segregation, in 2 minutes. Schelling, who was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”, showed with his Models of Segregation that even a mild preference for the colour of…

  • The Problem With Printers

    Not everyone agrees with the development philosophies of 37signals, but you can’t deny that they do have some ideas that are spot-on. This, for example, on printers and why they are so damn annoying: Buying a printer remains the last confusing part of modern computing. […] What makes this an even tougher choice is that…

  • Print Your Own Magazines

    Upload your magazine as a PDF to MagCloud and they’ll not only print it on demand, but also manage payments, subscriptions and delivery… now to the UK and Canada as well as the US. Reasonably priced, too. It reminds me somewhat of the newspaper, Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008 (via Kottke).…

  • Planning for the Worst Case Scenario

    Eliezer Yudkowsky on planning for the abyssal. Never mind hindsight on the real-estate bubble – there are lots of things that could potentially trigger financial catastrophes.  I’m willing to bet the American government knows what it will do in terms of immediate rescue operations if an atomic bomb goes off in San Francisco.  But if…

  • Business Models for Web Apps

    Looking at the business models of the top 100 web apps of 2008, Dan Zambonini of Box UK found that 34% use Advertising, 12% a Variable Subscription model, and a further 8% each for Virtual Products, Related Products and Pay-Per-Use. Continuing this analysis he compiles an extensive list of different methods to monetize web apps. via @zambonini

  • Evolution of Art and Design

    Flickr user 802.11 has created a lovely flowchart depicting the evolution of art and design between 1845 and 1980. The chart depicts art movements and design groups and how each are connected. You should take a look at some of her other visualisations, too. I particularly like the depiction of character interactions throughout Shakespeare’s Romeo…