As always on benmetcalfe.com: the views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and may not be opinions shared, supported, or endorsed in any manner by any other entity I may have other int...
I study and write a lot about disruption caused directly or indirectly by the Internet. It’s actually the key tenant that matured my wonder and fascination with the Internet beyond just the tec...
So-called “acq-hires” (when a company will buy a startup solely/mostly for the talent rather than the product itself) recently came up in a discussion amongst friends and industry peers. In m...
Hacker News has been buzzing with the story of Canadian citizen Zak Homuth, who was refused entry earlier in the week by US Customs and Border Protection to participate in Y Combinator with his n...
I was sad to discover that photos belonging to both Violet and I are being reproduced without our permission at ‘photo encyclopedia’ Fotopedia. I’m a firm believer in Creative Commons and c...
BitCoin I’ve spent the last few months researching BitCoin, which for those who don’t know is a p2p currency system that is (sort of) de-centralized and certainly delineated from any governme...
Maggie Brown asks in the Guardian today ‘whether the BBC has become too affraid to take risks?‘. Her piece focuses around the dreaded “BBC Editorial Policy Unit” which was set up to appes...
Genetic testing startup 23andMe is running a ‘1-day sale’ that removes their normal up-front testing fee of $199. The catch- you have to agree to subscribe to 12 months of their genetic updat...
Bill Schneier has highlighted two types of fraud currently occuring on the Amazon Kindle Marketplace due to lax copyright enforcement. The first type of fraud stems from content farm behavior mov...
It was interesting to read tonight that Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie, isn’t sure whether there is a long term future for tablets such as the iPad. “I don’...