Jeff Nolan
Latest from Jeff Nolan
Bouncing From One Bubble to Another
This post on Zero Hedge should serve as a reminder that people who use one “less bad” statistic to support the case for economic recovery are metaphorically bringing a knife to a gun fight. Economic performance, market performance, and fiscal and monetary policy are incredibly complex subjects that are both interconnected and operate on their ...
Obstacles to Greatness: Are We Capable of Topping the Achievements of our Past?
Last week I watched a really interesting documentary called Moon Machines about the development of the machines that took us to the moon in the 1960s and 70s. What was really remarkable about that program was the absurd amount of new engineering that had to occur in order to achieve the man on the moon ...
The Nature of Anonymity and Who is Tyler Durden?
Several stories have popped up, thanks to @pkedrosky for the links, about the popular blog Zero Hedge and who exactly is behind Tyler Durden. It is quite clear just from the variety of writing styles associated with the name “Tyler Durden” that more than one writer is associated with that name, It is also clear ...
Columnar Data Storage [#sapac09]
At the SAP academic research conference Friday, Hasso Plattner spent a lot of time talking about database design and why it’s still important. Perhaps more significantly, he drilled into why re-architecting applications to take advantage of a fundamentally differently database than what we are used to with relational databases is critical if we are to ...
Live Coverage from the SAP Academic Research Conference [#sapac09]
I’m liveblogging from the SAP Academic Research Conference – at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. If you’re viewing this post from a reader or syndicated site, you should click through to SiliconANGLE or the Venture Chronicles to view the live blog as it autoupdates. SAP Academic Research Conference
The Lack of Diversity in the Technology Industry
Every once in a while this issue flares up, usually in relation to conferences not having anything other than a bunch of white guys on the speaker agenda, but I think we should stop fooling ourselves about the technology industry valuing diversity and on there being a system of meritocracy for achieving it. Women, Hispanics, ...
Why (Current) Web Statistics Don’t Mean Squat
I would sum up this puff piece on the so-called new AOL as “we’re big, we’re bad, we’re AOL”. But AOL, often derided as the original gated community, is now manufacturing a broad array of digital media that is free for the grabbing. There are 300 working content producers in its New York headquarters, backed ...
The Problem With Anything Called “Name Here”-Killer
John is right, in spades. That said, I don’t think LinkedIn is vulnerable to any new business network starting up, whether incubated at a newspaper on in-the-wild. LinkedIn is one of what I think of as one of the “three horsemen of the Social Web,” networks that are fundamentally about real identity and real relationships, ...