See this article: The real cause of the financial crisis, notable for the explanation of the Martingale system. via Giles.

The combination of “seems impossible” and “strong network effects” is about as close as you can get to the magic formula for incredible, sustainable success, as with eBay, Wikipedia, and Google. Trenchant analysis from Joel Spolsky.

A few weeks ago, I had a bad experience using search at an e-commerce site. It cost me a little money and it cost the merchant a little good will. It was neither enough money nor enough good will to be serious, but that was just luck. If this had happened with a higher cost [...]

“Your Call Is Important to Us” Why is it that whenever I hear those words on an automated voicemail system, I react viscerally? If my call were important to the recipient, there would be a live person saying, “Hello,” and asking me how they could help me. That’s what you do when a call is [...]

From New York Times via Matt. Our desire to believe in an orderly universe leads us to interpret the uncertainty we feel about the future as nothing but a consequence of our current state of ignorance, to be dispelled by greater knowledge or better analysis. But even a modest amount of randomness can play havoc [...]

Robert Scoble wants search engines to pretend that the web is different than it is. I think this would be a bad idea. Scoble’s objection is that search results don’t reflect his notions of what is important in the world. “As long as I’m the #1 Robert and Robert Redford isn’t as high up as [...]

Paul Graham says lots of interesting things in What Business Can Learn from Open Source. I like this quote: The atmosphere of the average workplace is to productivity what flames painted on the side of a car are to speed.

Yesterday I visited San Francisco City Hall. I went to get a business license and to file a fictitious business name statement from my new project, 67 Central Software. I set out to pursue a simple business errand, but I ended up at the center of dozens of changing lives. There were two offices involved [...]