Daily Bites is a new section on Avocado Press that collects linkworthy content from across the internet on technology and startups. Think of it as fiber for your brain.
- There’s Steve Jobs and there’s Steve Jobs. The former is the innovator, the genius, the legendary hardass who terrified employees and intimidated competitors into submission. The latter is the man behind the genius which so few knew about. Mona Simpson, Steve’s biological sister, was among those few, and she’s penned easily the most moving eulogy to the man that gives a rare glimpse into the life of a man who, despite his celebrity, remained a figure shrouded in secrecy. It is, by far, the best thing you’ll read this week, and perhaps even this year. And by the way, Steve’s last words were Oh Wow Oh Wow Oh Wow!. That seems strangely uplifting. Perhaps the other side isn’t that terrifying after all.
- Hiten Shah of Hitenism, Crazy Egg and KISSMetrics spouts off like a Zen Buddhist as he waxes eloquent on the Art of Right Now. What he essentially tries to say is: stop dicking around with your phone, you dumbass, and live for the moment. Sounds easy enough.
- GigaOM weighs in on the Stop Online Piracy Act introduced in the House this week – essentially a more acute version of the “Three Strikes” law in place in several European countries – which grants all power to copyright holders, none to *pirates*. Besides a horrendously terrifying acronym (seriously, who comes up with stuff like this?) – E-PARASITE Act (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation) – the Act, as GigaOm puts it, amounts to ‘warfare’ on the internet and may kill free speech and the very soul of all that we’ve come to love online. Alarmist? Perhaps. But probably right.
- Moving on, here’s a video game simulator that’s less XBox and more Johnny Quest. That is, not only does it incorporate over 800 LED lights, a 3D Kinect motion controller, an omni-directional treadmill, and – wait for it – four paintball turrets to complete the most realistic simulator ever. The paintball turrets fire at you, emulating your enemies on-screen. That sounds like a fun weekend.
- Travis Pew, one of the co-founders of GetComparisons, weighs in on the question that plagues every ‘idea guy’: what to do if you don’t have a technical co-founder? Here’s my advice: do something, anything. You’re an entrepreneur. It’s your job to figure out what to do to make your dream project come alive, absence of technical co-founder notwithstanding.
- Mark Zuckerberg, by the way, sounds not too happy with the Silicon Valley, telling Y Combinator Partner, Jessica Livingstone in a candid interview at the Startup School that given a chance to do it all over again, he’d liked to base Facebook out of Boston itself. The reason? “[Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me”. Well put, The Zuck, especially after your erstwhile love affair with Twitter and relentless campaign to poach startup employees.
This little post from Om Malik proves that linkbait doesn’t have to include lengthy lists of infographics.
- Someone, whenever I see Bill Gates, I imagine a grown up Calvin sans Hobbes: cobbled into a mild mannered version of his former self, but still ridiculously smart and ruthlessly competitive. This post where Gates insists that he ‘helped’ Jobs’ create the Mac (which is true) and reiterates, several times, that Apple was in financial trouble many, many times because of its pursuit of an ‘unprofitable’ business model, makes him look anything but otherwise. You can see him, sitting there, all mild mannered, but somewhere, given the right impetus, the competitive spark that drove dozens of companies into the ground is still ever present.
- And before I close, here’s something you don’t see the Yellow Pages doing very often: trying to be cool, and (almost) succeeding.
