Blog
-
Founder by Day, Host by Night
People ask how I ended up running a bar and building software at the same time. Both jobs are the same job: you build something, you open the doors, and you find out quickly whether people want what you made.
-
Search Isn’t a List Anymore
For thirty years the web worked one way: type, get ten blue links. Now the answer comes first — and being found by machines is the job again.
-
Opening a Bar in the Year of AI
Last month I opened P Town Bar in Pittsburgh. This is also the year every software product I own got renamed to include AI.
-
AI Learned to Talk
A chatbot launched two weeks ago and millions of people have already argued with it. Meanwhile, my customers are bars and cafes. Both facts point the same direction.
-
Everything Moved Online in a Month
My diner does takeout through a window now, ordered and paid by phone. Schools, clinics, offices — everything moved online in the same two weeks.
-
The Store That Never Closes
I opened an online store this year. The lease is a platform account, the register is a payment processor, and most of my customers shop from their phones, late at night.
-
Bitcoin
It crossed a thousand dollars last month, and this week Beijing told its banks to stay away. A client asked if he should accept it. I gave him an education instead.
-
Independent
After Hong Kong came Boston and the CTO Office. This year I came home to Pittsburgh and went independent. Best compensation package I have ever had: my own calendar.
-
China by Train
Beijing to Shanghai: 1,300 kilometers in under five hours, on a line that opened last year. You learn this country at platform level.
-
Big Data, Bigger Map
I am four years into building a consulting practice across Asia Pacific and Japan. The phrase of the year is big data. The work is bigger than the phrase.
-
The Year Health Records Went Digital
Washington put billions behind electronic health records this year. Our SafeHealth team took the AMDIS Most Innovative System award. Both things are about the same idea.
-
Computing Came Full Circle
Dumb terminals and a big machine in a cold room, then PCs everywhere, now the cloud. The wheel turned all the way around — with one difference.
-
Eating in Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s real infrastructure is not the MTR. It is the dai pai dong, the cha chaan teng, and the noodle shop with six tables and a line.
-
The Crisis
Lehman Brothers is gone, and I get to watch the crisis arrive as a calendar event: projects frozen mid-signature, purchase orders recalled.
-
The Phone Changed
The iPhone shipped last week. It is not a phone. Every business application I have ever built assumed a desk and a chair — that assumption just expired.
-
Bangkok, for a Meeting
Two days of regional reviews in a hotel ballroom that could have been anywhere on earth. Then the evenings, which could only have been Bangkok.
-
Bermuda: Rainwater and Fish Chowder
Nobody tells you the first thing about Bermuda: there is no water here. Every white roof is a rain collector, and nearly every meal arrived on a ship.
-
Notes from Inside the Storage Giant
I joined EMC this year — first stop, Bermuda. Two things are changing the data center at once, and I plan to be standing where they meet.
-
Healthcare IT Grew Up Last Week
The HIPAA privacy deadline hit on April 14. The providers I work with will never treat patient data casually again.
-
A Thousand Songs in Your Pocket
Apple shipped a music player and Microsoft shipped an operating system in the same week. Only one of them points at the future.
-
The Bug That Paid My Rent
Every engagement this year is the same engagement: two-digit dates, and systems that think 00 comes before 99.