This @ericries piece from last weekend is one of the smartest things I’ve read on race & meritocracy. He discusses how the gender makeup of major symphony orchestras changed radically after implementing a simple change: Making people do their auditions behind black screens, so the auditors can’t see

Glam Media founder Samir Arora thinks he knows the future of media. The secret, he is betting, is brand advertising displayed against high-quality, premium content. That stands in stark contrast to the advertising model that’s worked best for the past decade online, in which increasingly specific te

I was a judge at a startup competition recently. It was great fun and all of the 8 contestants were brave enough to make a 2-minute presentation in front of a room full of people — not to mention four cranky judges. One presentation in particular really stood out though. When Halvor Gregusson got of

Minted, a marketplace for community-sourced paper products like custom stationery and wedding invitations, has raised a big pile of the green kind of paper — the kind you can spend. For anyone whose parents told them to stop doodling Celtic knots or obsessively repetitive graphic designs and focus o

I have a cameo in the Monty Python-esque introduction to this video that I’m rather proud of, goofy as it is. The week in review: Jobs’ last words, Siri’s rough week & Google+’s last stand | VentureBeat.

Apple understands it. Amazon understands it. But nearly every other gadget manufacturer is missing the point: It’s not about the specs any more. It’s about the ability of devices to deliver a seamless, integrated, easy-to-use experience that combines plenty of desirable content and useful services,

Silicon Valley has a race problem. You don’t need a Twitter fight to tell you that. And, while it’s great that CNN has made waves with previews of its upcoming show on the subject, you don’t need cable TV to tell you that, either. (For two smart views on the controversy, read Hank Williams and […]

In my latest column for VentureBeat, I try to make some sense of the Occupy movement and its relevance to Silicon Valley. I was wondering why the protestors weren’t targeting local icons of wealth and power, like VC firms, Google, Oracle and Apple. The more I thought about it, the more I realized th

When I arrived at work this morning, helicopters were hovering over the financial district, where I work. I checked Twitter and found out that protestors were outside a bank headquarters nearby, so I grabbed the office camera and walked over there to check it out. After playing photojournalist and i

In Star Trek IV, Scotty picks up a computer mouse and speaks into it, trying to get the machine’s attention. “Computer! Computer!” When nothing happens, someone tells him to use the keyboard. “How quaint,” is his bemused response. You might feel the same way in 10 years, if someone hands you a compu

Steve Jobs, the cofounder and former chief executive of Apple, has died. He was 56. Jobs was a visionary leader who, more than any other single person, reshaped the face of consumer technology. He was often quoted as saying “we’re here to put a dent in the universe.” He did exactly that. From his ea

Software is eating the world, storied venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently wrote — and from his perspective, it certainly looks like it. But that’s only part of the picture. It’s true that the fastest-growing companies in a variety of markets are driven by their deep understanding of software