Read this on Gizmodo: "How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet" Compelling stuff: "Integration Is The Enemy of Innovation". "[Corporate Development milestones] often completely ignore what made the smaller target valuable in the first place." Lessons learned: it's hard to apply structured, formal, financial controls to innovation. As soon …

There's a cool infographic on technology change in FrugalDad. See The Great Disruption: The Future of Personal Tech. It's interesting and informative, but the few predictions it makes are not really disruptive. You wouldn't see anyone lobbying against the suggested future directions. They're all good ideas that leverage existing technology …

See this: http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201204/python_iteration_presentation.html Nicely done, very thorough presentation on some Python fundamentals. The nature of iteration and generator functions is easily overlooked.

Read this http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/25/david-brooks-competitiveness-vs-creativity-ge-vs-apple/ It's a brilliant analysis of innovation and creativity.

See http://madexpo.us/ The Mid-Atlantic Developer Expo. In my backyard (more-or-less). There's going to be this: http://madexpo.us/Sessions/384 and this: http://madexpo.us/Sessions/385 I'm looking forward to http://madexpo.us/Sessions/339, which I'm certainly going to attend. Many other sessions look like fun …

Read this Computerworld posting: Should the CIO know how to code? The answer is "Yes." The examples of "well-functioning non-technical CIOs" are people as rare as hen's teeth. "These are leaders who know what they don't know. They are good at asking the right questions, probing for further insight, and …

Read "Why Software Patents are Evil" by Simon Phipps in InfoWorld. It's an excellent summary of the problems caused by patents applied to software. There's a great TED Talk by Johanna Blakley on "Lessons Learned from Fashion's Free Culture" which reinforces the essential point. Software patents don't help anyone. The …

when it comes to the exceptional cases, all bets are off. So keep your mind open to weird, young [ideas] that you meet …

Saw this on Twitter from @hunterwalk:

Startups piss people off because their existence is a statement that incumbents aren't doing their job well enough

Also true of IT internal innovation. Pitch a novel, innovative idea to management, and most organizations will find ways to avoid it. Suggesting a bold new …

As part of coming to grips with CouchDB (and a particularly odious graph-theory problem) I've been looking around for design guidelines, hints and tips.

This MongoDB Schema Design document is quite helpful. The Link vs. Embed section clarifies the essential tradeoff here. In SQL world, link is the only tool …