Saturday, August 10, 2013

6 Links on Saturday - Moritz on Bezos, Slow Ideas, The BestCoolest Players and Placebo Buttons

Aloha! I'm writing from Maui on my Summer Vacation. I relax by reading and I've done a lot of relaxing, so there were a ton of good links to choose from this week.  :)

1. Stop the Presses: A New Media Baron Appears - By now everyone knows Jeff Bezos (Amazon's Founder) bought the Washington Post. So instead of linking to a news story, I'll link to Mike Moritz's editorial on Bezos and Amazon. Moritz, Chairman of Sequoia Capital, is one of the best venture capitalists of all time, having been involved in Yahoo, Google, Paypal and LinkedIn, to name a few. He's kind of a big deal and so is Jeff Bezos, so this is a can't miss editorial. Also, you have to love New Yorker that claiming Bezos bought the Post on accident.

2. Slow Ideas - Why do some new ideas spread fast, while other that are just as important lag? Since I'm in the business of investing in new ideas, I find this stuff fascinating.

3. Grantland's Jonah Keri Lists The BestCoolest Players - Keri and I are about the same age so these are my guys too. My only addition would be Will the Thrill (bonus footage here).

4. Yahoo Has a New Killer App - The author imagines a future where companies choose to compete on privacy. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but why aren't companies doing this? Maybe it's because the Feds and NSA are really freaking scary. At least that's what the founder of Lavabit, a secure email provider that supposedly was used by Snowden is saying. This just keeps getting scarier.

5. Placebo Buttons Do Absolutely Nothing - We've been using plenty of elevators, so of course I've been hitting the "Doors Close" button every time we're stuck waiting in one. Guess what? That's a placebo button. It doesn't actually do anything. And I know it, but I still hit the stupid button. Why?

6. I'll leave you with a Songza playlist from our vacation, called Hawaiian Folk. It's as about as chill as you can get. Enjoy it even if you're on the mainland.