Jonathan Ive: Thank you Steve Jobs

Jonathan Ive spoke of working with Steve Jobs during the Steve Jobs Celebration at Apple in October, 2011. Jobs once called Ives his spiritual partner, and it's easy to see why. There are some wonderful sentiments in this speech about the fragility of ideas, and making products that seem simple and inevitable.

Gary Vayner-chuks Common Business Sense Out the Window

Anyone who is trying to market a small or regional business and is not familiar with Gary Vaynerchuck's hour long, wildly profane, humorous and disconcerting keynote speech at the Inc. 500 5000 conference last December, should be. It's not for the faint of heart, closed of mind or delicate of ear, but it may just be key to you figuring out how to compete against overwhelming big box corporatism in an increasingly Attention Deficit Disorder afflicted world.

That's right. I said it's an hour long. Bookmark it. Find the time and watch the whole thing, because even the Q&A at the end is a wake-up call, and a clear indication of just how set in our ways we are.

Artist's Run-over Cat Drones On

This Dutch artist found his cat flat in the middle of the road and decided to save him for posterity ... as a helicopter. Now, not only is it dead, but it's viral.

Salesforce.com, Buddy Media deal has a lot of heart

The $800 million acquisition deal of Buddy Media by Salesforce.com is big any way you look at it; big in financial terms and big when you consider the implications of these two companies core marketing competencies combined into a single discipline. But arguably, the most compelling aspect of this event can be found in one personal story ... that of Buddy Media's CEO Mike Lazerow.

Kid builds fusion reactor

O.K. maybe I'm not so pessimistic anymore.

The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My 27-year-old daughter passed The Hunger Games trilogy on to me and told me she thought I'd like them. I had seen some of the marketing for the film, so I was familiar with the title, but little else. By the time I was half way through the first chapter, I realized I was reading a YA book written for teenage girls. It didn't matter, I was already hooked by the story.

Suzanne Collins is a good writer. Real good. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she's a proper heir to Anne McCaffrey or André Norton. Her spare and straightforward sentence and paragraph construction is packed with subtle meaning, emotion and action.

Aside from simplicity of vocabulary the only other clue that these are YA books is the propensity by Katniss Everdeen, the 16-year-old girl protagonist, to be overwhelmed by emotion and want to shoulder the blame for everything that goes wrong. These scenes are awash with teen hormones but, instead of being a cliché, they ring very true.

I thoroughly enjoyed these books, perhaps volume one and three a bit more than two, and would recommend them to anyone of any age. In fact, if you are a local friend, I have three volumes I'll lend you.

View all my reviews

The Best Candidate You Never Heard Of

He's a character? The kind of character I'd like to see in the White House.

Saving The California Dream: Buddy Roemer: MyFoxLA.com

Learn more about Buddy Roemer on his Web site

If you like his positions, you can help make him the first Web nominated independent bi-partisan candidate for president at AmericansElect.org

Frankly, considering the mood of the country, I think somebody like him has a chance of winning, or at least pushing a reform mandate that will effect Congress in the following years — like Ross Perot did.