Netflix’s Excellent Vacation Policy

Fair point, said management.

As the company explains in its “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture”, a 128-slide PowerPoint presentation that has spread like samizdat literature on the internet: “We should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days worked. Just as we don’t have a nine to five day policy, we don’t need a vacation policy.”

So the company scrapped its formal plan. Today, Netflix’s roughly 600 salaried employees can vacation any time they desire for as long as they want – provided that their managers know where they are and that their work is covered.

This ultra flexible, freedom-intensive approach to holiday time hasn’t exactly hurt the company. Launched in 1999, Netflix now has market cap of nearly $7bn (£4.5bn). Meanwhile, its chief rival, the video rental chain Blockbuster, last month was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Review: Jack: Straight From The Gut

Made the mistake of reading Jack Welch’s book. It’s a terribly written, name dropping tome that reads like a list – there’s not much insight or meat here.

That said, I’m not sure how interesting the story of a guy who inherited a very strong balance sheet and a huge management team can be. Classic bureaucratic ninja rode the corporate ladder. Hiring didn’t matter as much as firing did (there’s always someone to take up the role.) Globalization happened.

Welch is the penultimate classic CEO. It’s a story about the business of business. That’s why this book is incredibly boring.

Review: Tasker

Tasker is an amazing application for the Android platform.

Basically, you’re able to se up automated tasks (called profiles) for different conditions. EX: for a particular location, say work or school, automatically switch to vibrate.There are some really cool instances of this tool at play.

Here’s what’s missing (other than a website that doesn’t suck – actually, the UI in general needs work):

Executed correctly, this could fill in the gap for an Android innovation engine.

Review: Too Big To Fail

Just finished Andrew Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail. Sorkin does a pretty good job covering the event as it happened, with minimal commentary and analysis. On the one hand, that makes it easy and quick to read. It does mean you have to go elsewhere for smart analysis. (I’m headed over to ECONned and perhaps The Big Short.)

Anyway, you learn a couple things:

Seaswarm: MIT’s Autonomous, Oil-Cleaning Swarm

Seaswarm. Unfortunately, this is priced at $20k a pop. I’d like to see the plans unleashed to the hacker community. (And watch the precipitous pricing drop thereafter.)

Economic Hitmen Inside the Gates Foundation Invest in Monsanto

Bizarre sense of morality. Increases holdings from $360,000 to ~$23 million. Monsanto’s track record with the third world is classic evil.

On Google

On the one side, the Larry/Sergey Google that makes amazing cool things — the search engine, Gmail, Android. On the other, the Schmidt Google that, in its efforts to serve ads as efficiently as possible, no longer seems concerned with the traditional Western concept of personal privacy.

Nonlinear Gameplay

I really dig this trend. Would be a blast to be able to tunnel anywhere in a MMOFPS. (Though I haven’t played one in a long time.)

Life Goes On

An excellent description of how daily life in Somalia still works, albeit in an extremely complex environment.

However, this image belies the reality of emerging national and sub-national political entities that have ensured a degree of civilian security in particular places at particular times as people have adapted their behaviour and livelihoods to cope with insecurity and even to profit from the opportunities that conflict throws up.

“There is life in the midst of all the chaos,” says Abdulkadir. “Not everyone has left. We cannot leave the country to the dogs.”

The Tangibles of Decline

Milk bags rather than jugs/cartons.

Kevin Kelley on Reading

Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A new idea or unfamiliar fact will provoke a reflex to do something: to research the term, to query your screen “friends” for their opinions, to find alternative views, to create a bookmark, to interact with or tweet the thing rather than simply contemplate it.

Book reading strengthened our analytical skills, encouraging us to pursue an observation all the way down to the footnote. Screen reading encourages rapid pattern-making, associating this idea with another, equipping us to deal with the thousands of new thoughts expressed every day. The screen rewards, and nurtures, thinking in real time.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Reading-in-a-Whole-New-Way.html?c=y&page=1#ixzz0sr2Ph5ZI

Infographic: Communism and the Financial Crisis

See Wifi Range in Augmented Reality

Wireless in the world 2 from timo on Vimeo.

On Energy Security

On LifeBoxing and Fungi

This is pretty cool. It’s cardboard box lined with seeds and particular fungi to accelerate growth. Whats even more interesting though, is their backend product, the seed mix.

H/T to Greendemon.


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