Month: December 2007

Scott Kirsner’s column in todays Boston Globe talks about the non-compete clause and Matt Marx the Harvard doctoral candidate that I interviewed here.

I wish Scott was able to talk to big company execs from EMC, and the like, and talk about why their employees in California have different rights than their MA employees.

EMC actually just acquired this week another California company. So obviously they are benefiting from all the innovation that happens in California w/o restrictions of a non-compete clause. 

Before the holiday break, I was chatting with Paul Maeder who is a managing general partner at Highland Capital. Paul is against the non-compete clause and believes they stifle innovation. He has joined our growing list of supporters over at the Alliance for Open Competition. Paul and I have talked about this topic and one thing that he said to me recently has stuck in my head. He said that non-compete clauses in MA are like telling college graduates not to get a job in their speciality or graduating degree. He said if you studied lasers or worked in lasers your whole life should you not be able to find a job that specialized in lasers?

Good point Paul. That’s exactly right. 

One of my goals for 2008: get more sleep each night.

It’s an obvious one, isn’t it? But I’m sure we are all guilty. I typically sleep about 6-6.5 hours a night.

My kids and Lauren get plenty of sleep thankfully.

I was reading this article called Snooze or Lose from the New York Magzine. Here’s the impact of 6 hours of sleep per night:

“The University of Pennsylvania’s David Dinges did an experiment shortening adults’ sleep to six hours a night. After two weeks, they reported they were doing okay. Yet on a battery of tests, they proved to be just as impaired as someone who has stayed awake for 24 hours straight.”

I’ve been up for 24 hours straight before. And I’m pretty useless after that. So this experiment “woke” me up. That’s for sure.

I know that the answer is no. At least it is for me.

But since Christmas morning my kids are digging the virtual world way more.

Now they just play and take care of their virtual dogs on Nintendogs. And I don’t even think they have even thought about our dear old Jackson lately.

Back in early November I wrote about Dave Winer’s FlickrFan. At the time I was part of a small group of testers/users.

Last night Dave opened up the door and it’s now publicly available.

I have FlickrFan on the MacMini/HDTV combo in our family room at home. I love having beautiful looking photos from Flickr (mine, my friends/family, AP photos and more) show up on our HDTV. 

But it’s not just for home use. I use FlickrFan on my MacBook Pro so I can enjoy it at the office as well.

Dave has added a lot of functionality to FlickrFan in recent weeks.

I like that there is an easy way to backup and archive all of your Flickr photos to your home server. This is very useful for me since a lot of photos I upload to Flickr these days actually comes from my cameraphone. Before FlickrFan none of these cameraphone pix were backed up on my home servers.

So if you have a MacMini connected to your HDTV monitor at home, or just a Mac at the office, give FlickrFan a try. Feel free to add me as a contact on Flickr if you want to see my photos on your set. My user name is bsabet.

Thanks Dave. I can’t wait to see how FlickrFan evolves.