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A metaphor for passive income

A giant spinning sequoia caught in a tornado that throws off dollar bills instead of pine needles. [Apologies if you thought this was going to be a treatise on creating passive income.] ps: Can someone draw this for me?

July 21, 2007 | Startups | No comments

Shooting down good ideas

Dustin Staiger has a list of 10 signs that you’re shooting down good ideas in your organization. This reminds me of someone I worked with a while back. Here are my personal favorite signs from Dustin’s list of 10: 7. Listing the top 10 ideas from your department this year, half or more are your […]

July 20, 2007 | Startups | No comments

The one thing governments never fail to get right…

…is to get it so very wrong. Via Marc Andreesen’s blog: The European Union on Thursday authorized Germany to give $165 million for research on Internet search-engine technologies that could someday challenge U.S. search giant Google Inc. Some politician is costing the EU $165 Megs to prove to the world he’s hip with the search […]

July 20, 2007 | Randomness | No comments

How to create a ZIP code distance lookup table with 1 line of SQL

A while back, Jobster CTO Phil Bogle blogged about some of the tricks I’ve used to do fast location queries in SQL. The link to my SQL query to generate the zip lookup table for radius searches is now dead (a cybersquatter stole my domain name and I don’t want to discuss it!). So here’s […]

July 20, 2007 | Code | No comments

World-wide city database and other (free) geospatial data

The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is one of my favorite data sources – it’s also one of my favorite names for any government agency. The agency provides a database of world-wide features which I use as a data source for Geojoey.com’s landmark search feature (top right of the screen). These guys are selling the equivalent […]

July 20, 2007 | Code, Technology | 4 comments

Brand Authority and the Milgram Experiment

I had a great chat with Tony Wright yesterday evening over a few drinks. Tony has a degree in psychology and is a fellow entrepreneur and we got chatting about the Milgram Experiment and its applicability to branding. Here’s a video summary: The experiment found that few people have the resources needed to resist authority, […]

July 20, 2007 | Marketing, Startups | No comments

Hard Rock – music for MTB

Andy Sack doing 51 pushups inspired me to haul my MTB out of the closet and start cycling hills. If you’re into hard rock and need something to get your adrenal gland pumping, here’s my list: Godsmack – Running Blind The Exies Army of Anyone – Goodbye Shinedown – simple man Trivium – The Rising […]

July 19, 2007 | Music | No comments

Marketing team brainstorms Facebook app launch (vid)

Jobster’s CEO Jason Goldberg sent me this vid this morning of their marketing team brainstorming the launch of their new Facebook application. I’m curious what your thoughts are on the brainstorming process and the ideas they’re throwing around. Full disclosure: I worked for Jobster and left about 1 year ago. I also sold a previous […]

July 19, 2007 | Randomness, Startups | 1 comment

How to make the perfect cup of coffee

When I arrived in the US of A in 2003 I got into coffee in a big way. It took me a while to get it right. When I moved to Seattle from CA I discovered Peets coffee. They don’t keep any beans in-store for longer than 10 days so it’s incredibly fresh. You’ll notice […]

July 19, 2007 | Randomness | No comments

What it's like to be an entrepreneur

Dave Lu, CEO of FanPop.com was part of a panel at the Churchill club recently – a previous entry has the video. I loved an analogy he made: That the leap of faith you take as an entrepreneur is a lot like a scene from Indiana Jones. Here’s the scene: I love what he does […]

July 18, 2007 | Startups | No comments

My name is Mark Maunder. I've been blogging since around 2003 when I started on Movable Type and ended up on WordPress which is what I use to publish today. With my wife Kerry, I'm the co-founder of Wordfence which protects over 5 million WordPress sites from hackers and is run by a talented team of 36 people. I'm an instrument rated pilot and I fly a Cessna 206 along with a 1964 Cessna 172 in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa but live in the US these days. I code in a bunch of languages and am quite excited about our emerging AI overlords and how they're going to be putting us to work for them.