BlogSat

I say "yes" a lot - not to everything, but certainly to app permission dialogs. This is somewhat unusual - not amongst most people - but definitely amongst most people I've generally worked with. I've always been pretty comfortable knowing that sometimes the only way to get value from an app is the share information about me. Sometimes the information is used to make things better for me, but often its just to get me to come back (permission to see my email) or others (permission to see my friends when its not really needed for the app). C'est la vie.. Now as products try to do more sophisticated things for you, they naturally need to know more about you. It turns out the line in the sand for me is being able to read my email. Over the last few months, I've been excited to try 3 app and but stopped just short of installing because the only way for me to use them would've been to let them see my email. In these 3 cases, I actually knew people that...

Bill Simmons is my favorite sports writer, probably my favorite columnist. So one of the best things I heard or read this week, is this B.S report podcast on ESPN Radio . He talks for 40 mins - characteristically, he thought he'd only speak for 15 :-) - about how he started as a journalist and got his first break on EPSN.com   Its kinda what you'd expect from Bill - he worked insanely hard in his laid back way, almost quit a couple of times but was convinced not to, and continuously worked on making his work better. The most telling part was how he asked for 5-week vacation before he started his espn.com job - and used most of that to plan out his columns for ESPN over the next year. His interview with Katie Nolan revealed a similar story - her willingness to toil really hard, continuously improve and pounce on any lucky breaks. I've enjoyed Bill for years. No one else really matches his ability and talent to marry passion, scholarship for sports/pop culture an...