I've always longed to taste French cuisine.
There’s such romance about it in books and movies, and such depth in French music, such perfected passion in everything French that I’m sure I long ago deduced that such lovers of elegance and finery and enticement must surely have infused all of such ways into their cooking, too.
My favorite way to eat was romantically-inspired: a torn baguette and some cheese, served on a plate with fresh fruit and olives or other nibbles.
It’s on days like today that I understand my laziness, my hesitance to move, to do anything but bask and take in this hot Georgia sun, to await cool breezes petting my skin and dancing through my hair and through the shimmering leaves, carrying the sweetness of roses and gardenias and dying lilies and fresh-mowed grass, of simmering pine and leafy trees of deepening green, soaking up the sun as I do….
Mark Shuttleworth is nothing if not ambitious. How may other tech execs have actually been to space? Not counting Microsoft alum Charles Simonyi, that would be one: the aforementioned Shuttleworth.
Now Shuttleworth, who used tens of millions of his own dollars to fund Canonical and made it his ambition to entrench Ubuntu Linux on desktops and servers is now launching a full-on assault to put it on…
You can also read: All my friends got engaged, and I got cancer.
First things first. Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, stop now.
I know you're still reading, mom. Fine, be that way. What you're about to read is on you. I warned you.
So: I have no boobs.
I don't mean I'm flat-chested, although I was. I mean a doctor scrubbed into an OR where I was anesthetized on the table, picked up a knife and cut me apart, removing both of my breasts and placing them in a plastic baggie to be incinerated with various other offal from the rest of the patients lucky enough to be dissected that day.
The designers at startup Misfit Wearables had a goal to make their wearable health gadget so beautiful that customers might keep it on even if it was completely broken. The company's quarter-sized Shine gizmo -- made from aerospace-grade aluminum, lined with a halo of LEDs, and fitted with a variety of accessories for the wrist, neck, and body -- is supposed to reach its first 5,000 crowd-funded customers in early June, at which point we'll see if the pint-sized device is as beloved by its customers as it is by its creators.
Here's the thing about simplicity. It's all relative. A developer's idea of simplicity is different from a finance chief or a customer service agent.
I run across a variety of startups in my daily work at TechCrunch. But few have that innate sense of elegance or the capability to abstract complexity to such an extent that anything else seems antiquated in comparison.
Formspring launched in November 2009 as a unique way for people to have engaging conversations about anything. Eventually reaching over 30 million registered users and 4 billion posts, Formspring grew beyond my wildest dreams to become an important part of how people interact online.
I'm grateful to each of you that helped make the site better by asking questions and posting responses.
