I bought the domain name danperlman.com several years ago with the idea of writing a personal blog.  That never really happened.  Now this domain is becoming the heir to my web writing. 

Among other online toys and personas, I’ve used Techgolem and had planned to write  a blog about tech startups focusing on marketing as techgolem.com.  That never really happened.  So I’m pointing techgolem.com here, so if you’re one of the 3 – 5 people who landed on that site in a day and wonder how the hell you got here – now you know.

For the last year, I’ve written about technology and tools on enquiringmimes.com (I have an unfortunate weakness for stupid domain names). 

Moving forward, the plan will be to still write enquiringmimes.com.  There I’ll continue to cover the kinds of technology and tools that fascinate me and are supposed to make me more productive.

danperlman.com will cover startups, marketing, some technology and probably a little food and the occasional personal stuff. 

I’m also parking previous techgolem and enquiringmime posts here just because.

Gmail Labs are the experimental additions to Google’s web-based mail service. Some are muy useful, like being able to add emails to a “to do” list, others not so much, like changing the Gmail logo back to show that the service is still in beta, as it was for so long.

For awhile the additions were coming hot and heavy, lately we haven’t seen much new — until today.  Gmail added two new ones – “Got the Wrong Bob?” and “Don’t forget Bob” .

• Got the wrong Bob? – Gmail checks to make sure the “Bob” you’re including in your email is the right one based on who you email most often.  When I send to Mark, I mean my brother, not some guy I worked with in a former life.  Addressing email to the wrong person can, of course, be more embarrassing that my example.
• Don’t forget Bob – With “Don’t forget Bob,” you can start composing an email to a group of people, and Gmail will suggest other contacts you might want to include.

To enable either or both,  go to the labs icon in the upper right of your Gmail screen, click it, find the Bob’s and enable them.

Since it is Google, wouldn’t “Got the wrong Sergey” have been catchier?

Declaring that I’m a fanboy for Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness Project is no new ground here, but watch this to see Gretchen on the CBS News giving “prosaic” steps you can take to make yourself happier. She mentions:

• Get enough sleep
• Get some exercise — a 15 minute walk is better than no exercise

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Gretchen has promised me an interview for this site after her up-coming book is released in December.  I’m looking forward to it.

Very funny short video from Slate on TV commercials for condoms around the world.

Much was made of photos showing the new Beijing Ikea store being less about shopping and more about being a good place to take a nap.

Ikea Beijing Picture LA Times

On a recent visit, it seems the Ikea store in E. Palo Alto, CA had the same soporific effect.

Ikea, E. Palo Alto, CA - photo android phone

Related articles

• IKEA In Beijing Is More Like A Giant Public Living Room [Window Shopping] (consumerist.com)
• Honey, We Holidayed At IKEA Last Year (paul.kedrosky.com)
• Ikea as tourist attraction (kottke.org)

Dan Pink makes a case for why extrinsic motivators don’t really work.  In an 18-minute video Pink, a “career strategist”, explains the social science behind why contingent motivators – if you do that, then you get this – only work for small band of problems and especially don’t work if the problem requires creativity.

Pink has an interesting back story – his last “real” job was as a speechwriter for Al Gore and as a law student he was bad such that “he graduated in the part of his law class that makes the upper 90% possible.”

According to a Twitter post by an Android developer, it seems that the Tmobile G1 android phone, introduced last year, has so little memory space it won’t be able allow any other further full OS updates after getting the recent “cupcake” release.

That would mean if you have a Tmobile G1, except for minor patches, it’s as good as it’s going to get.

The G1, the first phone based on Google’s open source operating system, was always quirky. It’s physical keyboard was nice — not as good as the Blackberry, but nice. The overall phone has a clunky feel that seems almost more like a breadboard or a lab prototype.

More about this topic, including an underwhelming denial by Tmobile, on AndroidandMe.

Personal note: I have been using a Tmobile G1 since last November but the decision to upgrade was made for me by my 2-year old last week when he tossed the G1 from the bedroom window. It didn’t bounce. I chose to upgrade to a Tmobile My-touch, the next generation Android phone. It doesn’t have a physical keyboard but seems much more polished than the G1. In other news, Sandra’s iPhone didn’t bounce either. Now she also has a Tmoble My-touch.

If you’ve always bought into the idea that Linux was written and maintained by geeks and hackers in after-hours ventures — all for other geeks and hackers, think again.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on Computerworld analyzed a report from the Linux Foundation on who writes Linux and found that Linux is written by big companies for big companies.

Here’s the top ten contributors to Linux:

1. Red Hat: 12.3%
2. IBM: 7.6%
3. Novell: 7.6%
4. Intel: 5.3%
5. Independent consultant: 2.5%
6. Oracle: 2.4%
7. Linux Foundation: 1.6%
8. SGI 1.6%
9. Parallels 1.3%
10. Renesas Technology: 1.3%

Big businesses write Linux because big businesses use Linux.

From a Y Combinator dinner talk.  In startups, you get rich if you don’t die. 

What do you have to do to live?

“Whereas if a startup regularly does new deals and releases and either sends us mail or shows up at YC events, they’re probably going to live.”

It’s true, in my career with startups, I’ve done both.  There was DASCOM – get rich; RoverLive – die.

Unfortunately for snaptalent.com, a Y Combinator portfolio company – they’ve just announced that they have died due to “market conditions”.  They had tried a couple of strategies in the job recruitment market – not a good place to have been in the last 2 years.

Judging by the excellent Crunch Gear review of the forthcoming release of Snow Leopard, the new version of OS/X, this isn’t going to be the kind of release that makes you say “oh wow”.  Sounds like even at the $29 upgrade price, you might wonder what you get for your money.  It’s really is a refinement to the current Leopard 10.5 release.

It appears to be one of those OS releases that fixes some problems and puts new technology i place that will eventually allow developers to build cool new stuff, but for now, CrunchGear’s conclusion is probably going to be right for most users – it’s a release that you can wait for. 

Buy it on your next Mac.