Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 104 of 153).

Pullen Pike

Things got a little out of hand at Saturday’s Pullen Park Grand Opening.

Raleigh wants a startup spark

Raleigh is building a startup environment. Software company CEO Josh Whiton gets it:

But the talent is too spread out around the city, says Josh Whiton, the 31-year-old CEO of TransLoc, a software company next to downtown’s Moore Square that makes web sites and apps for mass transit systems.

“We’ve got a lot of good companies, but they’re miles apart from each other,” Whiton said. “There’s not the serendipitous running into each other when you go to the coffee shop.”

“Durham has that concentration. That’s what Raleigh needs.”

It’s not a stretch to say I’ve worked for more startup companies than just about anyone. And Whiton is right on the money. This is what Raleigh needs to focus on with its entrepreneurial efforts: creating a startup scene. It’s all about those serendipitous meetings. Foster that feeling and success will follow.

What it takes to accomplish this is essentially what it takes to make any kind of development take place in the city: it all starts with staking a flag someplace, so to speak. Find a part of town that offers the “raw materials” that might make for interesting work places. Look for a place with “good bones,” as the real estate industry calls it. Then designate this place as the startup area and sell it with PR. It helps to attract an “anchor tenant,” which for Raleigh might be Red Hat.

Then wait. And wait. Then wait some more. And commit to nurture it with whatever it needs. Listen to the companies there to see what it might need. Look around for any good ideas being implemented in other places.

Like Whiton said, there are plenty of successful startups born here in Raleigh. We’ve got a great foundation. Now we just need to focus this activity in one area and help it grow!

via Raleigh wants a startup spark – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Time for OWS to embrace the co-op movement?

An op-ed on Al Jazeera looks at how the Occupy Wall Street movement could revive interest in cooperative businesses.

Head into Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan, and one is immediately struck by the self-governing nature of the “Occupy” encampment.

A community which adheres to non-hierarchical decision making, Occupy conducts General Assembly meetings which are transparent and open to the public. Meals too are prepared communally, and there’s even a public library. On the other hand, it’s not as if Occupy is putting novel ideas into practice, since the encampment harks back historically to the co-operative movement.

via Time for OWS to embrace the co-op movement? – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.

The other side of town: Southeast Raleigh’s problems and promise

The Independent’s Bob Geary takes a good, in-depth look at Southeast Raleigh.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on my way to Martin Street Baptist Church in Southeast Raleigh. For two years, it’s been the high ground in the political fight for control of the Wake County school system: the church, as a gathering place for the defenders of diversity; and Southeast Raleigh, the historically black area of the city and the county with all its problems and its promise.

via The other side of town: Southeast Raleigh’s problems and promise | News Feature | Independent Weekly.

Americans Work Too Much for Their Own Good

This is a compelling op-ed on Bloomburg.com. American companies are way too stingy with vacation time! I’ve worked at a few companies that offered three weeks of vacation and it was heavenly. I’ve worked at others where you feel lucky to get two weeks.

Sooner or later, more American companies will learn that they don’t get more productive workers by keeping their noses to the grindstone.

By the mid-1970s, and especially after 1980, median wages weren’t keeping pace with increases in our capacity to produce. But flattening incomes didn’t derail the consumption train. Americans continued to buy more, in part by going deeper into debt, by having more members of the family enter the workforce and by working additional overtime. By the boom times of the late 1990s, Americans worked more than the notoriously workaholic Japanese.

The Europeans took a different path. In the second half of the 20th century, prodded by strong and active labor movements and social-democratic political parties, Europeans took a large chunk of their productivity gains in the form of more leisure. They now work only 80 to 85 percent as many hours as Americans, and when you consider that fewer people in Europe work and that they retire earlier, the difference is even greater.

via Americans Work Too Much for Their Own Good: de Graaf and Batker – Bloomberg.

The 100 Up Exercise

Here’s more on the 100 Up running exercise that the New York Times Magazine discussed. The video below is helpful to see what the proper technique is.

The 100 Up exercise, which McDougall is touting as a surefire technique for training away these bad habits, is actually an incredibly old invention of a long dead English chemist apprentice. Since he was English, in this case being a chemist probably refers to a pharmacist. W.S. George developed his exercise pattern so that he could train for running even while busy at work all day. The technique was apparently quite successful, as George went on to achieve world record times in several short and middle distance races.

via The 100 Up Exercise: Method for Training Barefoot Running Form | Naturally Engineered.

Switching Gears

The Hibbles travel America

I like to think of myself as a “leaper,” but I don’t come remotely close to my friends the Hibbles. They make me and nearly everyone else seem positively timid! Geoff and Robin have packed their entire family into an RV and will live on the road for a whole year as they travel America. It’s crazy, it’s irrational, but it’s also strangely compelling.

You can follow the Hibbles on their adventures at their Switching Gears blog. Bon voyage, y’all!

Luck Is Just the Spark for Business Giants

Here’s a fascinating look at the role luck plays in business success.

Recently, we completed a nine-year research study of some of the most extreme business successes of modern times. We examined entrepreneurs who built small enterprises into companies that outperformed their industries by a factor of 10 in highly turbulent environments. We call them 10Xers, for “10 times success.”

The very nature of this study — how some people thrive in uncertainty, lead in chaos, deal with a world full of big, disruptive forces that we cannot predict or control — led us to smack into the question, “Just what is the role of luck?”

via Luck Is Just the Spark for Business Giants – NYTimes.com.

New House bill could kick you and your website off the Internet

More astonishing overreach from our intellectual property overlords and their corrupt cronies in Congress.

The Stop Online Piracy Act also goes by another name: The E-PARASITES Act. It stands for Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act. If it passes, that muscle would certainly be available.

Mark A. Lemley is a professor at Stanford Law School and director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology. He says, “What’s remarkable about this provision is that it would allow the government and in many cases private parties to come into court, get a temporary restraining order without the participation of the accused website and shut down not just the infringing material, but the whole website.”

via New House bill could kick you and your website off the Internet | Marketplace From American Public Media.