Behavior, Entrepreneurship, Economy and Technology

Behavior: Last year, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist from Duke.  He gave a presentation at TED this year on cheating that discussed, among other things, a fake MIT Honor Code, sweatshirts, the Personal Fudge Factor, atheists swearing on Bibles and The Ten Commandments.

Entrepreneurship: Seth Godin wrote today about how to apportion equity in a start-up. His ideas are well thought out and I especially like the idea of appointing an arbitrator right at the start.  This advice is all the more important if your partner is also your spouse, best friend or both.

Economy: I posted recently on some ideas regarding the AIG bonus issue. Adam Davidson, writes on the NPR Blog today to tell us to look at the bigger picture and as mad as I was when I wrote about the bonuses, I think he makes some sense.

Technology: I have been a big online mapping fan from the early days of MapQuest.  Now, I normally choose Google Maps, for the richness of the experience as well as the ease of use.  Today, I found out about www.openstreetmap.org. This is an open source world street mapping program.  It is designed to be crowdsourced, meaning that like Wikipedia, everyone can be an editor.  It looks a lot like Google Maps but includes user generated features like detailed bike paths near my home that were included by a user with a GPS unit.