Latest publications
Read my latest stories for The Wall Street Journal, Passcode, The Harvard Business Review, JSTOR Daily and more.
How 17 essential travel apps can improve your next vacation
Whether you’re packing your bags for a summer trip to Europe or packing the car for a summer road tip with the kids, you may be tempted to define your vacation by what you’re not packing: your computer, tablet or mobile phone. As more and more of us struggle with the...
Making room for messiness
For the past two weeks we've been in the middle of our semi-annual domestic meltdown. Meltdown features include: emergency school visits necessitating precipitous departures from work implementation of new household rules precipitating epically draining tantrums...
What you can learn by NOT throwing your child out of a window
A few years ago I found myself comparing vacation plans with a colleague — a single guy about a decade older than me. His upcoming vacation? A month-long backpacking trip to Hawaii, totally off the grid. When I marvelled at his bravery, he offered this wisdom: “Every...
Breaking my personal record for Craziest Apple Store Visit
Yesterday, 10 minutes into my flight to Toronto, my MacBook Pro's screen died. completely and dramatically. So when I hit the ground in TO, the first thing I did was called the nearest Apple store to see if I could get into the Genius Bar for a short-term fix. All...
Online Security as Herd Immunity
Privacy is available, but only if a critical mass of companies make the effort to protect it.
Established Companies, Get Ready for the Collaborative Economy
This post originally appeared on The Harvard Business Review website. As more and more startups like Airbnb, Etsy and Kickstarter crowd into the space of the collaborative economy, big brands are starting to get in on the action, too. Staples sells products developed...
Announcing Work Smarter, Rule Your Email
There's no part of online life that has a bigger impact on our productivity — and our happiness! — than email. But most email productivity guides focus on getting control over email, when what we really need is more control over our lives and our work. That's why I'm...
7 ways you can learn to love reading ebooks
About a decade ago, somebody gave us our first crock pot, also known as a slow cooker. For months we feasted on the remarkably easy, delicious dishes it could produce: chicken tagines and chilis, beef briskets and vegan stews. Then I made the mistake of discussing our...
It’s monkey see, monkey do over here
And you know, you usually don't let monkeys hack firmware.
The family that hacks together….
Saturday morning at our house: the kids are programming our new Lego Mindstorms robot. I'm installing Xcode on the Mac home media server...step one in the long road to controlling our Mini with our Kinect.