Latest publications
Read my latest stories for The Wall Street Journal, Passcode, The Harvard Business Review, JSTOR Daily and more.
11 things I want to stop learning
There are some things I seem destined to learn over and over again, and gosh, I wish I could stop learning them already. For example: Unplug it before you open it. If you don't want to do it tomorrow, you won't want to do it in three months, either. Just because Apple...
Work Smarter with LinkedIn, published today
Work Smarter with LinkedIn takes you through exactly what we’d cover if we sat down together to get you powered up on LinkedIn. If we had an hour or two together, we’d talk about your near- and long-term professional goals, and then we’d focus on how LinkedIn could help you achieve them.
How BrainPop prepared my son for time travel
Last night's bedtime story was "JCat and the Time Machine for Cats". Like all JCat stories, this one featured JCat traveling to Cupertino with Tim Cook in order to invent something. Happily, I was ready for the request to have a story featuring a time machine, since...
Win my love: The cheat sheet
I know that you are supposed to like or love people based on their character or their soul, but that shit takes a lot of time to figure out. It's much more efficient to quickly categorize people as loveable, likeable or deeply suspicious based on their surface traits....
Stop sibling conflict with a tech-inspired solution
Are you tired of listening to your kids argue? Does it seem like a single ill-timed comment can ignite a cascade of escalating attacks and complaints? Are you sick of playing referee? This weekend we came up with an innovative strategy for stopping the sibling...
Hey NSA, even my kids know snooping is creepy
This morning's breakfast conversation: ME: I'm feeling upset about how Barack Obama has been reading all the stuff we've been posting online -- everywhere except Twitter, which refused to cooperate. SWEETIE: That's creepy. ME: Good news, though -- I blogged your list...
8 kid-inspired features for Apple’s iOS 7
For the past couple of years, our kids' favorite bedtime stories have featured a feline protagonist whose best friend is Apple CEO Tim Cook. In each story, Tim Cook teleports this cat to Cupertino (Apple HQ), where Tim and cat work on various cat-friendly inventions....
Work Smarter with Twitter and HootSuite, new from Harvard Business Review Press
Do you feel like you could get more out of Twitter? Or are you a passionate Twitter user who wants to help your colleagues, friends and family use it and love it the way you do? Work Smarter with Twitter and HootSuite is for everyone who wants to get more out of...
End those digital fasts with these 5 April Fool’s Day pranks
Well, folks, it's almost that time again: Easter. Also known as the end of Lent. Or what should be known as national coming out day for all the people who've just spent the past 40 days doing some kind of digital fast. They inevitably come back with a desire to...
NSF Political Science cuts fail to predict the unpredictability of research
On March 20 the Senate de-funded political science grants from the National Science Foundation “except for research projects that the Director of the National Science Foundation certifies as promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.”...