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The Quality Without A Name

Rob Mayoff's Blog.

AngelConf 2010July 31

I went to AngelConf 2010.

I felt rather like a poser. I may have been the only attendee who doesn’t live in Silicon Valley (henceforth SV) and hasn’t done any angel investing yet. I talked to about 6 other attendees; they all live in SV and have done “angeling”.

I asked several people who have worked or invested outside of SV is whether being in SV is really as big a deal as Paul Graham indicates in his writings.

The answer seems to be a definite yes for startup founders. SV is much better than anywhere else because of the availability of talent and money. (Paradoxically I was also told that there’s not enough engineers available in SV.)

For investors, the answer was less clear. There’s a huge number of startups (and potential startups) in SV – far more than anywhere else. This alone means that the next Google is far more likely to be an SV startup. But there are also more investors than anywhere else, and some of them are strong “brands”. In a place like Austin, the playing field might be leveler for someone like me.

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I experienced firsthand why so many people complain about AT&T Wireless. I’ve been an iPhone user since day 2, and I haven’t had much to complain about. In Austin, I get decent signal strength just about everywhere I go. But in SV, I saw mediocre-to-terrible signal strength all o

iPhone 4′s “Retina Display”June 26

I got an iPhone 4 to replace my iPhone 3G (not 3GS). The “Retina Display” is very nice. Some apps work better as a direct result of the improved display. You get a lot more detail in Maps. Very high-density web pages (like the nytimes.com home page) are legible on the iPhone 4 but not on the 3G. Photos and Youtube probably benefit too, but I rarely use them.

But most apps aren’t any more useful as a result of the better display. Phone, Calendar, Mail, and most of the rest look a bit nicer but don’t provide any extra benefit as a result of the display.

Kindle typography goes craptacularMay 17 2009

I have a Kindle 2. The built-in font used for book text is apparently Caecilia. I scanned my Kindle displaying a page of Cryptonomicon at the smallest font size. Here’s a picture that is actual size if you have a 96 dpi display. Click on it for a 600 dpi image.

Now I’m reading Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life on my Kindle. Here’s what it looks like.

Notice how the crossbar on the first character, a capital T, is barely visible? The Kindle is displaying five capital Ts on that page. Here they are.

How to ship a used CDMay 13 2009

I ordered a used copy of the old game “Full Throttle” from amazon.com. Today I received this envelope:

Here’s the contents of the envelope, as I received at:

Classy!

Talking to ghosts in movies these days oughtn’t be so crazy.April 21 2009

We just watched Ghost Town, in which (surprise!) Bertram Pincus (the main character) can see and hear ghosts. So he talks to them and of course in various scenes he gets funny looks.

All he need do is wear a bluetooth headset. It doesn’t even have to be turned on. Everyone will just find him annoying, not nutty.