I have no experience in the movie industry, have never made a movie, and probably couldn’t make one either. But, I recently had an interesting email exchange with the creators of the documentary Buck. I contacted them to outline my frustration at trying to watch the movie in Canada. The movie had been on the [...]
Chocolate is a delicious, delicious treat; however, it is far too often tainted with the sweat of child slaves. While slavery in the chocolate industry remains a small portion of the global slave population (~27 million people enslaved today), it is something that can easily be fixed. Today, the cacao industry employees somewhere between 15 [...]
For the past year I’ve been trying to find a reliable software developer who wants to build a long-lasting sustainable business. Ok, that sounds a bit cheesy, but in contrast to most propositions that start that way, my main company, Nimonik, actually makes money and is growing at 100% a year. It is a painful [...]
Relationships are complicated. For one, they rely first and foremost on your understanding of yourself, your needs, priorities and desires. Second, they rely on your ability intimately understand another human being with equally complex emotions, history and feelings. If humanity were given a grade for its romantic relationships, we would fail. Over half of marriages end [...]
Domain squatting is a major problem. Companies go around picking up every imaginable domain name in the hopes of reselling it or placing ads that generate revenue. This land grab slows growth and drives people and businesses towards less intuitive names. Many registrars allow you to grab a trial period for a domain before purchasing [...]
Here are 4 crazy ideas, let me know what you think. Membership for restaurants Restaurants have cash flow problems, patrons often hesitate to go out because of cost. How about a membership (or time-share) system for restaurants. You create a subscription for restaurants where you pay a monthly fee and get x number of meals [...]
This is a follow-up to my last 7 free ideas, which you can read here. And the excellent discussion that happened on Hacker News. Why give these ideas away? I have too many ideas and too little time. If anyone wants to take these and run with them, go for it! If you do, I would [...]
Last year, I spent a couple of mornings working at Santropol Roulant, a non-profit group in Montreal that prepares meals for elderly people. Every morning they prepare hundreds of delicious meals that are then delivered by bike and car throughout Montreal. As a volunteer, I cut, chopped and prepped the food. It was a lot of [...]
Flying out of Hong Kong is an amazing experience. You hop on a bullet train downtown and before you know it, you are whisking past rice paddies to the airport. Travelling is stressful, especially when you are a bit late. Waiting for a train to take you to your flight has a certain element of [...]
In light of my promise to show some great design that has a big impact, here is a urinal. I took this photo in the Copenhagen Airport (I think). Basically, the urinal has a little fly printed at the exact spot that, if peed on, leads to the least amount of spillage. This makes cleaning up [...]