9 Brilliant Inventions Made by Mistake

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via inc.com

Think necessity is the mother of invention? Not always. There is a very thin line between brilliant innovation and absolute failure, as some of these inventors famously found out.

Some of the most popular products we use today were accidents stumbled on by clumsy scientists, chefs who spilled things, and misguided inventors who—in the case of the glue used on Post-it Notes—were trying to create the opposite of what they ended up with. But we can all take comfort in knowing even some huge mistakes can come with silver linings, sometimes big enough to change entire industries. And sometimes, even forgetting to wash your hands has its advantages.

Facebook Told Me To Sell My Business To Them Or Be Destroyed, And I Said Stuff It

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via businessinsider.com

An app developer named Dalton Caldwell has written an acerbic open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The letter is about how Caldwell was called into Facebook to meet with a group of executives, and how these executives told Caldwell that his startup was competitve with a Facebook product, and that he should therefore sell it to Facebook or face destruction.

Caldwell says he rejected the offer. “I was not interested in an acqui-hire.”

“I said that if Facebook wanted to have a serious conversation about acquiring my team and product, I would entertain the idea. Otherwise, I had zero interest in seeing my product shut down and joining Facebook. I told your team I would rather reboot my company than go down that route.”

The 10 Biggest Tech News Stories of 2012 (So Far)

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So far in 2012 we’ve seen great companies fall apart and new companies come together. We’ve seen the U.S. Department of Justice take down websites thought to be pirating copyrighted material as well as websites come together to fight against the U.S. House of Representatives. We watched companies, big and small, break records, and a corporation once thought to be staid and devoid of creativity unveil one of the most promising devices of the past few years. Suffice to say, 2012 so far has been full of surprises. We’re not sure what the rest of the year holds, but if it’s anything like January through July, we can’t wait. Take a look back at the 10 biggest news stories to rock the tech world.

Talking Comic Books Take All Of the Imagination Out Of It

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via gizmodo.com

We’re not ones to hold back the march of technology, even when it comes to our beloved comic books. Having them electronically delivered to our beautiful retina display devices is a dream come true. But we can’t help but raise an eyebrow at Valiant Entertainment’s new talking comic book cover.

Created for issue #1 of the company’s X-O Manowar comic, to be fair, the comic doesn’t actually include any kind of speaker technology like a musical greeting card. Instead, readers are encouraged to place their iPhone on the cover, where—thanks to augmented reality tricks—the character’s mouth is replaced with an animated version that provides a prelude to the comic’s story.

Things That Increase My Passion for Web Design

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Web designing is one of the most popular and well-paid jobs today. Just a few years ago, parents pushed their children to become doctors, engineers, and scientists; today parents push them to become web designers as well. Those who are most passionate about web designing can make it really big. Web designing is part of the creative arts and requires designers to explore their own creativity and imagination—whether creating a logo for a website banner or designing a home page—along with their technical knowledge.

Why I Told Anonymous to Kiss My A$$ - the UFC Story

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Early this year, after its parent company came out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the mixed-martial-arts promoter Ultimate Fighting Championship was attacked by the hacker group Anonymous. As told to J.J. McCorvey

I was in Chicago for a fight when I found out these Anonymous guys had started crashing our site. During an interview, I looked right into the camera and dared them to do it again. I said, Who do you think I am, eBay? I’m in the fight business. I could give a shit if you knock my website down. Do it again! Go ahead. I dare you!

You’re gonna send some pizzas to my house and put my Social Security number out? Who gives a shit? If people really wanted to get your Social Security number, I’m sure they could find it. I’m supposed to bow down to you guys now? I’m going to come after you harder. If you want to fight me, you better pack a f—ing lunch, man. Because we’re gonna go until somebody wins and somebody loses.

This is How History’s Greatest Inventions Really Happened

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via theatlantic.com

The world’s most famous inventors are household names. As we all know, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone, and Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

Except they didn’t. The ideas didn’t spring, Athena-like, fully formed from their brains. In fact, they didn’t spring fully formed from anybody’s brains. That is the myth of the lonely inventor and the eureka moment.

“Simultaneous invention and incremental improvement are the way innovation works, even for radical inventions,” Mark A. Lemley writes in his fascinating paper The Myth of the Sole Inventor. Lemley’s paper concentrates on the history and problems of patents. But he also chronicles the history of the 19th and 20th century’s most famous inventors — with an emphasis on how their inventions were really neither theirs, nor inventions. Here is a super-quick summary of his wonderful distillation of the last 200 years in collaborative innovation.

THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY IN AMERICA: Family Net Worth Collapses 40% In 3 Years

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via businessinsider.com

Yesterday, the Fed released its latest Survey of Consumer Finances.

The report included a lot of depressing data about the financial situation of average Americans. But nothing was so shocking and depressing as this:
The median net worth of American families dropped nearly 40% from 2007 to 2010.

Wow.

(Yes, the situation has improved in the 18 months since 2010, but only modestly. House prices are about where they were back then.)

Most of this decline came from the collapse of the housing market. But we can’t just write this one off to the housing bubble. The median net worth of households has now fallen to the same level as it was two decades ago, in 1992.

What does that mean?