Consider these three word pairs: Choose vs. chose Loose vs. lose Noose vs. nose Loose and noose rhyme, but they don’t rhyme with choose. Chose and nose rhyme, but they don’t rhyme with lose. There are lists of frequent grammatical errors; mistaken use of choose/chose and loose/lose are commonly found on such lists. I could pick on hundreds of other English [...]

Do venture investors with the biggest and best networks end up producing the best returns? An academic paper from a few years ago by Yael Hochberg, Alexander Ljungqvist, and Yang Lu titled "Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance" (embedded at the bottom of this post) suggests that is the case. They looked at historic venture returns and found that "better-networked VC firms experience significantly better fund performance," as measured by how many of the companies in their portfolios exited via an IPO or acquisition. A venture firm's network in the study was defined as being ...

People have always been inclined to join mobs - most people have at least one story to tell about a time that they got swept up in or had to face a crowd demanding justice for one thing or another (both of my experiences were in college). The Internet has proven to be a frighteningly efficient tool to create virtual mobs. But we note two trends that suggest a bleak future: the increase in non-anonymous mob participation and the evolution of online services towards ever more efficient and real time communication platforms that facilitate mob creation and growth like never before ...

This post is a bit different from the technology news that we generally cover here at TechCrunch. But it's something that I think needs to be said. Last night I got word that my parents had witnessed a tragic accident while driving in Northern California. I won't get into the details, but suffice to say one person was killed and others were left bleeding, in various states of unconsciousness. Thank God my parents were not hurt in the accident, but they witnessed it first hand, as well as the disturbing aftermath. Immediately after the accident, my parents and ...

I spend hours everyday on my main desktop computer, and I come across bugs in my own code and others' code often. Today as I was trying to help a friend move a blog off wordpress.com, I swear I saw...