BradBerens.com
Thoughts about where our real and digital worlds collide.

  • Short Post: Best iGoogle Replacement

    I’m a devoted iGoogle user since it first came online, and so I staggered through all the stages of grief when Google announced that it was discontinuing the product 18 months ago… with the count down ticking down to November 1… just a few days from now. For months I’ve held on to the fond…

  • New piece on Medium: “The Next Airline Disruption”

    I just uploaded a new piece to Medium.com about how the airline industry can practice innovation through simplification. Excerpt: Here’s how a savvy airline can disrupt the rest of the industry: create a secondary market in airline tickets that allows customers to buy and sell tickets to each other with no fees.   Need to…

  • On Medium: Season 2 of “The Newsroom”

    Just published a short piece on Season 2 of HBO’s “The Newsroom” over on Medium.com –“’Newsroom’ Season 2 Delivers: The problems of S1 turn into triumphs in S2.” Here are the first few paragraphs: I was crankily devoted to the first season on HBO of Aaron Sorkin’s latest intense one-hour drama featuring geniuses who have memorized…

  • Two new posts on Medium.com, plus thoughts on platform proliferation

    The past week or so I’ve enjoyed writing on Medium.com. I mentioned a post about Tina Fey’s “Bossypants as Startup Bible” here before, and since then I’ve written two more: eBay’s Sublime Terror: Staring down the precipice while hunting Babylon 5 DVDs and Barnes & Noble’s real problem: In praise of chunky scale Medium.com is…

  • Ahhh– the right email filter at the right time

    Sometimes a tiny adjustment can make a huge difference. Example: I have a backup email address where copies of emails that I might otherwise miss are routed. Recently, I started using this backup email address for other things as well– a new use case. The problem, however, was that suddenly I couldn’t see the new…

  • Giving Medium a whirl

    Just uploaded my first post on Medium, the new publication platform: “’Bossypants’ as startup bible.” Comments appreciated.

  • Look Carefully at the New Pew Number: 56% of Americans Have Smart Phones

    [Cross-posted.] Today the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new mobile report stating that 56% of adult Americans now have smart phones, with between 70 to 80% penetration among younger demographics, college grads and the well-off. You can see the full report here. Here’s the thing to look twice at: it’s not 56%…

  • What should I ask Google’s Susan Wojcicki onstage at ad:tech SF?

    I’m delighted to be interviewing Google’s SVP of Advertising Susan Wojcicki next week at ad:tech San Francisco 2013. She’ll make a brief presentation and then the two of us will sit down for a fireside chat. So what should I ask her?  What burning questions do you have for Google when it comes to their…

  • A Modest Proposal: just do away with “marriage” as a legal concept altogether

    I support gay marriage unequivocally.  There is no however.  Gay and lesbian couples should have all the same rights as my wife and I do, and it’s a shame on the United States that this still hasn’t happened. Right now, the Supreme Court is dancing on the head of a needle with two different cases…

  • Is there life after Harry (Potter)?

    I’m Single-Dadding it for a few days whilst Kathi is teaching down in L.A., and our seven-year-old son just made me so proud that I must share. Post school, post Tae Kwon Do, post dinner (pizza, because Dad’s a little under the weather and doesn’t want to cook), I offered him the chance to finish…