stories by Mark Goldenson

What’s Next: fully ergonomic laptops?

When the first laptops were created around 1979 — laptops like the Grid Compass — ergonomics was not exactly a core concern. The screens were only 2-4 inches, RAM was a few hundred kilobytes, and batteries were huge. The Osbourne …

What's next: an eHarmony for Travel?

What is the perfect city for you? How would you learn?

After 12 happy years in Silicon Valley, I have felt wanderlust and looked at living in places with the following:

A temperate climate within five minutes of a warm-water

What’s next: A StumbleUpon for porn?

(Note: this article discusses pornography but has no X-rated links and should be safe in PG environments. School teachers and clergy are duly warned.)

If the web has let a thousand flowers bloom, pornography has been its most prolific deflowerer. …

What’s next: Friend matchmaking that works?

In a college class on human sexuality, I learned a fascinating stat: over one-third of marriages stem from an introduction by a friend. Matchmaking has been practiced for thousands of years, from astrologers making matches with tarot cards to Ashkenazi …

What's next: A dashboard for online dating?

A friend once said online dating is like a full-time job with only occasional benefits. America’s 40 million online daters must answer questions, post pictures, run searches, write emails, and block bikini-clad spambait, usually across multiple sites. Susan Mernit, a …

What's next: Signatures as a Service?

Signature blocks, those lines of text some people include at the bottom of their email messages, are as old as the web itself. Some of the earliest emails included primitive signatures; perhaps Major Raymond Czahor earns the dual honor of …

10 lessons from a failed startup

A year and a half ago, my co-founder Dev Nag and I started an internet TV network for games called PlayCafe. Our ambitious plan was to run highly interactive game shows in which everyone was a contestant. Players could watch …