It’s one of those crossroads that I can’t seem to figure out how to cross. I’ve done so many career assessment quizzes that I know to-the-tee what I’m “supposed” to be good at. But I don’t think that any career assessment quiz can help you to answer the deepest internal questions you have.

Questions such as:

What is my unique talent?

What am I passionate about doing?

What have I done before that made me feel that I was really living?

Asking these questions and trying to find answers to them has been something I’ve been doing consistently now ever since I got home from my mission, so for 3 years this last September. I’ve pondered and pondered and pondered. I’ve read self-help books, from “Major in Success” to “Think and Grow Rich.” I’ve studied ancient philosophers, poets, and Prophets.

I’m not sure if I’ve come any closer to figuring out what I should be doing with my life.

I think part of it is that there are too many choices. My long term goal is to start my own company and create real value for others. But in what industry? With what product or service? Should I start a scalable company or do something local and from home? Should I work for a startup before I do my own? Or should I work for a big corporation before starting something up to get a feel for how the corporate world operates? Or should I scrap that and do consulting? But don’t consultants get a skewed view of business since they don’t have to ever stay anywhere long term?

Or I could just skip all these steps and start something right now. A few of the things I’m interested in:

1. Web Analytics (Omniture, Google Analytics, etc.)

Why I’m Interested in This Business:

It’s scalable; after building the initial technology I can work with hundreds or thousands of different clients with the same platform.

It’s very valuable to a web business. Knowing the behavior of your customers is huge. If you don’t know where they come from, which search terms are performing the best, which conversion tunnels are doing the best, if you don’t perform A/B tests, if you don’t understand your traffic you don’t understand your business. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t have any way to progress.

It’s sustainable. As the internet continues to expand, web analytics will only become more important. The growth in analytics will go with the growth of e-commerce and internet-driven sales.

Possible plan:

Partner up with somebody who understands technology at a much deeper level than most; somebody who can build a web app with his eyes closed and knows analytics. (All I know is Java, HTML, and some SQL & PHP. Hardly the technical ability necessary to build this kind of platform).

Charge small business with websites $100 a month to have access to the analytics data.

Charge small businesses who want 1 on 1 consulting from one of our experts a starting rate of about $2000 a month.

Continually upgrade and build our technology to make it the fastest, easiest-to-use analytics software available for small businesses.

2. Wealth Management

Why I’m Interested in This Business:

It’s interesting to try to understand how the financial system works. From buying chunks of public companies (aka buying stocks) to private equity, monetary policy, the pro’s and con’s of the Federal Reserve, asset preservation, the bond market, and hedging with gold and silver; it’s interesting stuff. I like reading about the world, its history and the current events.

I enjoy thinking about how political decisisons affect the economic world. I enjoy seeing how economic policies can affect entire countries, and even the world.

I like helping people, and the financial business is a people business.

Possible plan:

Get all necessary licenses.

Work for Euro Pacific or another firm that specializes in international investing in the developing Asian countries.

Learn everything I can about the business and work like a dog to grow up my clientelle.

Start my own.

There are several other ideas that I throw around, and I know that eventually I’ll figure this all out, but lately it’s been really stressful thinking about all of this. As I move forward it does get more clear; what I should do that is. But I’m impatient. I like seeing results. I like feeling that I’m creating something that is of value to somebody else – preferably from scrach, preferably with a group of people that I get along with like brothers and who are much smarter than I am (I want to be able to learn from others).

Any comments about what you think would be helpful!

http://venturehacks.com/articles/job-offer

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http://www.venturevoice.com/library.html

http://dub.washington.edu:2007/projects/denim/

Written by: Jason Lankow, Ross Crooks, Joshua Ritchie, and Brett McKay

There are the books you read, and then there are the books that change your life. We can all look back on the books that have shaped our perspective on politics, religion, money, and love. Some will even become a source of inspiration for the rest of your life. From a seemingly infinite list of books of anecdotal or literal merit, we have narrowed down the top 100 books that have shaped the lives of individual men while also helping define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be a man.

Whether it be a book on adventure, war, or manners, there is so much to learn about life’s great questions from these gems. Let us know in the comments which of these you loved, hated, and the books that meant a lot to you and should have made the list (you can even get really indignant about your favorite book). And without further ado, this is our list.

Click the link to see the list http://artofmanliness.com/2008/05/14/100-must-read-books-the-essential-mans-library/

Every month or two, someone on Hacker News asks “How do I become a Hacker?” And, I’m happy to answer the question in depth, because I had those questions myself at some point in time. Since it’s Paul Graham’s sandbox they’re playing in, I’ll assume that if most of those questions are geared specifically towards how to make web applications. And, this post is my answer.

First off, much of the below, can be learned from web tutorials. But, a lot of times, a book is the only thing that will scratch the itch. So, before you bankrupt yourself at Barnes and Ignoble, I’d highly recommend getting a Safari subscription. There’s a lot of great books out there on the below topics, and a Safari subscription is a cheap way to access a lot of them at once.

Click here to see the rest of the article.

Dean Kamen, Who Is He?

Dean Kamen is not a new player in the innovator’s arena. He has been inventing and innovating ever since he dropped out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the 70’s. Since then, he invented such things as the insulin pump, a mobile dialysis system, and an all-terrain electric wheelchair called the iBot. His best-known invention is the Segway, a self-balancing, gyroscope-using, automatic-steering, scooter-like device that did not sell well in the US but is expected to do better in Europe.

His newest invention could turn out to be world-changing. The term “revolutionary” comes to mind but may be too overused to express what this device could do for the world’s poor. It could save the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the third world. And it’s really quite simple. This invention answers the question — “How do you get drinkable water to the world’s thirsty?”

The Slingshot, A Revolutionary Water-Purifier

The invention, known as Slingshot, is basically a distiller. Distilling technology is not new. In fact, distillers have been around for decades. What makes this distiller unique is the low price and the large amount of water that can be produced. Other machines like the Slingshot can cost as much as $200,000 to $1 million. The Slingshot is expected to cost only $1,500. And it can filter 1,000 liters a day, using only 500 watts of electricity per hour. To put that into perspective, a toaster uses about 1,000 watts every time you make toast.

Possibly even more exciting than the cost-effectiveness and simplicity of the technology is its power. It can purify any source of moisture, whether ocean water, urine, or mud. And it does it all without filters, charcoal, or any other parts that must be replaced each time you use it.

The Slingshot has been slated for release within the next 12-18 months.

Saving Millions of Lives Every Year

“In the emerging world, in the under-developed world, a gallon of water is so precious that without it, you’re going to die,” says Kamen.

“In some places, the average amount of time per day spent looking for water that’s safe for their kids by women is four hours. And they carry this stuff, which weighs 62 pounds per cubic foot, four or five miles. And if it didn’t turn out to be the right stuff, or they put their hands in it and contaminated it, they spend the next day or two burying the babies.”

What will these women do with their extra 4 hours every day? How many families will be blessed by mothers who have the power to give water to their thirsty children? And with other inventions like the Merry-Go-Round power plant , we may start to see our friends in the third-world finding a luxury that we have taken for granted for hundreds of years in the U.S. — fresh, drinkable water.

To see a video of Stephen Colbert questioning Kamen about the Slingshot, go to http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=164485

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

The history of science is full of ideas that several people had at the same time.

Keywords

Myhrvold, Nathan;

Intellectual Ventures;

Inventors;

Bell, Alexander Graham;

Gray, Elisha;

Dinosaurs;

Telegraph

Nathan Myhrvold met Jack Horner on the set of the “Jurassic Park” sequel in 1996. Horner is an eminent paleontologist, and was a consultant on the movie. Myhrvold was there because he really likes dinosaurs. Between takes, the two men got to talking, and Horner asked Myhrvold if he was interested in funding dinosaur expeditions.

Myhrvold is of Nordic extraction, and he looks every bit the bearded, fair-haired Viking—not so much the tall, ferocious kind who raped and pillaged as the impish, roly-poly kind who stayed home by the fjords trying to turn lead into gold. He is gregarious, enthusiastic, and nerdy on an epic scale. He graduated from high school at fourteen. He started Microsoft’s research division, leaving, in 1999, with hundreds of millions. He is obsessed with aperiodic tile patterns. (Imagine a floor tiled in a pattern that never repeats.) When Myhrvold built his own house, on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle—a vast, silvery hypermodernist structure described by his wife as the place in the sci-fi movie where the aliens live—he embedded some sixty aperiodic patterns in the walls, floors, and ceilings. His front garden is planted entirely with vegetation from the Mesozoic era. (“If the ‘Jurassic Park’ thing happens,” he says, “this is where the dinosaurs will come to eat.”) One of the scholarly achievements he is proudest of is a paper he co-wrote proving that it was theoretically possible for sauropods—his favorite kind of dinosaur—to have snapped their tails back and forth faster than the speed of sound. How could he say no to the great Jack Horner?

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