The Federal Reserve has finally jumped the shark.

Nilay Patel reviews the Pebble smartwatch for The Verge:

As one of the most prominent Kickstarter hardware projects, it's good to see the Pebble apparently living up to the hype. Also, I particularly enjoyed this part about the battery life:

Earlier today, I was reading a Reuters report on Apple's “disappointing” quarterly results and the article mentioned something called the “Analysts Revision Model”. This model, developed by a company called StarMine, scores companies on a scale of 1-100 based on “changes in analyst sentiment”. StarMine claims the ARM score is “highly predictive of relative price movement” which it may well be. But let's evaluate the scores currently assigned to Apple and it's closest rivals:

• Apple: 10/100
• Microsoft: 19/100
• Google: 34/100
• Nokia: 82/100
• Samsung: 89/100
• Research in Motion: 100/100

On Twitter this morning (1, 2, 3) I was fairly harsh on the value of the model itself, but after thinking about it more, I realized the real blame here falls on the “analysts” upon whose machinations this model is based. What the scores are basically telling us is how valuable the insights of those analysts into each of the companies listed is worth.

In the case of Apple? Not much.

Note: This post is part of on ongoing series in which I'm watching a lot of movies.

I haven't watched a lot of Woody Allen movies, so I didn't really know what to expect going into this film. Now, having watched it, I think the general idea of a “Woody Allen movie” is lots of one-liners and breaking of the fourth wall. Does that sound about right?

Anyway, on to my notes:

• The whole sequence of waiting in line at the movie was pretty funny, although for a moment I felt like I was watching a Mel Brooks movie.
• “Politicians are a notch under child molestors.” I'm just going to assume that the irony of this line is not lost on you and move along.
• Christopher Walken sighting! (Annie's younger brother.)
• I loved the subtle detail of the lobster picture they took early in the movie being framed on the wall later on.
• Some of my favorite one-liners:
  • “We'll be in here quietly humping.”
  • “My grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.”
  • “There's God coming out of the men's room!”

Annie Hall on Wikipedia.

Dan McKinley on the dangers of real-time analytics for product development:

Someone is looking to build a new semiconductor fabrication facility in the United States:

Nothing more than speculation at this point, but some particularly handsome people have theorized that Apple probably wants more direct control over it's chip supply chain.

About 2 weeks ago I participated in the Fall 2012 iteration of Portland Startup Weekend. The whole thing greatly exceeded my expectations and I was very happy that I participated.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Startup Weekend, the basic idea is that a bunch of programmers, designers, and business types get together for a weekend and have about 54 hours to try to create a new company. Ideas are pitched, teams are formed, products and business plans are developed, and finally you get judged by a panel of experts.

The week before, the Startup Weekend organizers held a “boot camp” on Saturday afternoon. This was an optional event to introduce people to the principals of Startup Weekend and give us some practice pitching our ideas in front of a group. During the “boot camp” I worked with a couple other guys to refine a pitch based around improving the accessibility of local produce.

During the intervening week, we worked on the pitch a little more and by Friday afternoon, after a couple hours of feverish memorization and practice, I was ready.

I believe there were about 50 pitches total on Friday night, and the top 12 would get the chance to form teams and work on their project during the weekend. Each participant was given three stickers they could use to vote for their favorite projects. You could use your stickers however you wanted, including using all three to vote for yourself. After a tense 30 minute voting period the results came in, our idea was in!

After forming our six person team on Friday after the pitches, everyone came in on Saturday morning ready to get down to business. About half our team were “hustlers” who ventured out into the rain to meet with potential customers at the Farmers' Market and worked their connections with local chefs and restauranteurs. Our goal for the weekend was to successfully connect a chef with a local farm that he hadn't worked with before and to build an initial prototype of the web app we would use to scale this process.

We ended up purchasing some Romanesco broccoli from Winter Green Farm and selling it to the very accomodating chef Rich Meyer at Higgins Restaurant in Portland.

Sunday night we had five minutes to pitch our more formalized idea to the panel of judges. After having seen how well most of the other teams had been progressing over the weekend, I really had no idea what the results would be. But when the final verdict came in, our team was awarded third place! I was incredibly proud of how hard everyone worked. And not just on our team but it seemed like everyone that participated really put everything they had into the weekend and the result was a great experience for everyone.

Thanks to all the participants (especially my teammates!), organizers, sponsors, mentors, and judges who helped make the weekend such an excellent event.

(Read more about the Fall 2012 Portland Startup Weekend on Silicon Florist.)

Finally some details about the upcoming Surface Pro tablets from Microsoft. These are the ones that feature Intel processors and will run any Windows 8 compatible applications, not just the Windows RT apps.

So, $900, without the innovative keyboard cover, and battery life no better than a laptop? I guess I don't get it, who is in the market for this device?

It seems like the end game here is Apple buying a foundry (or at least its own fabrication facility).