1. How a small group can start a trend, create a tipping point and influence greater adoption. Where can we find these early adopters, how can we tell what is cool? Malcolm Gladwell has written a short essay more than 10 years ago on the art of the Coolhunt. If you have  read Tipping Point, you’ll recognise the reference to the rise of Hush Puppies. Love the stories about basketball sneakers and AI!

2. What would it be like to work for Google? Don Dodge discusses what it has been like working for the search giant for the last 6 months, and how it compares to another giant which everyone wanted to work at in the 80′s – Microsoft.

3. Speaking of Googlers, check out the 22michaels blog on careers and risk taking. Ex-Googlers Michael talks about the greatest career risk – not following your passion and dreams. Follow their rollercoaster ride!

4. I’ve been reading this Fred Wilson’s  blog for the last few months, and its quite insightful. He became quite well known as an investor in twitter, foursquare and tumblr. Here he discusses why he doesn’t like share buybacks – an subtle signal that a company is not innovating and has nothing better to do with the money.

5.  The pay for news content model is getting hammered left, right and centre. Clay Shirky, respected academic blogs about why the iTunes model won’t work for news. I’ll give you the short version: each news article is a unique item which consumers only read once. Unlike music or movies where consumers will play or view them multiple times, and there is a longtail back catalogue. Of course, Steve Jobs will tell you otherwise.

6. QANTAS plane boarding passes redesigned. Blogger Jordan Sim discusses how we can improve the user experience of boarding passes based on how users read information (left to right) and ordering the information in a logical order. Size is also an interesting point.

7. Keeping with the travel theme, want to travel to India? I’ve been living vicariously through my friend Pace J Miller who went to Hyderabad, India. I thought the traffic in Vietnam and Shanghai was bad. Here it goes to another level! India, I will go see you one day.

8. Lastly, there is no better place for hip hop music than Kevin Nottingham. Here, you can get a free download of the Just Wright movie mixtape Vol 3. Check this blog for free mixtapes, albums and singles on the regular!!

I’m out like crossing the road in India,

Matthew Ho.