The Local:

German Economy Minister Philipp Rösler appealed to top US university students this week to consider Germany as the place to start their IT careers and called for tech entrepreneurs to be offered dual citizenship.

Sign me up.

I’m going through the process right now and I am weighting my options.

Amazon, since first opening their offices in Seattle, has never truly been a part of this city. No corporate sponsorships or endorsements of cultural events or real participation in community life.

Now they are proposing parks for their employees inside “snow globes”. You want a campus in the middle of the city, but you are not participating, or letting anyone else participate in what you are building.

Fits to their overall philosophy, they’ve always been in their own world. I hope the city doesn’t go out of their way to support this crazy idea.

And your belly. Salami by Olympic Provisions. Fantastically delicious. Don’t mind me while I am indulging.

Emmett O’Connell:

It seems to me when we talk about the Northwest (Cascaida) we talk about mountains, rain, salmon and coffee. But, we imply these are small, seemingly insignificant differences from the rest of North America. What I want to talk about is that we’re a fundamentally different, the same way Ludlow, Massachusetts is different than Greenwood, South Carolina.

This is our home. The sense of our place. ‘Terroir’.

Can’t wait for the rest of those posts.

In Stuttgart, Germany airport restaurant food has been elevated and are getting Michelin stars. This is not the work of some hipster foodies who love airplanes and open a restaurant in an airport. These are restaurants, run by a big Foodservice conglomerate. Aramark, did you hear that?

This poses the question how the “law of diminishing returns” could be bend, if you truly instill care at every level of the your organization?

Fascinating.

FOUND is a curated collection of photography from the National Geographic archives. In honor of our 125th anniversary, we are showcasing photographs that reveal cultures and moments of the past. Many of these photos have never been published and are rarely seen by the public.

Brilliant time capsule.

Square is introducing cash by email. Brilliant idea that bypasses Paypal, Credit and Debit cards.

Like it a lot.

Yahoo! buys Tumblr, releases a monstrous Flickr update and all that with a build-in nursery for the CEO’s baby.

Man, someone had to make that comment, right?

But seriously, looks like they are on a roll over there… great to see that the once greats, that have fallen can get a second chance if they pull themselves up and are willing to fight.

Sam Baker for The Hill:

Early filings show that insurers in some states are planning to lower their premiums after President Obama’s healthcare law takes effect, Democrats noted on Monday.

…

Customers in Washington could see a price drop of 21 percent for the cheapest policy, according to the Democratic summary of state rate filings.

For graphic nerds.

(Via swiss-miss)

Podlexing, is a podcast advertising network from Lex Friedman. It does what it says: Sells ad space on some of our favorite podcasts.

Well done.

Gets its own website. Nicely done.

Straight out of an episode of Portlandia.

Amanda Ghassaei, 24, from San Francisco has created the world’s first laser-cut wooden records using songs from Radiohead and Joy Division. 

Can you imagine what Mumford and Sons would sound like on wooden records?

My beard is growing as I type this.

‘the ledge’, by wavefort. NOT made in Europe, but in Portland, Oregon. Of course.

Google CEO Larry Page:

“Every story I read about Google is ‘us vs some other company’ or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building Great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress. Most important things are not zero sum, there is a lot of opportunity out there.”

Or as my wife’s grandpa used to say: “This is the tiniest of violins and it’s only playing for you…”

Suggesting speed limits for the autobahn is as politically toxic in Germany as gun control is in America. But it’s time to hit the brakes on the country’s reckless driving culture, comments The Local’s Ben Knight.

Couldn’t agree more. I don’t love driving on American Freeways, but I hated driving on the German Autobahn. Hardly ever a long trip without the encounter of a serious, often fatal accident.

Facebook Home is not doing well, and it’s because it’s designers are all using iPhones.

Must be another huge problem for Apple. Oh wait?

A Seattle man dribbling a soccer ball from Seattle to Brazil for charity died this morning after he was struck by a car in Lincoln City.

How fast the tables are turning. A few weeks ago everyone was raving about the beautiful design elements of Facebook Home. Now we’re all tossing it out to the trash, because no one is buying it.

All that great design talent at Facebook might just be polishing a turd. They are “just” building an app platform after all.

Square introduces the “Stand” for the iPad register. The next phase to replace the retail Point of Sale system with an iPad and a Square register. Pretty brilliant.

I wish tools like this would’ve been out there in 2007 when I opened my retail shop.

The gamification of banking?

These kinds of monetary systems are designed to get customers to lock in a bunch of cash they can’t later get back out (no refunds or exchanges in this program, of course), and they’re baited with “discounts” to get people to dump large amounts of cash into the ether.

Horrible idea by Amazon.

There we go again.

Cheap shot.

Some great thoughts on one of the last shows on TV I still like to watch: Shark Tank.

Opening sequence of 007′s Casino Royale completely done in LEGO.

Incredible.

Today seems to be Youtube day… so many awesome videos.

When old people buy new technology… oh my. And that guy wanted to become the President.

He recorded a revised version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity on board the International Space Station.

Epic, in every sense of the word.

Like the new kit. Awesome red.

Which one displays more accurate the situation? Time’s real world equivalent of link-bait or Weird Owl Number One’s very popular mashup?

Hamish McKenzie takes a look at how the Lord of the Rings has helped New Zealand’s tech industry.