October Must-Haves

Each month I’m going to provide a list of resources (podcasts, talks, blog posts, books, music etc.) that I consider to be must-haves. There’s no doubt that you’ll see recurring themes or resources throughout these posts. I publish my Must-Haves on the closest Tuesday or Friday to the 15th of every month.

Check out September, August, July, June and May’s list if you’re just joining the party.

Here’s my list of October 2016 Must-Haves:

  • Clarifai Machine Learning API –   I’ve been tracking this company for a while now, and last week they announced the ability to customize the training for your own visual search model. The significance of their announcement is that the world of AI and machine learning continues to get more accessible and easy to consume. Companies like Clarifai are leading the way. If you use image search in your product at all, this is worth a test run / prototype project with your team.
  • Quantopian – This is a new company that lets you write your own stock trading algorithms. You author your algos right in the browser and then hook them up to trading events. This is really similar to a product I built at Bandwidth Labs a few years back called SwitchCoder, which allowed you to hook up your own custom code to calls and SMS messages. Obviously not for the faint of heart when you’re talking about money, but I love that we’re starting to see all of these products come out that put more control in the hands of the user rather than institutions. As I said a while back, software creation is getting easier and easier.
  • Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – I’ve read through (or more accurately listened through) this book probably 3 times in the last six weeks. This, along with the book below, Necessary Endings, have been a lethal 1-2 punch to kick my butt on getting focused.
  • Necessary Endings – This book will go into my permanent reading list, a book I pick up probably once a year and re-read. Excellent, excellent read on how to properly and quickly end things that are not contributing to your forward movement.
  • Shoe Dog by Phil Knight – Easily one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. The early stories of Nike, and how many times they were at the brink of extinction, are great reading.
  • Revisionist History Podcast with Malcolm Gladwell – I’m only a few episodes in to this podcast and I’m hooked. Available wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. My favorite so far is Generous Orthodoxy. And, the website for the show is really interesting visually.
  • Stranger Things – Great new show on Netflix. Lots of 80’s music and culture done really well, and the story line is really clever.
  • Cee Lo Green and Daryl Hall – Live from Daryl’s House. For my money Daryl Hall has one of the best voices, ever. My favorite from the show is One on One. Cee Lo’s classic F**k You is another great one (NSFW version). Bonus song with Elle King. And Slide from Goo Goo Dolls. And 3 a.m. with Rob Thomas. You get the idea.

That’s it for this month. See you next month for the Thanksgiving edition of Must-Haves.