11. Five Myths You’ll Hear This Week at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
Luke Timmerman wrote this as he was gearing up to attend the giant meeting for healthcare, pharmaceutical, and biotech executives held in San Francisco each January by JP Morgan. Among the regular refrains that Luke was trying to deflate: “The biotech IPO market will pick up,” and “the FDA is going to be more supportive of innovation.”
12. Can Anyone Catch Khan Academy? The Fate of the U in the YouTube Era
Universities are scrambling to put their lectures and other content online. In this column, I asked whether they’ll be able to compete in a world where there’s a flood of compelling (and mostly free) educational video content from startups like Khan Academy, Coursera, Dabble, Skillshare, Udemy, and Udacity.
13. In Google’s Moon Race, Teams Face a Reckoning
There’s a race underway to claim Google’s $20 million prize for the first private team that can land a robot rover on the Moon, cover 500 meters of terrain, and send back high-definition video and photos. This piece asked whether any of the teams have a realistic shot at winning the prize before the Dec. 31, 2015 deadline, and why Google is supporting the competition in the first place.
14. Punching the ‘Clear Your Head’ Button: The Xconomy Q&A with David Allen
This interview with personal-productivity guru David Allen focuses on his project with Seattle-based Intentional Software to turn his “Getting Things Done” methodology into an app.
15. Twitter’s iPad App Update Provokes a Backlash
Twitter has come in for a lot of criticism this year, but one of its dumbest moves, to my mind, was replacing its awesome old Loren Bricther-designed iPad app with the current version, which is generic and boring. Many people around the interwebs agreed with me.
16. Madefire’s Comics Bring a New Visual Grammar to the iPad
Madefire’s elaborate comics, with their layered animation, sound, and music, are setting a new standard for digital storytelling.
17. Broken iPhone? Call iCracked, the Aspiring AAA of Smartphones
Nearly a third of all iPhone owners damage their phones within the first year after purchasing them. iCracked can help: it has assembled a global network of local repair technicians, and if there isn’t one nearby, they’ll mail you a DIY repair kit.
18. The Most Interesting Y Combinator Winter 2012 Startups
There are too many startups going through the Y Combinator “startup school” these days for journalists to cover them all on Demo Day. In this article I focused on just seven from the Winter 2012 class, including Ark, Flutter, 42Floors, iCracked, MatterPort, 99Dresses, and Sonalight.
19. Why WebMD is History: The Next Generation of Web-Based Medicine
This was a guest commentary from Skip Fleshman of Asset Management about the growing consumer demand for personalized, trustworthy healthcare information. It was our most-viewed guest op-ed essay of the year.
20. Bay Area Coworking Spaces: The Xconomy Guide
This story was actually published in February 2011, but it continued to be extremely popular this year as startups competed to find office space around San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
