Hijacking the WiFi at your old university may make you feel smug at having blagged yourself some free workspace, but reality has to kick in sooner or later... 

Seriously - wtf? Do a twitter search right now for DanielBru and take a look at this humdinger of an affair. Daniel is a 17 year old Entrepreneur in the Valley who seems to run his own successful conference, Teens in Tech, and until recently was an intern at TechCrunch. Daniel, however, has just been ousted for soliciting a Macbook from one or more Startups looking for a favourable review on TC.

I think this was an idiotic thing to do from Daniel's point of view - TechCrunch's reputation is based on the integrity of its news and support for what is 'right' in Startup Land, and for an intern to abuse their link in such an organisation is pretty nasty. This particular case could be seen as bribery too.

But I am totally perplexed by how this situation is being massaged out of proportion. THIS IS A 17 YEAR OLD KID PEOPLE. Young. People. Make. Mistakes. Old people too.

Daniel's mistake is extremely serious, and now very public, but he should not deserve the hounding he is getting on Twitter at the moment from some individuals who are demanding he makes an extra-grovelling apology above and beyond this statement on his blog. He fucked up, and a culture of being able to fuck up, dust yourself off and start again is one of the things I'm envious of America for. He has been stripped of his internship and had all his content deleted. If his actions were illegal, I am sure he will be dealt with by the law. He has publicly said sorry on his blog. For a few entrepreneurs to carry on baying for some kind of  'Tech Justice' above that shows a lack of perspective.

I find it all a bit bonkers really.

If you fancy rocking some funky social media icons like I have to the right of my blog, you can download a full pack of icons for free from Inspired Mag, here. They were designed by Barcelona-based illustrator Xavier Gallego, who is so full of awesomeness that he went and founded a whole company out of these little pieces of art dubbed The Eyesores.

He has a Facebook app with over 152,000 active monthly users, which lets people send Eyesores to each other as virtual gifts. He doesn't know it yet but I'm going to a video interview with him when I go over to Barcelona in a month, so stay tuned for more on him and his creations!

A quick update on my earlier attempt to grow and consume some wheatgrass...

Today I got impatient and decided it was grinding day. Wheatgrass must be ground gently by hand to make sure it retains all its grassy goodness, and if you buy it in a juice bar, you'll notice their grinders are hand operated. So pure are the vitamins in a shot of wheatgrass, that subjecting them to a bashing in an electric grinder would be sacrilege. Apparently.

So, here's what we've got...

1. A Bunch of Wheatgrass, grown for just over 2 weeks (minus a few trimmings from my confused mother who thought I was growing a herb garden)

2. My friend's grinder

After cutting the grass and giving it a whirl in the grinder, lo and behold....

3. 6 drops of dark green juice

It tasted good : sweet, grassy, vitamin-y...

Verdict?  Worth it if you're bored and your kitchen is larger than 1 Acre.

And don't believe that stuff about it curing your gray hairs.

 

Starting a new business is tough, but with the advice and wisdom of those who have been through the process already, us young'uns can hopefully get better and more efficient at changing the world through our innovation. On top of founding my own tech startup, I am currently lending some brainpower and time to a couple of other bootstrapped startups who are looking to launch some great initiatives and products over the coming months. 

If you have 2 seconds, and in the past have successfully launched something, we'd love to know your response to the following question...

http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/NzUzOTEzMzA2

 

Thanks for answering, I'll do a follow up post if the feedback is interesting...

Twitter seems to be doing something really cool that will make it even more accessible. With most of its users based in the US, it's no wonder that English is the semi-official language of the Twittersphere. But with usage increasing right around the globe, how do you get around those pesky language barriers? Crowd source translation of course. I've recently noticed on one or two of my Spanish friends' profiles that they have a Translator badge - it turns out that Twitter is inviting users to translate their tweets using some specially developed tools, so they can enjoy Twitter in their local language.

LINK:  http://twitter.com/translate