Do you live in the Brain Belt?

I’ve heard it called Silicon Prarie before, but I hadn’t heard of the Brain Belt. Back when I worked in Green Bay WI, we used to call it the Silicon Tundra. They of coarse are all just made up names to talk about the tech boom that is happening in the midwest.

Just in Des Moines, we have some pretty impressive tech companies. My current employer LightEdge Solutions is head quartered here. We’re the first company to tie Microsoft’s OCS messaging system to a Broadsoft VoIP platform for hosted consumption.

Its hard to really put into words how proud of my wife I am. She has given me a gift that I can never thank her enough for, a handsome baby boy. Nolan James Patterson was born on September 18th at 9:47PM. Weighing in a 7lbs and 1oz and a whopping 20 inches long. Ok, maybe not that whopping, but still a decent height to him.

So, as a good father, I promise to raise my son to learn all the important things. Things such as:

I’ve been really bad about keeping up with various blogs lately. I mean really bad! I’m months behind on several of my favorite blogs. So it should come as no surprise that I’m just now stumbling upon this post which I wanted to chime in on.

I’m not a stranger to stating public goals to here are my two things:

1. What do you want to get better at?

I could go on about a good dozen or so things that I am pretty horrible at. But if I had to narrow down just one thing, I would pin it on its this. I need to be better at going to bed. I know, it sounds really simple doesn’t it. You’re tired, go to bed. But I’m not that guy. Typically my wife will go to bed at 9:30/10 and I’m up still until 12, 1 and this week even 2 a few times. Sometimes it is work related (the 2AMs this week), but often times it is not. Sure dabbling with a side business can do that to you, but its not my main focus. And with a wee one due any day now, I need to get a LOT better at getting my sleep in.

Recently, I have found FlipBoard for the iPad. If you haven’t seen this product, where have you been. Seriously, they’re even in Newsweek and I just saw them in an iPad ad this evening.

Here’s a demo of the app:

Pretty freaking sweet isn’t it.

And its free! Yes, FREE!

I still don’t get this. Its getting such great buzz around the web, why not charge some money for the app. I get wanting to get a bunch of people using your app and generating growth. But relying on advertisement revenue isn’t always the best plan. Why not get some of that cash in the door now.