“A players hire A players,” he said. “B players hire C players. Do you get it?”

[From Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: How to Hire Insanely Great Employees]

For its part, while acknowledging that one of its phones was indeed the culprit, LG reportedly claimed that dying due to such an accident was “virtually impossible.” [From Korean man killed by exploding cellphone - Engadget]

For what it is worth, I did some freelance work a few years ago for WebView. One of their clients was inspecting polymer materials used in battery construction. They were very aware of the consequences of shipping pinholed product.

A new site, walkscore.com, helps calculate how walkable an address is.

The site generates a WalkScore(tm) by measuring distances to walkable locations near the address and presents the results as a google map mashup. Of course, there are limitations such as safety, pedestrian friendly design, freeway intersections, weather, etc.

The site is focused on helping real estate brokers and buyers evaluate the walkability of their property. Real estate websites can generate a widget to embed on their pages.

However, this service combined with satellite imagery is bound to give walk-minded travelers a good idea of what ground transportation they may need (or not) at a destination.

The WalkScore may also have some usefulness as an inverse suburban sprawl score. Low scores are probably not desirable for people who want to walk for exercise or community services.

Here are scores from local downtown areas:

Carrboro – 89

Raleigh Moore Square – 89

Cary Downtown – 82

Apex Downtown – 65

Holly Springs – 38

It’s pretty good advice for two reasons. We benefit from the constant exercise of pushing the boundaries of our personal space. Meeting new people and sharing experiences is like many other skills; the more practice you get, the easier it becomes.

Another is that as technologists and entrepreneurs, we should always be on the look out for pain points. Unfortunately, nails are the only problem gleaned from a group of people all holding hammers. So expand your contacts and increase your understanding of other peoples’ daily grind. It’s likely that early NoonHat adopters will be techies, but over time, hopefully the word will get out.

NoonHat encourages you to bring a friend which sounds like a perfect idea if one-on-one discussion with someone you just met makes you squeamish.

Unfortunately, no one was available for my first attempt. I’ll keep at it by choosing every other Thursday as my NoonHat day and try again the first week of September. If your NoonHat shadow falls across Raleigh or Durham, then let’s do lunch.

Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs)

A quiet and underrated master of “hard science” fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.