My wife got me a Chris Schlesinger cooking class, and it was the only cooking class I'd ever taken. And in 20 minutes I learned more about cooking than I think I've learned before or since. Because Chris basically taught me how to think about what you were trying to do and basically said, A) You should taste the food as you go, which a surprisingly small number of people do; and B) he said salt and olive oil actually are cheating and they’re secret weapons and they always work.

Nisus, the makers of my favorite word processor. An organization with a single-minded focus on making something that works, keeping a promise to users, not investors.

Nonlinear lets you import a PDF or PPT file and then jump around. It's not for building slides, it's for navigating them, and even includes a way to drive an external monitor in a clever way.

Scott Adams writes about the cyborg tool that is coming momentarily, a device that will remember names, find connections, bring all sorts of external data to us the moment we meet someone. "Oh, Bob, sure, that's the guy who's friends with Tracy… and Tim just tweeted about him a few minutes ago."