Hello from Lisbon where the temperature is 84 degrees/29 degrees Celsius and sunny. The weekend was one of those "catch up" weekends flying back from London Gatwick to here, finding the apartment A/C was off but getting it to work as the breaker had blown, and having to contact the owner vs. calling the front desk is an example of the difference between AirBnB and a hotel.

The net result was the same. It was fixed, but that's why planning where you stay when using AirBnB is so important, and establishing up front, a dialogue with the property owner and their on the ground contacts are so essential. In my case, it's the owner's mother, a very together, poised woman, who cares. Also being in a security/concierge building, where the staff are super friendly and attentive, proving doing your homework matters as the desire was to be able to have all the comforts of home, while being a stranger in a strange land.

Sunday was lots of catching up on my reading and writing for work. One of my new way's of staying current on news related to our client base is to incorporate RSS feeds into Slack. I pipe in the sites feeds as appropriate to each agency client, and then can decide what needs to be shared outside of the team working on that piece of business. 

Once that was done, I explored more of Lisbon by wandering through some of the more colorful neighborhoods of the city, in this case a walk through the Chiado on my way to dinner..

The summer news slowdown is in full force and you cant tell by the amount of feature content that's in today's news. One story that I felt compelled to share was about compensation and the questions today's graduates are asking about it. If you're an HR person, your life is going to change as stock options are starting to be looked at as employee benefits with questions being asked that were previously more recruiter level, then HR level oriented.

Employees Wise Up

This week, a Bay Area founder was taken aback when an engineer being recruited by his startup asked for both its cap table and information regarding the liquidation preferences of its venture backers. The candidate presumably "worked somewhere where he discovered that these things matter," says the founder, who asked not to be named in this story.

Balance is something we all want in our life. Working from a different country, in a different time zone over a sustained period versus a few short weeks has taught me a lot more about my own work habits, traits and efforts. In reading the post from Upfront Ventures Mark Suster, I realized just how much I can relate to his life, and how apropos it really was. His blog is a great read and one worth keeping on your short list.

How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance? | Bothsides of the Table

I noticed this post today from Ezra Galston titled " Dear Brad, Fred & Mark: How The Hell Do You Do It? " The premise is that either I have some magical solutions that allow me to produce a lot of content or I'm super human.

The succession planning at Cisco is now almost through the top level changes,  and John Chambers is now the Chairman on a farewell tour, but he's clearly leaving a mark on the company and setting things up for the next ten years.

Cisco's John Chambers on two decades as chief: 'You have to let go'

Speaking to The Telegraph in his last interview before relinquishing his role to long-time protégé Chuck Robbins and becoming chairman, Chambers was steadfast in his assertion that ever-increasing connectivity, between both humans and machines, will be a catalyst for growth and employment over the next decade.

Our mobile phone is more than just a phone. This article paints a very good picture of what they mean to us, and more what we do with them.

My mobile: so much more than a phone

My mum came back from a party when I was little and told me about a conversation she'd had with somebody who worked for BT. "In the future, we won't phone a family," he'd said to her, to our general 1980s bafflement, all Rubik's Cubes and CND badges. "We'll call a person."

Drones are going to be big business. First in the NBC news story we can see how they will benefit society, especially with health care related activities. The second story shows how they will benefit the "amusement" economy, with Drone racing.

First FAA-Approved Drone Delivery Drops Medicine in Virginia

The first government-approved drone delivery took flight on Friday, in which an unmanned aerial vehicle successfully dropped medical supplies to a health clinic in rural southwest Virginia. Several hundred people including Gov. Terry McAuliffe came to the fairgrounds in the coal-mining region of Wise County, Virginia, to see the delivery, county officials told NBC News.

Drone racing: Teenagers are being lured away from screens and outside to fly their aircraft against each other

It seems certain that he will achieve his goal. Ask anyone in the tight-knit drone racing community and they will tell you that the teenager from Somerset is already an accomplished – some would say prodigiously gifted – aviator. Luke flies a type of aircraft known as an FPV racing drone.

Machine learning is one of those topics that are en vogue right now. And for good reason. Give a read over a cup of coffee or tea of today's item from the Financial Times.

We are data: the future of machine intelligence

I look at apps like Grindr and Tinder and see how they've rewritten sex culture – by creating a sexual landscape filled with vast amounts of incredibly graphic site-specific data – and I can't help but wonder why there isn't an app out there that rewrites political culture in the same manner.

Our next item deals with address book management, and an eerie side of it.

My Digital Cemetery

MY digital address book lists 2,743 contacts. This is not because I'm popular or extroverted; I'm neither. It's because this collection of names stretches back two decades, the oldest contacts tracing to a 1996 Palm Pilot and preserved through transfers involving more devices than I care to remember.

A phone without a SIM is where Apple and Samsung want to take you. This would mean more unlocked devices, and likely more freedom for the global worker and the global workforce. The phone and an app would be your key to more options as you travel or even while you're at home.

Apple and Samsung working on a standardized e-SIM card

If it all goes according to plan, you could soon be able to switch mobile carriers by going to the settings page on your smartphone. On Thursday The Financial Times (paywall) reported that Apple and Samsung are in "advanced talks" with telecom operators from all over the world to launch new electronic SIM cards.

Back in San Diego, I use Amazon Fresh and have since it opened up that market. Now I saw it's coming to the UK, which means it takes on the established players there who long have offered home delivery. 

Amazon Preps Fresh Grocery Delivery Launch in U.K.

Amazon's grocery delivery service is still only available in a few markets in the U.S., but the e-commerce company is already planning to launch the service outside of the country. Multiple sources tell Re/code that Amazon is prepping to launch the Amazon Fresh service in the U.K.

If you didn't know it by now, I love wine. With the help of master winemaker and friend Doug Margerum, I'm now producing wines ever other year-really when there's enough grapes to go around-and enjoy having a wine to call my own. Our favorite designer, Bobby Buchanan of San Diego's Buchanan Design, designed the Comunicano Wine Company labels, which are very non traditional in the wine world so when I saw this story, I had to share it, not only with Bobby but with everyone who likes a good bottle of wine, but hates the label.

A Winery With a Young Visual Indentity

Djurdjic Winery is a Serbian wine producer set-up in 2004. Peter Gregson's task was to create a new and memorable visual identity. Djurdjic Winery is a relatively young winery so in that context they don't have a strong heritage background which allowed the designer to create a simple design that represent the winery as new […]