1. James Blake
2. Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire
3. Bibio – Mind Bokeh
4. Wilco – The Whole Love
5. Joe Henry – Reverie
6. Washed Out – Within and Without
7. Gillian Welch – The Harrow & Harvest
8. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
9. Tom Waits – Bad as Me
10. Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band – No Time for Dreaming

I’ve always been motivated by money and stability, and usually stay in a safe situation long after I should have left. So why the radical departure from my previous self? The inspiration of innovation.

The past three years have seen technology go through a massive upheaval thanks to three transformative innovations: iOS, Cloud Computing and the “Consumerization” of IT. Each individually changed the rules of the game. Taken as a whole, this triumvirate has changed every business user’s expectations about how products should work. If something isn’t easy to use and isn’t always available, regardless of how it’s consumed, it will not survive. Your biggest competitor is likely the one that doesn’t exist yet.

This is no grand realization, but it was enough to make me think about what I want to do now and in the future. On one hand, I had a very good job at a stable company, as well as an outstanding manager who was both an incredible mentor and my outspoken advocate. But in staying with the company, my future would have been stale technology, fear of innovation and tighter golden handcuffs.

This change in our technical world has been set in motion, and I can either be a part of or watch it pass me by. Both the newspaper and music industries saw the change for years and did nothing. Look where it got them.

I learn best by doing, falling over and getting back up. So I’ve decided to go all in and start Gantry, Inc., focusing on making ExecutiveView the best product I can make. This is a very exciting time for both technology and business, and I’ve never been more motivated to be a part of it.

As I left my previous job, only a single person there thought I was making a bad decision; everyone else was extremely supportive. And it was shocking how many shared the desire to build their own companies but couldn’t, for one reason or another. So to everyone out there who does not have the courage to go his/her own way, take advice from Steve Jobs, a man who always follows his passions:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

But commitment, I understand. Doing really hard challenging things, I understand. Trying to let go of my ego enough to focus my energies and attentions and ambitions on someone other than myself, I’m starting to understand.

Every demo BlackBerry gives usually goes something like this:

1. Launch Movie, play it
2. Launch eBook Store
3. Launch Calculator
4. Launch Web Browser
5. Switch between the applications to show that they are still running

Without fail, they say something along the lines of “this is true multitasking, we aren’t just freezing the applications in the background.” This, of course, differentiates the Playbook from iOS devices since Apple’s implementation of multitasking will freeze all background applications (save for a few functions such as GPS, music, incoming voip calls, etc).

So the PlayBook user can have a calculator and web browser actively running in the background while they buy a book? This offers nothing more than strain on resources, specifically the battery.

Any company who thinks it can innovate the tablet space by replicating a PC experience has already failed. Microsoft tried this for almost a decade and failed miserably. BlackBerry is on course to repeat history.

1. The New Pornographers – Together
2. Beach House – Teen Dream
3. Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid
4. Vampire Weekend – Contra
5. She & Him – Volume Two
6. Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
7. Hot Chip – One Life Stand
8. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the Soul
9. The Divine Comedy – Baing Goes the Knighthood
10. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening

The following five also made the list, but were made before 2010:

1. Passion Pit – Manners
2. Mayer Hawthorne – A Strange Arrangement
3. Theophilus London – Jam!
4. Lee Fields & The Expressions – My World
5. Menahan Street Band – Make the Road by Walking