Best of the web reads: San Francisco’s new entrepreneurial culture

Entrepreneurial culture in San Francisco – San Francisco has a history of being at the forefront of America’s cultural life. Free love, hippies, the gay rights movement all established a place for themselves in the west coast city, and from there influenced the rest of the country. In this piece for The New Yorker, Nathan Heller explores the latest group that’s making its mark – young entrepreneurs.

Designing giants – Two of the world’s leading designers, Marc Newson and Apple’s Jonathan Ive, have joined forces for a project to raise funds to help fight the HIV epidemic in Africa. Vanity Fair interviews the friends about their approaches to design and reveals they seldom talk about the shapes of objects, but more about process and materials and how they work.

Lessons in negotiation – Bill Richardson is a former US ambassador to the United Nations and has matched wits with tyrants and dictators. In this interview with Inc. he offers his tips for negotiating with difficult people, including when to use humour and when to call someone out if they’re stalling.

Finding emotion in email – Have you ever wondered how the boss was feeling when they wrote that last email you received from them? Were they angry with you or happy? Well you may not have to wonder for much longer. FastCo reveals in this article a data mining tool can measure the “emotional temperature” of emails.