September 2009
30 posts
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“Does the organization understand that ‘everything’ is not an option?”
– Seth Godin, Things to ask before you redo your website
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Huts used to defeat Nazis rescued by £4m grant →
“Bletchley Park, the wartime intelligence centre, has achieved a breakthrough which could mean that its historic wooden huts are saved from going to rot.”
See Bletchley Park Faces a Bleak Future from May.
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“As near as I can tell, consumer-facing businesses these days virtually never...”
– Kevin Drum, Why So Serious?
The corollary: good customer service and good customer experience become ways for a business to distinguish itself from the competition.
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“…small-print legal confusion is used as a tool to extract money from customers,...”
– User-friendliness and fascism
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“I’ve seen a lot of hard working entrepreneurs fail, and I’ve come to...”
– Caterina Fake, Working hard is overrated [via Naveen Selvadurai on del.iciou.us]
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“…too many organizations are making their decisions — their policies about talent...”
– Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation, at 11:42 in the 18:36 video [via Reddit]
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“Today ‘public’ means ‘online.’ …Shielding hearings form the public eye reduces...”
– Carl Malamud, “By the People…” (19 min video) [via O’Reilly Radar]
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“I view higher (and lower) education as teaching people to be more autistic in...”
– Tyler Cowan, Autism as Academic Paradigm
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“Services like Twitter, Foursquare, and Outside.in are changing the way I use the...”
– Fred Wilson, Urban Architects [via Steven Johnson]
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“The failure of newspapers is not a failure of imagination or foresight nor is it...”
– Joshua-Michéle Ross, Stop Giving the Newspapers Your Advice — They Don’t Need It
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“When you start developing on the web, your default is to be smart, to interact...”
– Seth Godin, The end of dumb software
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“Wal-Mart cannot thrive in a nation where prosperity is broadly shared, and it...”
– Harold Meyerson, In Wal-Mart’s Image
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“Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs...”
– Michael Pollan, Big Food vs. Big Insurance, who goes on to describe how this situation may well change due to health care reform
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“Government information is a form of infrastructure, no less important to our...”
– Carl Malamud, “By the People…” (19 min video) [via O’Reilly Radar]
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“We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or...”
– Dan Gillmor, Eleven Things I’d Do If I Ran a News Organization [via Boing Boing]
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“IT pros always and without fail, quietly self-organize around those who make the...”
– Jeff Ello, The unspoken truth about managing geeks [via rit and Matt on Facebook]
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“You’ve got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate...”
– Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation, at 4:23 in the 18:36 video [via Reddit]
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“Work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by...”
– Mark Bowden, The Story Behind the Story
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“If you’re sufficiently determined to achieve great things, this will...”
– Paul Graham, in The Anatomy of Determination [via Milosz’s shared items]
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“…the presence of complexity is very strongly correlated with the presence of...”
– Colin Percival, Complexity is insecurity [via Daring Fireball]
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“The most under-appreciated skill in the modern world is someone who can explain...”
– Scott Berkun, What I learned at FOO Camp ’09
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“The point is to so flood the political discourse with stupidity, that it lowers...”
– MetaFilter commenter VigingSword, DeathPanels.org: The Disturbing Details Behind Health Care Reform!!1!! [via]
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The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents →
Timothy B. Lee: “We use programming languages to express mathematical concepts in much the same way that authors use the English language to express other types of ideas. Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of patents on software has made the development and use of software legally hazardous.”
Thanks to this article for informing me about the upcoming Bilski v. Doll case, which...
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“The long-running tech-industry war between engineers and marketers has been...”
– Gary Wolf, Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess
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“Hate is easy. Destroying things takes much less work than making them, always...”
– Scott Berkun, Hating vs. Loving: a personal note