December 2008
43 posts
“is thinking how our best work is done when resources (time, materials, etc) are...”
–
Twitter / johnmaeda (via wreckandsalvage)
“Embrace constraints.”
(via whitneymcn)
An investor in Tipjoy, Harry Sleeper, like the short saying “Constraints are Liberating” It’s certainly true, but runs into problems at the extremes.
(via giantrobotlasers)
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2009 Resolutions for the New Year
Focus I produced quite a bit stuff and exerted a lot of creative energy last year, but my energies were scattered across all sorts of experiments—Philadelphia Sheriff Sales, quickerly, tinydb, Spreadmob, Swipestats, Convomonitor, Layer Six Labs, blogging, tweeting, and reading. Next year, I want to focus this sort of energy on one or two big ideas. Delete the adjectives I can’t believe...
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Redirecting Ad Dollars
Agreed that social media is a low cost alternative to CPM/CPC advertising. Everyone—person,company,restaurant—should be blogging / commenting / twittering / youtubing / getting involved in the public conversation. In addition to getting your name in front of eyeballs, I’m sure you’ll learn something from the conversation as well—remember, conversations are two sided,...
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Wes Montgomery - “Besame Mucho” via gbattle
Love...
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“I am excited about the power of blog commenting to bring ‘intellectual...”
– Fred Wilson http://bit.ly/5h3L
Me too! I have lamented easy access to professors and fellow students often since leaving University, but participating more discussions on other blogs, writing more on my own blog, and encouraging my friends to publish their thoughts has definitely helped fill this...
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“The old, often legitimate accusation against labels was that they sold entire...”
–
Jon Pareles, NY Times, writing about the increasing use of pop songs to pitch products, Songs From The Heart of a Marketing Plan (via newspeedwayboogie)
This article was a great find, Andy. Truth: “Musicians have to eat and want to be heard”
Another great quote:
there’s no going...
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Amazon.com 2008 Holiday Facts →
msg:
Amazon.com 2008 Holiday Facts
Amazon.com sold enough “Breaking Dawn” books that stacked end to end they would reach the summit of Mt. Everest eight times.
During the period from Nov. 15 - Dec. 10, Amazon sold one copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 every 2.5 minutes.
The weight of all GPS devices sold from Black Friday through December equals the combined weight of 151 Mini...
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“Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own...”
– Op-Ed Columnist - Time to Reboot America - NYTimes.com (via davemorin)
Good read. I could not agree with this sentiment more:
To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering....
newspeedwayboogie:
Bruce Springsteen - Santa...
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“Engage me at a concert; sing like Stevie Wonder; make me move at your concert -...”
– Iqram, in the comments on http://blog.kortina.net/post/66592901/lament-for-the-loss-of-the-album-cold-war-kids
Agreed, and this doesn’t seem to scale for the performer in quite the same way as selling $18 albums in Best Buy does…
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Lament for the Loss of the Album
Cold War Kids -...
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Customer Service Opportunities (Verizon Fail)
My friend Iqram had a horrible customer service experience with Verizon recently. He doesn’t have a blog, but wanted to share his experience so he asked me to re-post some of his exchange with Verizon here. It’s a shame American companies can’t do a better job of customer service. I have always thought customer service is as an industry where we should be on top (at least when...
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“I’ve been thinking a great slogan for the double meaning is “Twitter...”
– @tipjoy
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Bela Fleck and the Flecktones Live at...
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StockTwits Gets Stocked →
Good shoutout to Convomonitor today on the BW blog. Here are links to the “Business Channel” on Convomonitor (because you can link to this sort of thing):
Stream view: http://bit.ly/3oA3
Grid view: http://bit.ly/vXh8
It’s a shame this sort of thing is not built into Twitter by default, because I find the noise to signal ratio on Twitter getting really high, and I rarely read...
The Internet is Like Being in College--Easy Access...
I ate quinoa for the first time recently (good stuff, by the way). As I was eating it, I thought ot myself, “I wonder what my most trusted nutrition blogger, http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com , thinks about quinoa.”
Since blogs are open forums, I decided to just ask. I got a fantastic response from this smart, niche community. The internet is great. Here’s the post I...
1337
This was not a security hole in Windows or a software bug in a Cisco router. This would allow him to reassign any Web address, reroute anyone’s email, take over banking sites, or simply scramble the entire global system. The question was: Should he try it?
…
“The first thing I want to say to you,” Vixie told Kaminsky, trying to contain the flood of feeling, “is...
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Firefox add-on allows you to download everything...
yvynyl:
wtfguyssrsly:
via adw:
via pirates-of-the-amazon.com
“The Firefox add-on “Pirates of the Amazon” inserts a “download 4 free” button on Amazon, which links to corresponding Piratebay BitTorrents. The add-on lowers the technical barrier to enable anyone to choose between “add to shopping cart” or “download 4 free”. Are you a pirate?”
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Tiny Twitter Hacks from @terrycojones
This guy is a command line wizard:
http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2008/10/31/twitters-amazing-stickiness-with-a-caveat/ http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2008/10/13/digging-into-twitter-following/ http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2008/10/13/how-many-users-does-twitter-have/ http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2007/11/24/hacking-twitter-on-jetblue/...
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What Would You do with a Stable of MBA's
via Iqram:
This is why I love Penn.
Fwd: …
We have a stable of Wharton undergrads and MBA’s that work on consulting projects for companies—doing research to help understand markets, helping optimize operations, innovating on the marketing plan, understanding costs and profits, organizing an execution plan—really anything that is helpful to a company.
…
“stable of...
3 tags
Angelique Kidjo - Ae Ae
Djin Djin is an amazing...
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Tumblr SEO, Part 3
I was searching this evening for other people talking about Tumblr SEO, and I didn’t find much, but this tip from Joe Lazarus reminded me of an important point that was implicit in my previous post on Tumblr SEO, but I probably should have been explicit about.
> Tumblr SEO Traffic Tip
joelaz:
The other day when I was futzing with my Tumblr theme, I made a change to the way my page...
Relative search
johnborthwick:
[Google Search Wiki] is inconsistent with what I want from a Google search.
I have become accustomed to Google representing a canonical point of view.
Methinks Google is afraid of Facebook Search.
“Fear is finding fault with the future.”
– Ajahn Brahm, via Tiny Buddha, http://bit.ly/Rlv1
“Whereas chat is fundamentally about people with information tacked on, the Web...”
– Aza Raskin (via Christopher Blizzard). Yup. We call it the “social web” (via betaworks)
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bit.ly Serves a Basic Human Psychological Need
From a corporate/marketing perspective, the value of bit.ly is pretty clear—you get a lightweight way to track campaign efficacy in real time. Last night I was thinking about bit.ly from a consumer’s point of view and what value bit.ly provides there. The last wave of web companies facilitated a basic human need for communication—sites like Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube,...
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Next-generation businesses are built on human,...
Friends, read this post from Umair Haque at HBS: http://bit.ly/16KiP
Finance to me always seemed a lot like being a professional poker player—you work hard, do lots of math, can make lots of money—but you don’t really create any value. (Of course there are exceptions, but in general, compared to farmers or engineers or teachers, I just don’t think bankers produce as much...
Wrote Learning is not Essential
Jenny just sent me a link to http://bit.ly/1355S - “Learning by heart is ‘pointless for Google generation’”
I could not agree more. Aristotle said man’s essence was to think. What separates us from other animals is our superb talents for creativity and problem solving. For Aristotle, happiness is doing what you are designed to do. So if ‘outsourcing’...
On financing, via InformationArbitrage
My favorite quote today was:
Everything not strategic is a commodity and can be purchased from a partner company.
—John B
Everything not strategic is a commodity, I like that.
zeem:
Venture Capital: I attended an interesting brownbag today with my pals at betaworks. A big part of the discussion was around funding in today’s hostile environment. Here are a few of the tidbits that came...
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“I DON’T believe that Twitter is Journalism. You can’t replace the freaking New...”
– Howard Lindzon. Yes (via betaworks)
Someone told me the all important messages throughout history were 140 characters or less, “Alea iacta est,” for example. I think this is probably true.
The context, commentary, and entertainment surrounding the message are what is valuable in the...
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Lessin on Encryption
˙ʇı ǝʌɐɥ noʎ ǝɹǝɥʇ uǝɥʇ - ʇuǝɯʇsǝʌuı ǝɥʇ ɥʇɹoʍ ƃolq ʎɯ puıɟ noʎ ɟı ‘ʇxǝʇuoɔ ɔılqnd ʎlǝʌıʇɐlǝɹ ɐ uı ǝƃɐssǝɯ ǝʇɐʌıɹd ɐ pǝʇʇıɯsuɐɹʇ ʎllnɟssǝɔɔns ǝʌɐɥ ı uǝɥʇ ǝlqɐnlɐʌ uɐɥʇ ssǝl ƃolq ʎɯ puıɟ ʎllɐɹǝuǝƃ noʎ ɟı ˙ʇuıod sıɥʇ oʇ ǝƃɐssǝɯ ʎɯ pǝʇdʎɹɔǝp ǝʌɐɥ ʇou llıʍ ɹo llıʍ ɹǝɥʇıǝ noʎ ‘ʇou ɹo ǝlqɐnlɐʌ sı ƃolq ʎɯ ʞuıɥʇ noʎ ɹǝɥʇǝɥʍ ɟo uoıʇɐnlɐʌǝ ǝʇɐʌıɹd ɹnoʎ uo pǝsɐq ‘os ˙puǝ uɐ oʇ suɐǝɯ ɐ...