"In the meantime, identify the thing you know better than anybody else, and start working it. Write blog posts, preferably on a service where others can find and share your work, like Tumblr. Write for other sites, Rubel says, and point to your own blog address, and think beyond words--use graphics and video when possible. In other words, create a small but smart brand around yourself and the thing you want to do, and you’ll stand out from those who just want to be hired for a job, any job."
How To Get A Job In America
September 30, 2011
September 21, 2011
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Elizabeth Warren
Bing Is Losing Billions--since inception.
“Luring users away from Google is a daunting task. Microsoft is competing against a verb — “I’ll go Google that” — and an entrenched consumer habit”
Bing!
Bing!
September 19, 2011
September 18, 2011
How Tumblr Created A Design Culture With No Design Team
A key tenet of Tumblr's design aesthetic is obvious from looking at its interface: Simplicity. "We really enjoy seeing a small simple page free of clutter," says Vidani. "If we can get rid of anything, we will." While other blogging platforms might hype their range of constantly growing features, Vidani says, his team does everything they can to minimalize them, or, in some cases, remove them. "We think the users are smart, and don't need things 'sold' to them," he says. "Keeping this in mind gets rid of the clutter, like labels and chatty copy."
fastcodesign
fastcodesign
September 13, 2011
Things will get bad for Microsoft
“Apple is taking over the world. Microsoft has not realized how bad things are going to get for them. They think it’s bad now, just wait,” he said, adding that “It’s always frightening when one powerful group owns all of the clients. Maybe it won’t be as frightening under Tim Cook.”
Paul Graham
Paul Graham
September 10, 2011
The Best Note-Taking App
A priest uses Evernote to compose his weekly sermon while one man uses it to keep track of his weekly sins. A veteran suffering from traumatic brain injury uses it daily to literally remember everything and is showing other veterans with similar disabilities how to do the same. A musician uses Evernote to compose songs, tracking snippets of melodies with audio recordings and jotting down lyrics and sketches as they tap him on the shoulder.
The Future of Evernote
September 5, 2011
8 Reasons Why Success Eludes You
If you’re worried what the world will think of you and what others will say about you then you’re seriously handicapping your chances of achieving success. You’ll likely take the “safe” route for all your decisions, and by safe I mean boring and with mediocre results.
You may think that taking risks will without a doubt hurt your success…but sometimes playing it safe can hurt your success much more than you think.Playing it safe and sticking to the same path as all your competition will at best produce decent results, and at worst cost you a lot of time and money. Taking a risk by trying something new may result in a waste of your resources, but it could also result in amplifying your success tenfold.
Don’t be afraid to risk humiliating yourself or wasting resources by trying something new. If you fail, people may laugh but if you succeed, people will support you, respect you and cheer you on.
8 reasons why success eludes you
Some good humor
An Indian man walks into the New York City bank and asks for the loan officer. He tells the Loan Officer that he was going to India for some business for 2 weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The Loan Officer tells him that the bank will need Some form of security for the loan.
So the Indian man hands over the keys and the documents of the new Ferrari car parked on the street in front of the bank. The loan officer consults the president of the bank, Produces all the required items and everything check out to be OK. The loan officer agrees to accept the car as a security for the loan. The bank president and the Loan Officer had a good laugh at the Indian For keeping a $750,000 Ferrari as a security and taking only $5,000 has a loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari Into the banks underground garage and parks it there.
Two weeks later the Indian returns and pays $5000 and the interest which comes to it $15.41. Seeing this, loan officer says, “Sir, we are very happy to have your business And this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you are away, we checked you out and Found out that you were a multi millionaire. What puzzled us was why would you bother to borrow $5000?”
The Indian replies "Where else in the New York City can I park my car for 2 weeks and For only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return". This is a true incident and the Indian is none other than Vijay Mallya.
Brillian idea, for those living in NYC!
original post
So the Indian man hands over the keys and the documents of the new Ferrari car parked on the street in front of the bank. The loan officer consults the president of the bank, Produces all the required items and everything check out to be OK. The loan officer agrees to accept the car as a security for the loan. The bank president and the Loan Officer had a good laugh at the Indian For keeping a $750,000 Ferrari as a security and taking only $5,000 has a loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari Into the banks underground garage and parks it there.
Two weeks later the Indian returns and pays $5000 and the interest which comes to it $15.41. Seeing this, loan officer says, “Sir, we are very happy to have your business And this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you are away, we checked you out and Found out that you were a multi millionaire. What puzzled us was why would you bother to borrow $5000?”
The Indian replies "Where else in the New York City can I park my car for 2 weeks and For only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return". This is a true incident and the Indian is none other than Vijay Mallya.
Brillian idea, for those living in NYC!
original post
September 4, 2011
"I invented nothing new.
I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work.
Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
So it is with every new thing.
Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense."
HENRY FORD
I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work.
Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
So it is with every new thing.
Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense."
HENRY FORD
Everything Is A Remix
Copy. Transform. Combine.
"..Put simply, copying is how we learn. We can't introduce anything new until we're fluent in the language of our domain--and we do that through emulation."
Before Apple, there was Xerox. Apple wasn't the first to create the mouse--they were the first to remix it. See this post:(https://plus.google.com/101467412948752406148/pos
Google wasn't the first search engine, Facebook wasn't the first social network. Everything is a remix.
This is too important not to watch.
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”
--- Mark Twain - Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880.
--- Mark Twain - Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880.
The Elusive Big Idea
We have become information narcissists, so uninterested in anything outside ourselves and our friendship circles or in any tidbit we cannot share with those friends that if a Marx or a Nietzsche were suddenly to appear, blasting his ideas, no one would pay the slightest attention, certainly not the general media, which have learned to service our narcissism
Read more
Read more
Gandhi's 7 Dangers To Human Virtue
1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Business without ethics
5. Science without humanity
6. Religion without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle
A quote from Steve
September 3, 2011
Make things
People ask me who inspires me. This question often stumps me because I have been inspired in my work by stuff that people make. I fell in love with zines and independent radio when I was an isolated teenager living in the suburbs. Then BBSs, people’s personal web sites, Usenet, Entropy8, online zines (holy crap, the old Bitch magazine site is now a porn portal! And Maxi is squatted!), blogs, Excel, online communities, Amazon, Salon, eBay, O’Reilly books, Google, Friendster, Alamut, NQPAOFU, Metafilter, board games, Blogger, paper games, 1000 blank cards, The Mirror Project, 1000 journals, Moveable Type, 20 things, Google Maps, Flickr, Gmail, last.fm, iPhone, NaNoWriMo, McSweeney’s, Kingdom of Loathing, muxtape, vimeo, Etsy, iPad, Kickstarter …the people who make these things are my leaders. Most of the time I don’t know their names. Sometimes I’m lucky and do.
Make things:
Make things:
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