I just got my first iPod - it lives up to the hype

As i type this out on the touch keypad, I can't help but remark how remarkably cool this device really is. It really dazzles me as a formerly distant admirer but someone who resisted the hype. I now have a taste for what I've been missing. And it is making me rethink everything - including what brand of PC I see us buying next. And whether Apple stock is still a buy even at $150 billion+ market cap. Well done, Apple.

Making sure you get the job done

Liked this quote, presumably on being successful

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
- Ray Bradbury

Great "This American Life" episode - on the importance of loving parents

One of the great takeaways was that for the early part of this century (early 1900s) parents were encouraged not to handle, cuddle, or show affection towards kids. It's interesting to hear why. Apparently it had to due with incorrect notions about parents getting kids sick, and also that "spoiling children" with affection would make them infirm adults.

Psychologists spent YEARS undoing these misconceptions and invested tremendous amount of time with human and nonhuman subjects to show that parental love is a GOOD THING.

It's a great story that also must make us ask: What else do we "know to be true/good" that just plain isn't?

New on my "Don't leave home without it" list - Freespire Linux Live CD

So my work laptop BSOD'd on me. Not Windows - it was the hard drive. This is actually the third work hard drive to die in the past two years. I also had a personal PC hard drive fail on me two years ago. Add that up and I've now had 5 - that's right - five hard drives die on me in the last two years.

I don't exactly baby my laptops, but I do use them long, hard hours. Often times 12+ hours a day, every day, more or less. My laptops do travel with me everywhere and I'm sure they have the same kind of typical insults other hard drives encounter in laptop form factors.

But that many failures would be enough to devastate most people - myself included, up until a couple years ago.

Now, though, I more or less live in a cloud.

- My personal and work mail is web-based.
- My most imporant documents are all in Google Docs and Spreadsheets
- My digital photos are all uploaded to Google's Picasaweb
- My personal laptop is backed up by Mozy online automatically every day
- My work laptop is backed up to a server automatically every day

It's nice to know that ... should my hard drive die on whatever machine I'm on ... I can drop my Freespire Linux Live CD in, connect to the web and get going again in just a couple minutes.

In fact, the main thing that lives offline is my Firefox configuration - which I keep on a USB drive.

Freespire, it turns out, is really nice. Easy to set up and use. I'm pretty amazed at how well everything works - and it's fast. Well, except for certain javascript apps in Firefox. Yikes - really, really slow.

It will be nice when I can simply go with a solid state flash RAM hard drive to boot my OS and then simply connect to the cloud. Speed, energy efficiency, battery life and durability should improve, all without sacrificing access to data.

Walk Score - Creating a metric to measure how "walkable" a neighborhood is

Walk Score - Helping homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods.

Awesome mashup for finding apartments and homes with access to stores, recreation, education, restaurants and entertainment within walking distance.

I scored a 71 - not bad for suburbia!

Time Waster - WSJ.com

Time Waster - WSJ.com

Hilarious articles and photos related to internet humor memes. I'd never heard of icanhazcheezburger.com before. And the bukkit stuff - pretty priceless.

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes - New York Times

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes - New York Times

Another reason I'm not really interested in working overseas in China. The air in Beijing when we visited was absolutely horrific - several multiples worse, at least from a particulate matter perspective, than I recall ever growing up in LA during the late 70s and early 80s. Living there could take years off your life.

Cancer is the #1 cause of death? Yikes!

Navigating Uncharted Territory: How We Developed a Strategic Product Marketing Role — Pragmatic Marketing

Navigating Uncharted Territory: How We Developed a Strategic Product Marketing Role — Pragmatic Marketing

Great commentary on the disconnect between product marketing and product marketing.

How to Be More Effective

Excellent insights from my home slice at Trizzle on how to be more productive. We can have a tendency to get ego involvement in finishing that one thing ... that ONE thing ... that we lose sight of the fact that among the other things on the list, this one isn't really as important as we think it is.

I love this guy.

 

 

Sent to you by Mark via Google Reader:

 

 

How to Be More Effective

via Trizle by The Trizle Team on Aug 15, 2007

Scenario: "Yo, let's spend the entire day on fixing ____. We-so-determined! Yay!"

Peep this:

Johnny Orangeseed runs a small factory in Fremont, Californ-i-a. This crazy mofo employs twenty employees.

The company ain't runnin' so well:

• His managers need resources.
• His accountant needs balance sheets.
• His employees need software.
• His customers need shipments.

But-oh-no-no-no!

Sure, Mr. Orangeseed thinks subconsciously:

• "Oh-gee-golly! I have so much work to do!"

But consciously, what does his booty do?

• "Just wait right there! I gotta fix our customer feedback form first! Once I fix this thing, that will free up my time to help others! Shebang!"

So, what does the Johnny do?

• 10:00 a.m: He tries fixing teh report.
• 11:00 a.m: Still tries.
• 12:00 p.m.: Still tries.
• 1:00 p.m.: Still tries.
• 2:00: p.m.: Still tries.
• 3:00 p.m.: Still tries.
• 4:00 p.m.: "Gee-golly! I just fixed it!"

Then, he tells himself and whoever's listening:

• "See...when you put your entire heart into completing something, you can accomplish anything! Yay! Believe in yourself!"

So, he goes about his daily days with his self-indulgent victory trips, as:

• His managers drain morale.
• His employees lose productivity.
• His accountant's getting woozy.
• His customers start cussing.

Boo.

Why Accomplishing ______ Ain't So Important

What was the most important thing you did last year?

"Oh-no, not-one-thing!" you scream.

"My badass completed a plethora of things that contributed to my effectiveness last year!"

1. Take the the most important thing you did last year?
2. It'd still be a fraction of what you accomplished.

(And probably, within that context -- you still completed numerous mini-tasks.)

A ridiculous collection of tasks contributed to that 2006 story.

And the times when you focused 100% of heart, energy, and soul on fixing that itty-bitty problem that bugged you?

• In the grand scheme of things, that itty-bitty problem ain't so important after all.

If a future situation like that happens:

1. Delegate/trash it.
2. Move on.

It's not worth your time.

The Goal

1. Finish something quickly.
2. Start next task.
3. Repeat.

Productivity. Soar. Eagle.

Big Shots Think Bigger

Hewlett and Packard had no business plan.

As did Salesforce's Marc Beinoff, Virgin's Richard Branson, and Michael Dell, Gates, Buffett, yadda.

Walt Disney's behind just wanted to sell something.

We still know folks that tell us they're still "perfecting" their business plans -- after 5 years.

Boo.

Spending 9968987408609587094 hours on one thing gets you nowhere.

It Just Doesn't Matter

Sure, you hear those "success gurus" telling you:

• "Never give up! Yay!"

They.suck.suck.

Hanging onto something for too long suffocates productivity.

It gets to a point where spending any more time on Task A will contribute nothing to Task A.

Remember:

• Nothing's too important.
• Nothing's too important.
• Nothing's too important.
• Nothing's too important.
• Nothing's too important.
• Nothing's too important.
• Nothing's too important.

One-two-three-five-twenty years from now:

It just does not matter.

Sidebar: Measuring Real Productivity

A sweet measure of productivity:

Measure how many tasks you accomplish, daily.

That is:

1. List the items you'd want accomplished today.
2. Tackle dem suckas.

Rule of thumb:

The more tasks you accomplish in a day, the crazier more productive you'll see yourself by the end of the week.

Doing many things drives you to focus on bigger pictures.

A collection of tasks drives freakish progress.

El entire enchilada.

 

 

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Full Text: Keen vs. Weinberger - WSJ.com

Full Text: Keen vs. Weinberger - WSJ.com

A great snapshot of two articulate spokespeople on either side of the debate about whether web 2.0 is destroying quality/high culture through enabling easy access and attention on "miscellaneous"/low culture.

I think what we're seeing on the web is a reflection of the collective consciousness - a consciousness that has often focused on the trivial, insignificant and lacking in talent and/or substance (local news, trash talk tv, pop music, Hollywood, sit coms, anyone?). But now that the long tail of that collective consciousness is more visible, lots of people aren't happy about it.

Gatekeepers of high culture are still relevant. People still want experts, authorities and - yes - algorithms to help them decide what's relevant.

But gatekeepers and content owners who profit from concentrations of attention clearly have a vested financial interest in maintaining their share of attention. The long tail of "lowbrow, miscellaneous content" represents competition for attention, and therefore, it's no surprise that cultural critics and defenders of the existing media universe alike are sometimes critical of the new landscape.

PissedOff.org » Blog Archive » The Best In The World?

PissedOff.org » Blog Archive » The Best In The World?

I love the provocative question posed by this blogger, riffing on Seth Godin's "The Gap" (note to self: add to reading list): What do you want to be the best in the world at?

Good thing to have figured out.

Excellent online backup service - Mozy

So a little over a month ago, I was freaking out. My wife and I had decided to end the madness of having data strewn across three laptop computers (two of them old and obsolete), a desktop computer (rather old and obsolete), an external hard drive, and numerous CDs. I undertook the laborious task of consolidating all of our personal data into one place. The most tedious - but in many ways, also the most rewarding - of these tasks was organizing and deduping thousands of digital photos we had. Some dated as far back as 1998.

Of course, no sooner did I have this done than I began having visions at all times of the day and night of my hard drive crashing and losing years upon years of precious digital memories. While I felt somewhat safe mirroring the external USB drive to the laptop and backing up once a month, we wanted to keep the external drive in a locked safe under the bed. I knew that backups would only happen once a twice a year with the hassle of pulling it out, setting it up, and running the backups - and I couldn't let that happen.

So what else could I do? I could join Smugmug or use Picasaweb and back up all of my digital photos there. In fact, I do use Picasaweb - but it's more for public photo sharing of compressed images (1600x1280) and easy access from any PC or device. Also, online photo sharing services are not complete backup solutions. Even though I'm primarily a Google Docs & Spreadsheets guy for almost all of my personal files now, there's a fairly significant archive of personal data and MP3 files that I want backed up.

That's where Mozy came in. I've had an excellent experience with this incremental, continuous online backup service. The initial backup requires patience - it can take a week or more, depending upon the data - but after that, it's more or less invisible and requires absolutely zero thought and effort on my part. And it only costs $5 a month for unlimited storage space.

Take away my backup worries for $5 a month? Well worth it.

I also tested Carbonite, which also had great ease of use and setup. But Carbonite couldn't handle backups from external USB drives - so Mozy got my business.

Customer service has been outstanding. Mozy had a short period of irregular access in terms of backup, and to make amends, the founder sent an email to every customer apologizing, stating what had been done to rectify the situation, and offering customers a choice of what level of remuneration they felt was fair for their level of incovenience - 1 month free, 2 months free, 3 months free, or no worries - no free service required.

It was an incredibly standup thing to do. It's incredibly rare for a company to allow customers to pick what kind of compensation they think is fair for outages or interrupts. I felt incredibly valued as a customer and my respect for Mozy and its leadership grew tremendously.

I haven't seen a glitch since then, and can count myself as a very satisfied customer.

Crappy Stuff

I'm starting to have very little patience with the crappy stuff in my life. Time is getting too precious to spend 5-6 hours diagnosing a problem on my car, going to the store to get repair parts, researching how to install and reinstall the broken parts, getting out my tools, actually doing the install and reinstall, testing the fix, cleaning up the car, and cleaning up myself.

It really pisses me off when the fix doesn't work. You've invested the requisite time, and sometimes the replacement part itself is broken. It happens. Like this weekend. I replaced my starter motor with a remanufactured unit from Kragen. It was broken, too. Of course, I didn't discover this until the repair was completely finished. So now I have to remove this broken unit, take it back to the store, and get another one. What a frickin' PITA. It's going to take me another 1.5-2 hours to install this one and try all over again.

There was a time in my life when I would look forward to fixing things that were wrong with my car. It made me feel good about knowing I could fix it. Now, I get nothing but pissed off when my car breaks.

Of course, my wife's car has bad trailing arm bushings, too. I decided to do the work myself. I'm not looking forward to it. It seemed like the right thing to do to save money. But now, all I can think about is time. Weekends are so short as they are. And when there's 5-6 hours of work work to do, who wants to spend that plus another 5-6 hours working on a car?

I'd rather play hoops, spend time at the gym, catch up on sleep, movies and TV. The weeks are so long, and now the weekends are short, too.

I guess the lesson learned here is to be very deliberate about allowing crappy things to control my time and my life.

Secret to Woot's success: Good writing

Credit Australian blogger intepid for distilling ab obvious but valuable insight. Without its brilliant writing, Woot.com is just a small-time online liquidator that sells one item at a time. With its wacky, brilliant and sometimes just-out-there writing (and podcasting now), it's a must-visit destination.

Combine that with the treasure-hunting aspect of never knowing what you'll see from one day to the next, and it's an addiction. It's habit-forming. It's like the daily comics or SportsCenter.

Who says having a great writer can't be a competitive advantage? Think about that one, little sister.