April, 2008

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13
Apr 08

What are you doing?

What are you doing? Over at Twitter, the site is being used by a lot of people to answer this very question. So much so, that despite the 140-character limit, TIME pondered Why Everyone’s Talking About Twitter and rated it one of the best 50 websites for 2007.

I post regularly on my Twitter Page for now, but it isn’t just the 1.2 million individuals who have found Twitter to be entertaining. Big companies like CNN are reporting breaking news. Little companies like 37signals are reporting product updates or system status. Politicians like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain are all using it. To echo another sentiment (was this O’Reilly?): There is something interesting happening with Twitter. I’m just not sure what exactly.

The services that have been plugging into Twitter have been expanding weekly. The base account will let you post via a text message on your cell phone, the web site, or your IM. You can also use one of the many mobile web clients. You can eve post with a quick phone call via my favorite Jott.com service.

Photo journaling is within easy reach with TwitPic, which I’ve only recently tried out. Then there is Tweet Clouds which will make a tag cloud of the things you most commonly tweet about. Twitterholic will tell you just how many people are following you over time. And as you can reply to people directly in an almost IM like way, Quotably will put it into a nice format to see how the conversation unfolded. You can even use Twitter to track your MPG performance with My Mile Marker. For a truely mind-bending experience, check out what the whole world is thinking with Twittervision.

The best argument I’ve seen for Twitter was linked to by David. Watch Twitter in Plain English on why you might want to give it a try.


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11
Apr 08

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

After falling out of the reading habit for a couple months, I am happy to report that I just finished Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It was given to me by a good friend and was an excellent read while waiting for flights to and from Chicago.

From Wikipedia:

The book continues the idea of “stickiness” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, seeking to explain what makes an idea or concept memorable or interesting. A similar style to Gladwell’s is used, with a number of stories and case studies followed by principles. The stories range from urban legends, such as the “Kidney Heist” in the introduction; to business stories, as with the story of Southwest Airlines, “the low price airline”; to inspirational, personal stories such as that of Floyd Lee, a passionate mess hall manager.

The book outlines six key qualities of sticky ideas. From the back cover:

Simplicity: How do you strip an idea to its core without turning it into a silly sound bite? See how Army commanders force simplicity into their battle plans.

Unexpectedness: How do you capture people’s attention . . . and hold it? See how Nordstrom managers shock enw employees into embracing high customer-service standards.

Concreteness: How do you help people understand your idea and rember it much later? See how an elementary-school teacher cured her students of racial prejucide.

Credibility: How do you get people to believe your idea? See how NBA coaches engineered an experience that made the dangers of AIDS more palpable to their players.

Emotional: How do you get people to care about your idea? See how Texas persuaded truck-driving young men to stop littering.

Stories: How do you get people to act on your idea? See how the Jared campaign for Subway became a huge hit, against the wishes of the top Subway marketers.

Be sure to check out the book web site and their blog*.

* I like this blog. But does anyone else think it is a bit weird that a plain, physical, book have an accompanying active blog online? Maybe I’m starting to show my age. After all, I still don’t have a myspace account.


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6
Apr 08

Time and Attention

If you liked Merlin’s Inbox Zero then you might like his more recent talk about Time and Attention he gave at Google earlier this year.


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5
Apr 08

Who’s on First

Abbott and Costello classic “Who’s on first” routine. Just Plain Good Fun. My brother and I tried to memorize this when we were young. We got part way, but never quite made a solid show of it.


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2
Apr 08

The Western Nostril

I wasn’t so sure about The Western Nostril till I came across this strip and decided that yea, I like it. Thanks Dan!

So here’s the question: Does any one know of an rss-like reader that is tuned to work nicely with web comics? Think funny pages powered by your selection of comics on the web. It seems like these things are hit-or-miss if you put them into a traditional rss reader.


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