Apparently I am bizarre, because I am the one person in the history of mankind who liked Clippy.
You know, the paper clip in Microsoft’s Word. Whenever I needed him most, he’d appear. Yes, I AM composing a letter! Thank you!
I’m a believer in personal agents. I think the people who had the foresight to see them coming have been oddly silent lately.
It feels like the signal to noise ratio of the world has decreased significantly over the past several years. Not just in terms of communications volume, but also what it is that people have to contribute.
Navigating a world like this should prove to be exceedingly difficult unless we start figuring out what we need to do to keep our interaction with the world manageable.
Entire microcosms are coming into existence around wholly useless memes. Meme viruses manifest themselves as links that get sent around, singlehandedly destroying time and brain cycles. It’s not just about productivity any more either, it’s quality of life.
It’s old news by now, but I’m going to post it just so I remember it later.
Ill tell you what I learned from Bobby Knight: everybody’s got the will to win but when it comes time to doing something, it’s always about someone else. Not many people have the will to prepare. You got to be willing to know your product and environment better than anybody. No matter what you do there is someone out there trying to kick your ass. You got to be the smartest guy in the room about your product. Then you need to have a revenue source. You need a company with a revenue to make money. Concept, competition, and where the money is — plus something you love doing. I’ve never had a day of work. When I die I want to come back as me.
taken from the
Mark Cuban interview at the TC50
recently i went digging through old memories. and i realized that there are critical periods of my life from which i seem to have few recorded memories. my life stream is absent - only true biological memories are easily accessible.
no doubt i could dig through the past if i wanted to - but why take the time?
i’ve made a promise to myself to take more pictures, video, and capture more memories.
the mundane ones, the not-special ones - those memories are by far most precious.
Please.
Tell me which is the best product. Tell me which one you liked best.
Obviously different products, services, movies would be best suited for different people, but please have an opinion, take a stance, and tell me.
Increasingly, as we begin to publish more and more, how much do we expect people to “just know” and how much can we repeat ourselves? When you publish your calendar to friends, or make status updates via Twitter or Facebook - do you expect your friends / contacts to keep up with you?
When you have a lot to say, it can be annoying to repeat yourself.
Then again, sometimes when you have a lot to say, it might be most wise to remain silent.
I logged into my music sharing service to find songs / albums / artists that are similar to Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights”.
I was recommended a delightful song by Architecture in Helsinki - “Souvenirs”. I give it a go, and sure enough, it’s pleasing to the ear… at first. I start to get this sinking feeling that something’s not right, the song seems familiar, but not in a good way.
Yup. Product association. I definitely remember hearing the tune during a Sprint commercial in a movie theatre. I can’t remember the time or the place - but I’m sure it was the song.
Trash. Another perfectly normally good song ruined by an ill association.
I am ever so thankful that U2 keeps it’s songs (mostly) out of commercial placements.
It’s taken long enough, but I’ve finally realized that it doesn’t matter if I think about things, it doesn’t matter if I have ideas, and it doesn’t matter if I’ve formed opinions if they aren’t in some way shared with the world.
I use a nice piece of software called VoodooPad to jot down all my ideas. It’s like a wiki on your desktop. The big thing about it that I feel is invaluable is that it auto-links what you write. As you write, it pattern matches for other page titles and creates the links for you. It makes it hard to ignore things you’ve written in the past.
If anyone knows of a web-based wiki engine that does this, please let me know.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose the ventures before us.
- William Shakespeare, Julias Ceasar