December 2009
40 posts
“I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are...”
– Franz Kafka
(via bmdesign)
“Watts and Peretti set up a regular mass-market ad buy, running banner ads on...”
– Is the Tipping Point Toast? — Duncan Watts — Trendsetting | Page 6 | Fast Company
Rafer sez: Watts’ findings reflect my online marketing experience, with a healthy dose of Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte’s product marketing and MVP thinking.
The seeds of adoption are unpredictable so offer public...
Success is what’s left when you’re done failing →
mikehudack:
(via hiten)
Do yourself a favor. Read the post. It’s so incredibly true. My favorite part: “And any success you see today becomes tomorrow’s failure when you continue to strive for improvement.”
draft toward an email etiquette guide
mikehudack:
hiten:
cdixon:
1) always ask people if it’s ok before introducing them to each other (double opt in)
2) after being introduced to someone, don’t cc the introducer more than once.
3) never, ever use bcc. for one thing it’s rude. for another, you can get caught with reply all. instead, forward after sending.
4) vacation auto responders are lame and for n00bs
5) keep emails...
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But...”
– Steve Jobs, via Caterina.net (via kareem)
Seth Godin - What Matters Now: get the free ebook →
zehnuhr:
Seth Godin finished & published a new book called ‘What matters now’, in which he collected essays and ideas from different people about what they think matters now. You can download it for free.
“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
– Bill Moyers (via ninakix) (via infoneernet)
Reid Hoffman on Philanthropic Movements on the web... →
rahmin:
(starts at ~24min) Surprisingly inspirational talk. Reid’s idea of a public intellectual fits my goals as well.
“Managers today are taught not to micromanage their employees. But there comes a...”
– When and How to Micromanage (via hiten)
“We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to...”
– Richard Feynman, Caltech lectures, 1962 (via fdanbo)(via langer)
“The beliefs I have to defend are so soft and complicated, actually, and, when...”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday (on the difficulty of defending one’s beliefs) (via bmdesign)
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve...”
– Hunter S. Thompson (via kari-shma) (via hiten)
TED: 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World →
mikehudack:
andres:
grahamgrafx:
morningstar:
Ive been saying this for years, hah. Fungi are the most fascinating organisms potentially not from this Earth.
Graham, remember that conversation we had about the universe being an organizing principle for everything? The internet, neurons, dark matter, mycelium… it’s ALL COMING TOGETHER :)
Watched this last year. Loved it.
The Psychology of Being Scammed →
6. The need and greed principle. Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you.
College Degrees More Expensive, Worth Less in Job... →
infoneernet:
Employers and career experts see a growing problem in American society — an abundance of college graduates, many burdened with tuition-loan debt, heading into the work world with a degree that doesn’t mean much anymore.
The problem isn’t just a soft job market — it’s an oversupply of graduates. In 1973, a bachelor’s degree was more of a rarity, since just 47% of high school...
Startup Contradictions
In a start-up (such as life) you experience a lot of contradictions when attempting to decide what to do next. I thought these summed up below (I got from an LSC email) a lot of them very well.
Contradictions:
1. Trying to do development based on assumptions w/o reality checks leads to massive time waste.
2. Trying to do development based solely on quant metrics leads to massive time waste and...
“Being addicted to your work might be slightly better than a coke habit, but it...”
– Signal vs. Noise - Step one is admitting you have a problem (via zehnuhr) (via hiten)
Startup SF: Give Your Ideas Ex-Lax! →
#8 “ Now If Only….
… I could find a technical co-founder”
What can YOU do, with YOUR skill and your resources, in the next 48 hours? Can you make a mailing list? A wiki page with some info? A Google Form -> Spreadsheet? Can you pay $10 to advertise on Google for potential customers to talk with?
langer:
cursivebuildings on this unreleased take...
No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup →
hiten:
caterpillarcowboy:
dfdeshom:
Great presentation (by Xobni)
Helpful look at how PR can help growth of a startup, but there is a right time and place for it (ramping into product/market fit).
Amazon.com Starts Textbook Trade-In Program →
infoneernet:
Amazon.com has announced a new textbook trade-in program that gives people Amazon gift cards if they mail in their used books. The program comes just in time for ordering textbooks for next semester — or, since the gift cards can be used on any Amazon items, just in time for the holiday season, depending on where your priorities lie.
Amazon says the program will give students good...
“Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its...”
– comment by JLM on the The Herd Instinct (via fred-wilson) (via somewhatfrank)
“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly...”
– Cormac McCarthy in the WSJ, via ★DF. (via langer) (via hiten)
Respecting failure: Some thoughts, and a proposal →
infoneernet:
If we are really serious about innovating, we need to respect failure, and leave room for it. We need to let people try things that might not work, allow time for encountering dead ends, have contingency plans that let us continue to carry out our missions even as failures occur, and note both what worked and what didn’t in the things we try. It’s especially useful to note things...
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in...”
– Winston S. Churchill (via kari-shma)