• Linking Park: 2006-W49

    edited by Alexander Becker on December 09, 2006 | Link

    Balancing smarty pants, selling and tracking blog content, changing wrists, the future of books, simple simplicity and potential performance. Rock on.

    Balance is always and by definition a good starting point. Balance as in Smarty Pants v. Dumbass for example --

    ... the ways that the "smart" or "correct" or "chaste" part of our mind can potentially help keep the "dumb" or "weak" or "compulsive" part from screwing up; as well as how the dumb part constantly begs help in its way from the smart part, which is then often strangely disinclined to stoop to assistance ("'I' am too intelligent to need help with such things! Just buck up!"). The smarty quietly polishes his monocle and tsk-tsks while the dummy sits and wonders why he's such a basket case.

    If you want zero second interruptions avoid Twitter and study the asymptotic Twitter curve and its effects on the precious state of flow --

    If you think email, IM, blogs, RSS, MySpace are the king of interruptions - try again. Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users introduces a service called Twitter which is basically a community answering one simple question: "What are you doing?"

    Caterina's notes from FOO Camp about getting high performance out of high potential people match the theme of this site just right --

    High potential people is hard to come by - and getting high performance from them can be hard as well.

    The WOW experience and anecdotal evidence suggest that best results are achieved when people follow their excellence, whatever that may be.

    This blogger (on the other hand) is taking care of his health -- I have hurt my wrists and unfortunately have to cut back on the typing. Fortunately, by the time I finally get to point out the fun part of taking care of ones health, change is ahead with 6 ways to learn about change from the new James Bond movie - Casino Royale --

    1. Change is difficult.
    2. Change is necessary.
    3. Don't listen to the negative people.
    4. Do your best and success will follow.
    5. Learn from your mistakes.
    6. Adapt to stay successful.

    I am not quite sure about the idea behind Scoopt Words which sells your blog content to the media. With content being cross-syndicated via arbitrary searches, and since tracking information with Google is becoming even more easy; you are able to stay informed with Google News search and its sure to come off-shoot product betas --

    Here are some of the ways I use Google News: For topics I regularly search for, I create Atom feeds that search topics on Google News and subscribe to them via my blog reader (Google Reader). [...] For topics on my watch list I create Google News alerts. In addition, Google News provides feeds (RSS or Atom) for popular groupings of articles.

    While I can't agree with the brain = machine theory, those 22 ways to overclock your brain are an entertaining read, with this introductory quote --

    I just found out that the brain is like a computer. If that's true, then there really aren't any stupid people. Just people running DOS.

    Presentation Zen is a great resource and highly recommended reading. Go take a look at presentations and the "Laws of Simplicity" --

    Much of the book's content can be found on Maeda's blog, The Laws of Simplicity. So if you want to save some money, it's basically all online. I think it was Seth Godin who said books are now a kind of 'leave behind' for people once they have heard your story. People expect some sort of hard copy even if it is all online. If it is 'your latest book' so much the better. There is just something about a book in the hand that is so much more 'real' and 'engaging' than the seemingly ephemeral text on a screen.

    That's quite an outline for the future of books and one of the main reasons why books are not going to disappear all too soon.

    The end of print is nowhere near... think Print Gocco, which is engaging and low-tech --

    Though small in size and low priced, Riso's Print Gocco Kit is no toy. The Print Gocco will produce professional quality printing that in some ways will out-perform your local printer.

    The book of the week? The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. Simply.

    To your excellent life.

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