Puzzlepieces – tag ‘bus’

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody - couple of things here I agree with, couple that I disagree with.

To start with, I thought “journalists” calling non-fad web things fads was going to die years ago. The internet is not a fad. Blogging is not a fad. Sharing stuff on the web, clearly not a fad. Lolcats are a fad. Sharing pictures of your cat is not a fad. This is hardly an opinion. Were people still calling radio a fad when it had as much penetration as blogs do today?

Once upon a time in the ancient 1940s, people wondered what humans would do with all the free time afforded by machines doing most of their work, like cleaning, cooking, etc. Try to find someone today who says they have enough free time.

So what happened? Why didn’t we get our free time? Well we did. But the available options with which to occupy our time has increased much faster than our free time has. People no longer need to invent things to do with their free time, they have to spend extra time deciding which things to try to do in their free time, as they can only do a small subset of what they want to do. The difficulty today is to look at the millions of options out there, and eliminate virtually all of them from your life. Realizing that removing things from your life will make it more full; that is tricky.

Saying that you do not have time for something is always a lie. You have time for whatever it is you decide to have time for.

Oh, and to tie that back in, it is nice that an increasing amout of what people are spending their time on is contributing to the public good, such as Wikipedia, as discussed in the article.

I think there are two web companies in the last few years that I’ve really wrote here about how great I thought they were, JotSpot and Feedburner. Now 2/2 acquired by Google… of course, let’s hope this purchase goes better for Feedburner than it appears the JotSpot one went for them.

Greening businesses, one step at a time - somehow I got dragged into writing an article for my campus paper this week about an event (Environment and Business conference) I was attending.

Anyhow, writing for a newspaper just felt really wierd, almost like going back in time . I’m much more accustomed to my blogging style (obviously). The article was supposed to be a fixed length, of course, which just feels funny. Writing from a semi-neutral tone was the hardest part, I’m so used to using “I”… it just seems so drab otherwise.

Then I submit the article to the editor. “So, I guess you edit it and send it back to me?” I asked naïvely. Of course not, they just make their changes, then publish it, with my name on it of course. Naturally I’m not hugely in favour of the changes, as what person likes their writing modified? My biggest complaint? They took away one of my exclaimation marks.

Oh, one last point… I wasn’t responsible for the headline, subheading, photograph, or photo caption.

I’m watching the State of the Union now. After rambling on about how America is great for a minute or so, his very first words were “on september 11…”. omg is about all I can say to that. one of his first sentences: “dictatorships harbour terrorists” - is that generally true?

I also likes how he points fingers at countries. “these guys are bad”, basically. argh, why do I even watch these anymore…

NextPath - 13 Things I Wish I Learned in College - yes, I realize that I’m still in “college” (in Canada we call it University ), but there are a few good points in this…

1. Getting to the Point

This is a very, very important skill. I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s not just that it is important, it also seems to be something that few people can do well, when in fact everyone needs to learn how to do this well. The director of my program at university is a great and intelligent guy, but I recently heard him speak, starting with a five-minute disclaimer that he was going to have to be brief on that occasion. Essays and papers for school that give wordcounts (or worse, pagecounts) are hardly improving our ability to get to the point.

2. Making Proper Presentations

This is also very important. Many of my courses involve giving presentations, and this is good. However the assumption is clearly that practice makes perfect… and this is true, once you’ve learned how to do something. The problem is that how to give good and effective presentations is never taught at all, so people give a poor presentation, and then the next time, give another poor presentation. I consider myself a pretty good presenter these days (I definitely wasn’t always), but I’m still learning and know that I always will be.

9. Taking the Initiative

This one is very tricky. University is a set of required courses, which have set durations, set textbooks, and set assignments with set questions at set lengths. There is almost never any room to initiate anything, so the only people who ever do so are the ones who don’t sleep because they’re volunteering for student societies or other volunteer activities.

Via del.icio.us.

TechCrunch » Rumor: Yahoo Acquired Jotspot - I don’t usually report on breaking news rumours but this one is very interesting, because Jotspot is such an amazing company/product.

FeedBurner: Not Funny - I’ve said before that FeedBurner is a company doing things right. I’ll say it again.

pc4media: Compiled 2006 Predictions - I haven’t even finished reading it - but Peter’s “predictions” beat everyone else’s a thousand times over.

I was thinking of a really long rant, but instead I’ll make a short comment.

Google Base leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, in more ways than one. You?

Knowmore.org - the corporation watch search engine. I had the idea to build this website a couple of years ago. I’m glad someone finally did. At least I think so, haven’t really explored it yet. Via del.icio.us popular.

Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog: Ciao, FeedBurner - now this is a company that is doing things right. points go to anyone who can explain why this is a good business move

I approached this bus from behind and first thought that it was sort of an ‘old-time’ bus, or imitating an ‘old-time’ bus, but it’s talking about the Internet, so obviously not.

Looking at the map mentioned (several photos ago), it appears to be in Pershing Square, or at least near there. Around the “Main Post” area.

17-Apr-05 18:38:40