January 2010
20 posts
A Handy Post-Apple Event Guide for the Geek
good advice from jeffrock:
The internet can be a cruel place. Before you rifle off your thoughts on the newest i-thing, do yourself a favor. First, take a deep breath. Feel better? Good. Now read this list before you hit “post”.
Remember, you probably aren’t the intended market. Do you understand the difference between bash and tcsh? Trust me on this one. Put down the laptop.
Never post...
support
“The engineers and I handle customer support. When I tell people that, they look at me like I’m smoking crack. They say, “Why would you pay an engineer $150,000 to answer phones when you could pay someone in Arizona $8 an hour?” If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing...
The Science of Loving What You Do
To be happy, your work must fulfill three universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
In more detail…
Autonomy refers to control over how you fill your time. As Deci puts it, if you have a high degree of autonomy, then “you endorse [your] actions at the highest level of reflection.”
Competence refers to mastering unambiguously useful things. As the psychologist...
On data dependency →
Seth Godin on data and faith:
In my experience, data crowds out faith. And without faith, it’s hard to believe in the data enough to make a leap. Big mergers, big VC investments, big political movements, large congregations… they don’t usually turn out for a spreadsheet. The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not...
“The Internet is the world’s largest library. It’s just that all the books are on...”
– - John Allen Paulos (via julie911)
“Remember: The more emails you send, the more you get back.”
– - Bijan Sabet’s post “Little things to make email better”
2010 Horizon Report →
The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to...
“…knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5.”
– - Eric Schmidt (via azspot)
Google & China
via azspot:
“…what bothers me is the apparent hypocrisy of their actions. The excuse given for their previous censorship efforts was that Google plans to adhere to ‘local laws.’ This sidestepped the issue and ignored the big question: do these local laws harm or impede people or their rights. Only now, when their own intellectual property is threatened, do they act. The fact that Google actively...
“Everybody’s a web designer until, you know, they actually try to do it.”
– - Gabe Boning
