Links and Ephemera

Assorted links and ephemera that I want to either bookmark or have a comment on without making of them a real blog post. Sort of a micro blog with more characters then Twitter and comments held all on the same page.

Ship or not to ship? What’s the suckage to usage ratio?

December 31, 2009

I love this little unscientific idea from 37signals that puts into perspective some of the shortcomings of the Kindle from the point of view of the overall experience:
The price of shipping is imperfection. If you wait for your product to be perfect, you’ll never finish it. Fortunately you can decide which features should be closer [...]

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My year of living without money

November 10, 2009

The fellow in this article in the Guardian is putting the whole Aligned Goods idea of mine to the test.
Mark Boyle took it upon himself to live one year without spending any money. In the article he states:
I believe the key reason for so many problems in the world today is the fact we no [...]

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The Jobless Rate for People Like You

November 8, 2009

The New York Times provides this excellent interactive widget for visualizing the jobless rate from January 2007 to September 2009 by different demographics. Head on over and have a click or two, it is a great example of a quick and easy to use interface to express different subsets of data.

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Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging

November 3, 2009

Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging (here too) looks to be a great idea as they are working directly with manufacturers to box products in Frustration-Free Packages right off the assembly lines, which reduces the overall amount of packing materials used.
They also mention that A product’s original box often is not designed to be shipped directly to the [...]

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Facebook’s spammy ads and insight into the ad marketplace

November 2, 2009

A great article from Dennis Yu on TechCrunch as the spammy situation over at facebook starts to unwind. If you happen to have websites that host advertising and/or use AdWords, a nice bit of confirmation from someone deep in the online ad game appears in the comments:
Most performance marketing products/services aren’t profitable on the back-end [...]

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The “Less Than Free” Business Model

November 1, 2009

An eye-opening read from Bill Gurley over at abovethecrowd.com examining some of the strategy behind Google’s moves with Android, free GPS on Android phones and the idea of The “Less Than Free” Business Model. It is long but be sure to read until the end for the full effect.

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Apple vs. Herd Mentality

October 24, 2009

Herd Mentality by John Gruber is a fantastically written and lucid look at Apple vs. the herd mentality in the PC industry and how they ignored the calls to become the only other player in the operating system game for PCs.
Conformity is a powerful instinct. There’s safety in numbers. You have to be different to [...]

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Google Website Optimizer

October 23, 2009

I must admit that I am behind with respect to using Google Website Optimizer, generally programming bespoke a/b or split tests for clients.
35 Resources for Getting the Most out of Google Website Optimizer over at the KISSMetrics Blog looks like a good reading list, so now my only excuse is having the time to read [...]

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Eat less, live more

October 15, 2009

Old news, but something I have something to say about (eventually on the blog). Research has been undertaken into the effects of calorie restricted diets on humans and whether this has a positive effect on longevity.
To me much of it sounds like a healthier life in addition to a longer life; many of the [...]

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30 Days of Grateful

October 15, 2009

Robin Sharma, the author of the bestselling The Monk who Sold his Ferrari, has a theory that you can build a habit if you do something consistently for 30 days. And he, like many other performance and motivational coaches, believes in being grateful 1.
This video that I just received via email from Robin puts [...]

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