September 4, 2008
Link → Abraham Maslow’s 8 Ways to Self-Actualize

“Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.”

September 3, 2008
Link → Cargo Cult Management

“Hit the BUSINESS section of your local bookstore for insights into why cargo cult management runs so rampant — it’s hard to find authors who understand the difference between causation and correlation.”

August 27, 2008
This is why I hate RimuHosting. This is the fifth time something like this has happened in the last six weeks.

This is why I hate RimuHosting. This is the fifth time something like this has happened in the last six weeks.

August 25, 2008
I appreciate the honesty. Why can’t anyone make a dent in ticketmaster’s customer hostile monopoly?

I appreciate the honesty.

Why can’t anyone make a dent in ticketmaster’s customer hostile monopoly?

August 13, 2008
Horrible error message when I tried to book a flight on Virgin America. A great example of the desperate need for better copywriting on the web. It turns out that Regan’s name didn’t match the frequent flier number I entered. Why didn’t they validate that three screens ago when I entered it? And why didn’t they provide a clear way to edit the frequent flier number I entered?

Horrible error message when I tried to book a flight on Virgin America. A great example of the desperate need for better copywriting on the web.

It turns out that Regan’s name didn’t match the frequent flier number I entered. Why didn’t they validate that three screens ago when I entered it? And why didn’t they provide a clear way to edit the frequent flier number I entered?

August 6, 2008
Link → Reinventing news on the web

“While the water cooler variety of news has dominated the past, there is an opportunity to deliver a different sort of news — news which helps consumers make better decisions.  Massive volumes of publicly available data, cheap compute cycles and storage, and ontologies like the social graph have lowered the cost for reinventing the news market.”

August 5, 2008
Link → Are Users Dumb?

“Are users dumb? User interface design is not about dumbing things down for the poor stupid user.

We software developers, understanding the software as we do, find it easy to look down upon those who lack our understanding.

This is wrong.

Users aren’t dumb. They just have better things to do with their lives than memorizing the internal data model of our screwy software.

When software is hard to use, don’t make excuses for it. Improve it.

When a user makes a mistake, don’t blame the user. Ask how the software misled them. Then fix it.

The user’s time is more valuable than ours. Respect it.

Good UI design is humble.”

August 3, 2008
Free shipping for a $28 t-shirt, lame.

Free shipping for a $28 t-shirt, lame.

July 14, 2008
“ Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Malachy McCourt (via gregnews)
July 9, 2008
Link → As E-bay is to auctions, E-Lottery would be to lotteries

Love the idea, I wonder how nasty the legal issues would be.