Category Tumbling

Management Based on Trust

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Advice•Management•Rands•Trust March 19th, 2010

The topic of trust is where I draw a line in both my personal and management philosophy. My belief is that a team built on trust and respect is vastly more productive and efficient than the one where managers are distant supervisors and co-workers at 9-to-5 people you occasionally see in meetings. You’re not striving to be everyone’s pal; that’s not the goal. The goal is a set of relationships where there is a mutual belief in each other’s the reliability, truth, ability, and strengths.

The problems with authors like Rands is that every single post a hits is. Check this latest one out… now!

On The Lack of Flash

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Experience•Flash•Ihnatko•Internet•iPad January 30th, 2010

Andy Ihnatko covers it perfectly:

Months ago, I installed a browser plugin for Safari called “ClickToFlash.” It blocks all Flash content. You’ll see a placeholder image in the webpage and if you want to view the content, give it a click and it’ll load in. I have not noticed any drop in my ability to enjoy the Web. What I have noticed is that my browser is faster and more responsive, and that I can leave a couple of dozen tabs and windows up for weeks without having to force-restart my Mac.

I also use ClickToFlash and a Flash-less internet has positively improved my browsing experiences.

On Showing and Sharing Early

0 comments Filed in Advice•Tumbling Tagged with Ed Catmull•Pixar•Process January 9th, 2010

More bloggers should listen to this advice. Starting early and daily being confronted with the minor issues, or work still to be done at a site, is a great way to make sure you actually do actively work at your project and constantly improve.

In the process of making the film, we reviewed the material every day. Now, this is counter-intuitive for a lot of people. […]

Suppose you come in, and you’ve got to put together animation or drawings and show it to a famous, world-class animator. Well, you don’t want to show some thing which is weak or poor. So you want to hold off until you get it to be right.

The trick is actually to stop that behav ior. We show it every day—when it’s incomplete. If everybody does it, every day, then you get over the embarrassment. And when you get over the embarrassment, you’re more creative.

It’s not obvious to people, but starting down that path helped every thing that we did. Show it in its incomplete form. There’s another advantage to that. When you’re done… you’re done.

Pixar president Ed Catmull, in a speech to Stanford’s business school.

Do You Really Need Windows on Mac?

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Liam Cassidy•Mac•Windows January 8th, 2010

Apparently I am not alone not being interested installing Windows (7) on my MacBook:

But apparently, that’s unusual, and most Mac owners in the world not only use Windows, they need Windows and, more than any other version, they absolutely must have Windows 7, so Apple’s missed deadline is nothing short of scandalous.

True? Because if that’s not true, all of that breathless reporting over the weekend about missed deadlines and Apple’s ‘fears’ would prove a tad silly, wouldn’t it?

Actually, I have had one issue since switching to the Mac; my friends don’t use iChat. They’re stuck with Skype or — horror of horrors –Windows Live Messenger for video conferencing and collaboration. I pity them. It’s the one thing I wish Apple would release for Windows. The world would be a better place then, I’m sure.

At some point, I think after 6 months on Mac, I stopped caring about Windows. Unless I really need to work in MS Access for a client, I will not install Windows and if, Windows XP has a much smaller footprint.

On Hiring People; Making People Feeling Wanted

0 comments Filed in Real Life•Tumbling Tagged with Employee•Hiring•Links•Rands January 4th, 2010

Rands explains the importance of making the desired candidate feel wanted. Both to make sure the candidates becomes the ‘new hire’ but also because every great hire is a new award for your own career:

If you’re hiring well, you’re hiring people not just for this job, but for your career. These are the people who, for better or worse, will explain to others what it is like to work with you. They’ll explain your quirks, your weaknesses, and your strengths. When they eventually leave the group, they’re taking your reputation with them. You may never talk to them again, but they’ll continue to talk and my question is: what stories are they going to tell?

One of the most important things to make this double-edged sword highly successful is to assure that the employees still feels wanted after joining; the hire is an important pilar of the department.
How long does it take you to settle in a new job? That period is arguably even more important than the actual ‘chase’; it’s when the new hire grows roots.

Katy Hubert Would Make A Great Weather Woman

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Analysts•Dept. of WTF•I Can Haz A Job Too?•Links•Tumbling December 28th, 2009

Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty’s predictions for the stock value of Apple shares read like listening to the weather report. She says there’s one chance in 4 Apple stock could pass $325/share and range between $325 and $435, but if the Google Android platform takes off, Apple shares might as well drop as low as $150.

In a more common and closer to home situation: the weather for tomorrow will be dry, but if our most optimistic dreams don’t become reality it will rain.

Why Gruber Refuses to Embed Flash

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Flash•John Gruber•Quotes December 21st, 2009

John Gruber on why he refuses to embed Flash on his site:

As for why I refuse to embed Flash, let me put it this way. I use and highly recommend ClickToFlash, which blocks all Flash content by default. Why would I publish content using a technology that I personally block by default? I truly hope to see Flash fade as the de facto standard for embedded web video, and I’m willing to put my markup where my mouth is.

I am an avid ClickToFlash user as well and until recently thought the internet was for ~~pr0n~~ text. It would be nice to be able to embed H.264 videos from Youtube.

Living in the Valley, the perfect recluse recipe

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Michael Arrington•Recluse•Richdom•Silicon Valley•Truth December 21st, 2009

Apparently you can wake up and open your eyes to the outside world, even if you live in Silicon Valley. Of course for any European, especially fans of the football game, this is no surprise at all, we actually would prefer Russian riches to invest in our clubs than poor Americans who constantly need to renegotiate the debts taken on to buy out our clubs. Of course the internet is no exception to this, Arrington gets the wake-up call:

A controversial comment on Hacker News makes us wonder if hot U.S. startups are the new vanity purchase for rich Russians.

The Inevitable Destiny for Everything Online

0 comments Filed in Tumbling Tagged with Books•Paul Carr•Publishing Rights•Semantics December 20th, 2009

Paul Carr, after a battle of semantics, before publishing his book as free download at Techcrunch.

And yet barely a day goes by without someone telling me they tried to find my book in the US, only to be disappointed that – due to publishing’s ridiculous obsession with territories – it’s only available outside North America. “It’s available on the Kindle” I say. “Pft” they reply, “I don’t have a Kindle”. In most cases I end up emailing them a PDF – a distribution model that doesn’t really scale.

The logical solution would be to publish the PDF on my site. The print version of the book has been available for 18 months now – it’s had plenty of time on bookstore shelves and with the publication of the paperback in the UK and no US publisher on the horizon, any future sales are just part of the long tail. There’s already a pirated version available on Limewire – that’s where I got the PDF from in the first place

Worth reading 275 pages? If you like dry humour and everything’s as good as the intro, yes. If you don’t want to visit TC, grab it here.

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