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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your friends are not all in one social network, but we want to help you stay in touch with them anytime and from any device. That is Seesmic’s vision and to deliver this faster, we have acquired Ping.fm. You can now update 50 social networks using Seesmic+Ping.fm from email, chat, sms, Blackberry, Android, web, Windows, OSX and much more soon.

So much for less noise in 2010.

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.

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.

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

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.

Back in 2006 people still had a notion of privacy online, particularly around contact information. Today those walls are crumbling. People share information today without blinking that they never would have considered sharing in the past. Things that bother us today probably won’t matter much this time next year.

It might seem a lost battle in the mindset of people, but the more information is readily available the more people will become aware of sharing less. Expect big battles with law makers in countries such as Germany.

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.

Posts are an issue. Content is up <7 seconds but the full page is way too long (18s). The biggest problem is JS-Kit, and loading icons for each comment, for example hits to FriendFeed for icons can add 5-10 seconds to load time. I’ve asked them for the option to cut the icons out, crossing fingers.

Two-thousand was the last time the Yankees managed to win a championship. And it was awfully close to the last time that that Microsoft managed to produce a version of Windows that anybody cared about. And, hey, both the Yankees and Microsoft have long histories of dominating their professions, and of using that dominance to run up huge payrolls with — let’s be honest here — a near-decade of lackluster results.

“I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.”

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web.

Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything – including photographs or video – that could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility

Complete story here.

We were going to reach out to Godin yesterday, but instead figured we could write this story by aggregating what everybody in the world thinks of Squidoo, and then asking him to pay us $400 to remove the parts he may not agree with.

What most have missed though is the huge marketing campaign, even if not entirely positive, the Squidoo Brands release aggregated in only 2 days. Marketing Guru Seth Godin 1 – 0 ‘tIntarwebz.

My parents’ handwriting was slightly slanted because they held the sheet at an angle, and their letters were, at least by today’s standards, minor works of art. At the time, some – probably those with poor hand- writing – said that fine writing was the art of fools. It’s obvious that fine handwriting does not necessarily mean fine intelligence. But it was pleasing to read notes or documents written as they should be.

I hate the phrase lazy journalism.

It suggests that an undercooked story is because the journalist doesn’t work hard. Many times that’s not true.

Mind you the reality isn’t much more attractive to lovers of the old school journalism of contacts, beats and knocking on doors. But it does have big implications for PRs.

A more accurate description of what we’re seeing today is ROI journalism – where efficiency with scarce journalistic resource means that journos are spread thinner and have more ground to cover than ever before.

And yet, I argued back, after camera phone dude helps us establish that the plane has crashed, who can we trust to tell us why it happened? While bloggers can own the first five minutes of any breaking story – a plane crash, a fire, a burglary – it’s always going to be the professional reporters who own the next five days, or five weeks. They walk the streets, work their contacts and – yes – trawl the blogosphere for eye-witness reports, and then take all of that information, analyse it, follow it up and ultimately provide an account of events that readers can trust.

There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient.

Illegal activities
Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on form 1040 line 21, or on schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self employment activity.

Kickbacks.
You must include kickbacks,side commissions, push money, or similar payments you receive in your income…

Stolen property.
If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner.

Bribes.
If you receive a bribe, include it in your income.

Macintosh adherents tend to be frivolous time-wasters dazzled by cheap sensory effects.

If she had been at all good looking we might have done it.

<Khassaki> HI EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!
<Judge-Mental> try pressing the the Caps Lock key
<Khassaki> O THANKS!!! ITS SO MUCH EASIER TO WRITE NOW!!!!!!!
<Judge-Mental> fuck me
[via Bash.org]

Are you a 1337 with perfect eyesight?

[via ffffound].

It’s a pleasure to see how far Michael, whom I have worked with on Tubetorial during my time for Splashpress Media, has come. From subliminal pr0n evangelist to WordPress guru. Although the ‘guru’ thing can be debated ;).

Related: You might want to browse through the complete photo series at Boston.com, there are some amazing documentaries.

Via International Society for Individual Liberty.

We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win.

#!/bin/sh
while [ "$CONSCIOUS" = "yes" ];
do
slamHeadIntoWall();
done
.

Thinking I sorta liked it when you had to learn perl, apache, and html to smear the web with dumbassery. It was a modest barrier to entry.

I can’t tell you how many girlfriends I’ve had that said “me or the business”, and I said “whats your name?”.

So Andrew, you’ve bought into the simplistic argument that reducing paper usage will save trees. Actually reducing paper usage is more likely to reduce the amount of trees grown. Most trees used to make paper are grown by private land owners. If the market for those trees goes sour those land owners won’t replant trees after they are harvested. They will divert the land to something more profitable — like growing houses. I know. I’m one of those private tree farmers
A comment at WLTC.

Every person engaged with nature, rather than profit, knows that a fully grown tree can generate more oxygen than any young tree.

Other times, it’s not so fun running a visible site. Some people are determined to deliberately misunderstand much of what they encounter in life. Sometimes I have a hard time realizing that that’s their problem, not mine.

Jason Kottke in an interview with Deron Bauman.

On the Internet, we’re all famous to fifteen people. Inevitably, you’ll date at least one of them. So how does one gracefully navigate Relationships 2-point-whatever? Is post-coital Twittering acceptable? Should you block an ex from your Flickr? Do we need to call in a couples’ counselor to revise our Facebook relationship status together? After the breakup, who gets custody of the secret sex vlog? A seriously self-effacing facilitated discussion of social networking & managing your identity online when that comes close to and at odds with that of your lovers & partners.

Melissa Gira Grant condensing the truth of internet love drama in only some lines.

Self Reminder: I really should start working at iminternetfamous.com.

Second, on the issue of community – I don’t know how to respond to this exactly. The problem isn’t that our community is growing. The problem is that growth, by definition, leads to the degradation of a community. The wingnuts arrive, and the trolls take up residence. Our challenge is to find a way to engage a larger audience while keeping the interest of our core readers. That may be impossible – and someday I may spin myself out of TechCrunch and start a new blog. The topic – new startups.
[Crunchnotes]

Michael, do it. Do it now.
The stealth way. Give yourself 6-9 months time and write as you did at the start of TC. Go the uncov way after all the TC experience you gathered.

Together with the community gathering the trolls, your crew also did. Don’t get me wrong, I love Duncan, I’ve been reading Duncan for more than 3 years now and always will continue, but people like you, people like Ted, people with inside knowledge or extended coding knowledge, should go solo again.

And if you do, screw the echo chamber Techmeme-osphere, you’ll be surprised of the following you could gather within only some weeks.

TC, the magazine, works well and does its job, now it’s time for hardcore opinions again.

The challenge in establishing an effective design solution that reaches a broad audience is in no way less difficult or creative than making work that is personal in nature. In fact, I’d argue that it’s typically much more challenging, as it requires one to dissociate with personal perspectives, in an effort to understand the situation from a more pluralistic standpoint.

Eric Karjaluoto on design vs. style: Fuck Style an appeal to return to hardcore design.

I treat RSS with undeserving priority, and this causes two big problems: 1) I’ll stop whatever I’m doing to read, flag, or ‘mark as read’ all new RSS items as they come in, and 2) I’ll go to absurd lengths to ensure I have zero unread items whenever I walk away from a computer.

This compulsion has reached the point of being a real problem, and I’m finally taking steps to rectify it.

Back in the old days, when I still wrote on blogs about blogging, I suffered a major RSS burn out. My OPML list had reached the amazing and less tantalizing number of 800 entries, and every day I had to drag my back part to read. Reading, which once used to be a passion of mine.

Over the last days, I have carefully been adding feeds to my newsreader again. Even entries from the good old past.

Blogs written by pundits wannabe pundits, overly ethical and always according to the KIAKIB (Know It All, Know It Better) principle.

I might prefer to go down the snarky Gawker and Valleywag path.

…we learned early on the Web that dragging the past with us into the present weighs us down as we try to catch the future

Paul Boutin in 1998.

Reason enough to finally register my own name as URL. A thing I have not done over the last 13 years I’ve been online (admitted there was no www the first year of that online life).
Luckily I have a not common name.

You think I have a hard-on for the web because of some greater virtue? Fuck no, it’s the story: it’s that my story is there now, and I didn’t even have to do much but show up. Scores of photos, other people’s blogs, videos and videos I don’t even know about, and people, people who may wish they were never there with me, but there it is, there it’s been told, there we’re all told it, and even when all parties haven’t been recorded, the absence is just as telling.

Melissa Gira Grant, new Valleywag contributor, and obviously a great author.

After all those years online, I often wonder what would not have happened for me and what would have without the internet.

A very sad weekend.

Photo Credits: Rubén Navarro on flickr.

tweaking someones Windows laptop. God it’s painful to use, it’s really hard after 12 mths of Apple serendipity

Duncan Riley on 02.05.2008.

Logging in to Windows already hurts after only 3 months of Apple and applications such as Twitterific, Coversutra and all the other bling for Mac. Let’s forget the super work orientated applications.

Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured…

— Abraham Lincoln in his 2nd inaugural address. Found on iPod touch.

I’m not proposing that the long-form blog is dead in the water. Just that it will reach a point where it’s frequently punctuated with the sort of content currently restricted to tumblelogs. We’re going to see a sort of amalgamation of the two becoming commonplace. With the long, thought out posts punctuated with other “short” content.

Nostrich.net numblr.nostrich.net.

Exactly what I intend to do here: combine a regular blog with a tumblelog.

If Yahoo agrees to the deal with Microsoft, it will be a shotgun marriage, but it will be Google holding the shotgun.

This is in the search area, in every other area the combination might call Google back to reality. Looking forward to what follows [via Cameron.io]

Sometimes, I get the feeling that stupidity is self-inflicted. That people are really only as smart as they want to be. And that for some reason or another, the youth culture has decided that intelligence, and perhaps even thought itself, is something to be stigmatized, something to be avoided at all costs. And that the kids followed suit, dumbing themselves down in order to be accepted, to fit in, because being smart means being a nerd, and being a nerd isn’t “cool.” And maybe—just maybe—there was a time when we didn’t feel like intellect was something to be ashamed of, but we’ve stashed those feelings away in a little tin box with the rest of our childhood memorabilia, because that time is past, and now is the time to grow up, and growing up means going dumb, it means getting hyphy, it means downloading “This Is Why I’m Hot” in droves until it reaches #1 on the iTunes Store.

Smart kid. [BrokenLogic]

Upon request for clarification I was told that they were not at liberty to divulge which features or of course any thresholds of use. Then they warned me not to do it again or I would be banned permanently without recourse to reinstatement

One of 13 14 reasons Facebook might disable your account. Because they feel like can.

WordPress could have regained their Chinese market by launching a specialized sister site for China that censored content and agreed to give up information about users to the Chinese government. But in a phone interview from his home in San Francisco, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg said, “It was the most Orwellian, ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life… That just seems actually, positively evil to me… There’s no way we could support that and still feel passionate about what we do.”

— Matt ‘WordPress’ Mullenweg on A quick moral view on wordpress.
I really like Matt, and some of his views. I’m sure with time, and the years, Matt will be able to navigate the grey areas better and come out with less haters.

Mel Gibson is Stanley Kubrick on steroids

— Read on rec.arts.movies.international.
I wished my ISP would block out Google Groups on Usenet.

How to tell if a website sucks 2.0
[Via warpedvisions]

Amateur pornography is a great thing. You can find anything for everyone on the internet. So long as no one’s hurting anyone or involving children then hey, what’s wrong with that?

— Dita Von Teese, 07.22.2007

You should assume everything written on this blog is a lie. You should assume I have motivation for linking to everything on this page and will benefit from it somehow.

— Shoemoney Disclaimer

How can thinking that takes place so quickly be at all useful? Don’t we make the best decisions when we take the time to carefully evaluate all available and relevant information?

Certainly that’s what we’ve always been told. We live in a society dedicated to the idea that we’re always better off gathering as much information and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. As children, this lesson is drummed into us again and again: haste makes waste, look before you leap, stop and think. But I don’t think this is true. There are lots of situations–particularly at times of high pressure and stress–when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions offer a much better means of making sense of the world.

— Malcolm Gladwell, Blink

Developer time, analysis time and hardware resources will all be a part of what we do here, and hopefully a few of these projects will provide remarkable value (while others will help to serve as lessons of what not to do).

— Great and realistic thinking of “randfish“.

Come to think of it, I’ve long felt conflicted between ‘dressing like an art director’ — which means casually and vaguely ‘alternative’ — and dressing like I work in a real, grown-up office.

— Khoi Vinh on Clothes Make The Design Director.

Great thing about Europeans is you can always count on them to jump right in and correct your mistakes. It’s why we love doing business in Europe. Even the dumbest, least educated European is still so sophisticated and advanced compared to any American. They’re always ahead of Americans when it comes to design and style and grammar and history and knowledge of other cultures and languages. And the great thing about the Internet in general and the blogosphere in particular is that it gives these really clever Euros a place to put their cleverness on display.

— FSJ