Month: August 2008
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Usability Tips for Your Website/Blog
Tom of I’d Rather Be Writing—the ‘technical communication’ blog—has just written-up twenty usability tips for your blog. I’ve been doing research on what distinguishes good blogs from poor ones, especially by reading “lessons learned” posts by bloggers. I’ve come up with 20 principles I think are worthwhile. Encourage comments Include an About page Keep posts…
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Whip Your MP3 Library into Shape
10 years ago I made the decision to shy away from using ID3 tags with my MP3s; at the time they were new, cumbersome, and not really that useful if you already implemented good file-naming conventions. Then my library grew. A year ago I realised that my archaic way of thinking was getting in the…
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The Millionaire and the Squatter
Originally an idea for “professional philanthropic development”, Michael—a multi-millionaire who’s giving away $78m over a 10 year period—lived with a homeless Chicago man for one weekend. Freakonomics covers the story in Michael, Meet Curtis: Philanthropy Gets Personal. Curtis cooked another plate of chicken and beans. He was about to eat it, but once again he…
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Must Read Daily
Wondering what the hot topic of the day is? Wonder no more, with Must Read Daily: Wish you could get the one article everyone’s talking about e-mailed to you every morning? Welcome to Must Read Daily, a daily text-only e-mail list. Every weekday morning, we promise to send you the most important article in a…
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Seth Godin’s Author Advice
As the author of a number of influential marketing books, Seth Godin knows what he’s talking about when it comes to writing and marketing a book. Advice for authors is a list of his top 19 tips. Lower your expectations. The happiest authors are the ones that don’t expect much. The best time to start…
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Uncruel and Unusual Punishment
When three young girls caused $30,000 worth of damage to Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy’s mansion, instead of involving the authorities he decided on his own unusual punishment. “I tried to be lenient with them but wanted to punish them,” Cathy said. “I wanted to show them there was a better way than the way they…
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The Meaning of Our Food Preferences
I love reading about food-related psychological studies and this one on how our eating preferences are influenced (by our personal values, the food’s cultural meaning, and its physical appearance) is no exception: How we feel about a sausage […] says more about our personal values than about what the sausage actually tastes like. A large…
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Letting Go of Love
Worldly advice from Ask MetaFilter. How do you let go of love? […] For an added level of difficulty, this is a relationship that you don’t really have any bad memories of, so you can’t use those to change the direction of your thoughts. One piece of advice from me? Originally written as advice on…
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Busy? Movies and Books in a Minute
Don’t have the time to watch that new film or read that classic book? Got a minute? Movie-a-Minute Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles (1941) Orson Welles: Rosebud. (dies) Reporter: What does it mean? Everybody Else: We don’t know. THE END Book-a-Minute The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald Gatsby: Daisy, I made all this…
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Interview with a Self-Trepanner
Self-trepanation seems the realm of low budget horror films and historic medical literature. However Neurophilosophy has a transcript of an interview with a recent self-trepanner. M: How exactly did you perform the trepanation? HP: I used a hand trepan initially, but that wasn’t proving to be terribly successful. Then there was a problem with the…