Outside Look

Take a Looks at TEDTalks

If you haven't checked out TEDTalks check the link and/or pull it up on iTunes. There are literally dozens of some of the most interesting speakers doing short (less than 30 mins) talks on a topic. Some are funny, others are serious, but all of them are thoughtful, interesting and enlightening. Some of my favorites include Ze Frank, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennet, Micheal Shermer, Julia Sweeney, Steven Levitt.

Using LinkedIn Answers Effectively

LinkedIn is a great networking tool, a really useful business and job hunting tool and a place to get real life expertise and something not unlike primary research. The LinkedIn Answers feature can be a really useful tool, both for people with question and people with answers - the real trick is using the features effectively. Asking Questions In 'real life' face-to-face communication, most people are effective at asking questions. We all know that we need to be clear, concise, provide enoug...

iPhone 1.1.1 Update

Just a quick note on my experiences with the new iPhone firmware - had a few problems, and got things working. First - I did have 3rd party apps installed. After reading initial updates at The Unofficial Apple Weblog and initial reports at Gizmodo I thought it best to do a factory restore the 1.0.2 firmware and then do the update, but for some reason iTunes didn't want to do this - I'd suggest trying to disconnect from the network, doing the restore and then doing the update. iTunes downloade...

A Big Win for Software Users

According to the New York Times, IBM has indicated they are offering Symphony, an office suite based on the very solid OpenOffice. It looks like IBM will be devoting some development resources to the project as well. While the NYT focuses on the competition with Microsoft, there is much more to it. This is great for users of all stripes, but I think small and medium sized businesses will win the most. This is the segment that will pay retail or buy small blocks of licenses. A free set of offi...

The Fine Art of Negotiation

Through a friend, I found this article about negotiation. While many books and articles on negotiation focus on a 'act like you have nothing to lose' strategy, this focuses on what one can bring to the table, an offer providing a better situation for everyone involved.

Corporate Integrity

Today Google made another announcement about the impending end of the Google Video's download to rent/download to own program. This is an excellent example of a company (big, faceless company?) admitting a mistake, doing right by their customers, and being really honest and forthcoming: When your friends and well-intentioned acquaintances tell you that you've made a mistake, it's good to listen. So we'd like to say thank you to everyone who wrote to let us know that we had made a mistake in t...

Lions and Tigers and Emails, oh my!

One of the most challenging aspects of day to day work for most of us is keeping up with the flood of tasks and communications that come our way. There is email, phone calls, voice mail, coworkers 'popping by' and for some the added streams of instant messaging, RSS feeds and so on. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders (among others) has a video of a presentation at Google about efficiently and effectively handling email: The video is about an hour long, with the first 30 minutes or so of presentatio...

Pownce on this

Much is being made of a new social media/nano-blogging/awareness application (for example, Wired, Scoble, half the net). I think some of the possibilities of this application are being missed. One if the painful truths about the social networking types of applications is that businesses really need some of these features, and only consumers are getting them. For example, for employees to be able to ask questions of the organization (does anyone know why this customer has X configuration?) and...