Rich Bragg
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YouTube
Christopher Sacca favorited a video on YouTube
The Process
Play
July 23 at 1:44 pm - Link
If it were up to big companies to design stop signs, this is what might be like. (via Ontario Emperor) - Christopher Sacca
This is so true. There were definitely parts of this video that gave me flashbacks to my consultancy days. - Kevin Fox
OMG! Im dying!! This is soooo funny! "female intersection zones"... "circles feel very 90s to me" - Erin
What a coincidence! ..I'm currently working on a new GO sign, still not sure if it'll fly.. however I'll give it a road test first.. - Jason Brooks
The last line is classic: "Guys, we don't like the way this is testing..." LOL - Diane Ensey
...so we've got some miiiinor tweaks we're looking into" awesome - Jason Wehmhoener
Hilarious. Also a bit sad that so many times we end up stuck in this sort of a 'process'. - Bindu Reddy
Clients suck. Sometimes they need to be reminded of that fact, gently. - Jason Wehmhoener
"The stopping occasion". I whose "internal use" this was for? (at the end) - Paul Buchheit
Great video. - Adrien Susini
YouTube
Chris Roat favorited a video on YouTube
Time is going by really really really really slow
Play
July 13 at 12:50 am - Link
FriendFeed
seth posted a link
Flying Spaghetti Monster @ Fremont Summer Solstice Parade
July 4 at 11:57 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
Finally, irrefutable evidence of a higher power -- sign me up!! - Rich Bragg
Blog
June 30 at 12:37 pm - Link
"Sometimes I wish I were a kid again, who can only think of how things are rather than about how things will be later. " - RAPatton
I agree, 12% seems low. - RAPatton
"Nexting." I like that term. I compulsively next an entire week, then get paralyzingly overwhelmed at the plethora of things I have to do, and wind up only accomplishing 10% of what I planned out. I'm interested to see what strategies work for you over the next few weeks/months. Oh God, did I just next not nexting? - Mark Trapp
I think it is much more healthy to spend time thinking about the future than the past. Myself I am more of an eat whatever is around when I am hungry person like your husband. But my lack of planning means I miss out on activities and later regret the lack of planning. - Brian Sullivan
"I clapped my hands over my ears and chanted, 'NA NA NA NA NA NA,' until I realized I was driving, and turned the radio volume down instead." :D - possible248
Thinking about the future can be dangerous if it takes you away from enjoying the here and now. I sometimes can't relax and enjoy what's going on right this second because of obsessively contemplating what's going on later... - Jason Kaneshiro
Be Here Now. - Jason Wehmhoener
Yoda had a lecture about always looking to the future, of course if would have planned ahead a little more we could have avoided that whole Empire thing - RAPatton
Your description of how your husband thinks about eating vs. you is classic. Exactly describes my wife and me. Cereal for dinner? Not a problem! - Hutch Carpenter
I think you're onto something: it's often a lot more relaxing to just stop and breathe and stop thinking about the future. - j1m
I think I'm a NEXT-er and a LAST-er. The future and the past both seem more important than the now usually does. - Wm Scott Rees
Yoda was a terrorist. - Amit Patel
@Amit Patel Yeah, he was the mastermind behind blowing up the death stars and runs a terrorist training camp on Dagobah - RAPatton
Isn't thinking about the future what's supposed to get us to drive Priuses and save for retirement? Americans seem to be accused alternately of being short-sighted and of being unable to focus on the moment. Maybe it's all about being smart about what to next and how much. For example, if you did plan your meals (or a default choice) on paper a week ahead of time, it might free you from having to think about it as much. Not that I could bring myself to do that. - ⓞnor
I like the friendfeed comment widget on your blog. - Shakeel Mahate
as my mind is just about ready to explode on some of those issues, thanks for linking it so I can get my mind back! ;) - Nicole Simon
Shakeel, Glenn Slaven built the WP FF comment plugin. Works super slick: http://blog.slaven.net.au/word... - Ginger Makela
Blog
Fred Wilson posted an entry on A VC
June 22 at 2:31 pm - Link
10 people liked it but nobody commented - Fred Wilson
Fred: A great post. Here's one way we at The Star-Ledger are trying to use these tools to address some of Umair's points: http://www.nj.com/helpinghands. Basically, it's a platform for blogs by non-profits and volunteer organizations across New Jersey. A partnership with the United Way allows groups and volunteers to find each other through a searchable database of events, interests and opportunities. - John Hassell
Revolutionary products often start out looking like toys, such as the PC. Of course that does not imply that all toys are revolutionary, but it's important to remember that the impact is not always obvious beforehand. - Paul Buchheit
Incidentally, the line at the Shake Shack was awesomely short right after the rain storm ended ;-) - j1m
I've noticed that 'likes' happen first and comments follow. I would speculate that the formula goes something like this: If a user finds an interesting item, they're more likely to 'like' it if it has few or no 'likes' yet. If there's an existing conversation, a user is more likely to add to the conversation. People are less likely to leave the first comment ('star the conversation') on an item shared by someone they don't know. Put these rules together and you get a group behavior of an interesting item getting several likes with no comments, then a comment, then a great deal of increased activity in both 'likes' and comments. Of course, it would be interesting to gather data to support these hypotheses. :-) - Kevin Fox
Kevin, as a general rule, I comment when I know what to say or quote after reading a peice and I like when I don't. - Clare Dibble
In a world where our media consumption is evermore occurring on an individual level (feed readers, Kindles, iPods vs the family radio and TV) humans still crave shared experiences. The same forces leaving me confident that the live music business will remain healthy for years help me understand the emotional value of endorsement of a FF post. Even if we discount a "like" to zero, I think it still serves as a sign of vitality and gives this service a pulse. Often it's just nice to know others are listening. - Christopher Sacca
good post Fred. I personally have completely given up on "Web 2.0" as a term - it's just the Internet now (with Ajax, RSS, rounded corners, and "social" stuff). but I do think "Internet Ennui" is a recurring cycle, and considering the run we've had recently, we're probably closing in on another wave of it... - Jeremy Toeman
Not everything has to be about social change. Sometimes, we just want a place to hang out and relax. - Morton Fox
@Kevin - One thing I like about the friendfeed bookmarklet (and also feeds from delicious), is that you can include a comment right off the bat, which I think is more likely to spark a conversation. I think that having that first comment there might also entice people to read the link. @the article - I think this depends a little on how you define web 2.0. Is it the technology aspect (ajax, json, etc.) which allows websites to be more interactive, or is it the social aspect, or some combination. - Robert Felty
john, i'm glad to hear it - good stuff. morton, the point is that more value can be created by solving bigger problems than just entertainment (in fact, hanging out can be part of the solution). fred, that was (really) a killer, eloquent post. - umair
Google Reader
Bret Taylor shared an item on Google Reader
June 17 at 1:12 am - Link
Looooong, but great read. I often felt at Google, on the sales side of things, we were so smart that we were stupid. I can't tell you how many meetings I sat through where simple solutions (and, probably, the right solutions!) were ignored because they sounded too simple. And we'd spend a full hour coming up with complicated, convoluted, confusing solutions because that's what smart people do, right? Come up with arcane stuff? Agh. It was all gas. Not throwing anyone under the bus -- I was as guilty as anyone else. - Ginger Makela
100-word version: "You're not as smart as you think you are. You need to find people way smarter and more effective than you. You can't find them with normal interviews. A six-month trial period might work, but what super smart person will stand for that? Your only real hope is that you've bumped into them some time in the past, or maybe you can find them by asking around. Good luck, and also I made up this weird phrase which doesn't help." - ⓞnor
Ginger, thanks for sharing your experience at Google. - Mike Reynolds
First page down, giving a Like for that. Continuing to read... - Hutch Carpenter
Really great read, and a true take on the types of "smart" out there. Also, I liked this little add-on Steve had in the comments section: "The Dunning-Kruger Effect has a fourth principle that I didn't mention, which is that as your competence increases, your self-evaluation diminishes. The most competent people apparently tend to rate themselves below their skill level. " Interesting thought. - Hutch Carpenter
The core of any good engineering culture is deeply allergic to unnecessary complexity. "Fancy" is a bad word; "complicated" is a really, really bad word. Design doc templates have a section asking you to explain why a simpler solution would work. Half my interviewers (having convinced themselves that I could code) were making sure that I wasn't the type to build giant rickety abominations. But a company like Google is too big for any single generalization to apply. - ⓞnor
ⓞnor: "and also I made up this weird phrase which doesn't help" Ha! :) - Bret Taylor
@nor if you do that for every Steve Yegge post you might have a high-traffic blog on your hands - Jeremy Raines
ⓞnor-notes.blogspot.com - Ginger Makela
@Ginger: I see that everywhere, not only in Sales… :( - Amit Patel
very cool...that is probably why friendfeed is ramping so smoothly and getting intelligent new features vs. another nameless service that is having severe growing pains. - Pokai
That's excellent hiring criteria -- would you hire them for your start-up. I know from experience that you can't really understand how important it is to work with A-players until you work at a company with mainly B-players. - Tödd Nëmët
I really prefer to work with @-players and ideally ?-players - ⓞnor
What about cos-players? - Jim Norris
And who is super-heroic dude? - Jim Norris
cos-players tend to be irrational unless you get exactly the right angle. - ⓞnor
Question: Why would one of these super-heroic programmers want to work for you rather than launching their own thing? - Adewale Oshineye
Dan should publish a blog with 100-word versions of all of Stevey's posts. I don't have the patience for the long versions. - Jeremy Hylton
I want high quality generic collaborative summarization in general. Not sure how it would work, it's really easy to warp and distort things when boiling them down, and way too easy to take cheap shots at the author (as I did above). - ⓞnor
Is that a bad thing? - j1m
ⓞnor, use a wiki. Also, i know an infinite number of rational cos-players. Take 60º for example. - John Lam
FriendFeed
Chris White posted a link
I'm sorry I put a dent in your car... - Autoblog
May 25 at 12:29 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Don't you just hate it when you're idling around in the parking garage and there aren't any empty spaces? How do you feel when you spot somebody with a nice car who's purposely taken two spaces so that nobody can park next to their car?" - Chris White
If they want empty space around their car, they can go to the back of the parking lot and walk the distance. Parking toward the front of the lot should be reserved for people who are willing to take the chance of getting dinged in exchange for the convenience of the closer spot. :) - Kenneth LeFebvre
This kind of thing is stupid. You see a car taking two spaces and you assume they're an inconsiderate jerk, but more likely there was another car 5 hours ago that was slightly off center that meant the car parking next to them had to touch the white line on the other side to fit, and the next car had to actually intrude slightly into the next space. Eventually you're presented with two cars that both straddle the line, with one space between them. Then night falls and everyone goes home except for the straddler. The next day people park in their right spaces until the lot's full except for the 'asshole' who took two spaces then someone self-righteously comes along, declares that person unfit for society, and vandalizes their car. There's little worse than people who are self-righteous and wrong at the same time. - Kevin Fox
Self-wrongeous? - Jim Norris
There's bad parking and there's obvious space-hogging. Look at the original picture on Flickr and tell me this guy is the victim of "space creep" as you describe. :) http://www.flickr.com/photos/l... - Kenneth LeFebvre
You should always park diagonally when you mean to take two spaces. ;) - Chris White
I'm a stickler for parking garage rules and hate it when others put others in unsafe situations. I also hate those who take up two spots. Back when I had my Jeep Wrangler, I once squeezed between two cards so tightly that I had to hope out the back of my car. - Mike Reynolds
Google Reader
Adam Kazwell shared an item on Google Reader
May 7 at 7:44 pm - Link
Damn, I didn't know you could do this....I should have declared while I had the chance. - Adam Kazwell
This is great. I use to joke with my college roommates about doing this all the time, glad to see someone actually pulled it off. - Rich Bragg
Twitter
Kevin Fox posted a message on Twitter
Reddit
Paul Buchheit liked a story on Reddit
May 8 at 1:37 pm - Link
I tried selling a few myself and had the same freakn issue :( - Kyle Weller
I only by used cars and laptops from friends -- eg, people I've know for a long time and know how they drive. - Ginger Makela
I've never used eBay before, but that sounds just horrible. Why do they let it persist? - DeWitt Clinton
"Shortly thereafter I received an email from 'PayPal' (who is now apparently sending out their customer service emails from gMail), stating that I had received a payment, but that it would not show up in my account until I emailed them back the tracking number for the parcel." - bob
Why does eBay not directly handle payment (as they own PayPal and all) but leave it to customers instead, opening the system up for scams? - Philipp Lenssen
This has been going on with eBay for quite some time now. I gave up trying to sell any electronics on eBay over a year ago. - adventureran
My Dad had a similar spoof when he tried to sell his Used Truck on a website. If this spreads (meaning these 3rd world scammers make enough $ from the trickery) it could impact online commerce. Really its a social engineering scheme. Any online auction model is at risk (as the scammer can always win the bid and not pay). - Tim Bauer
Use Amazon instead of eBay. They seem to actually care more about the "small fish." - darnell
Sounds like it might be a good time to sell short on Ebay, it's bound to catch up soon enough on their bottom line. - Michael Mink
FriendFeed
Karen Padham Taylor posted a link
Business Photo Slideshows - Portfolio.com
April 17 at 10:50 pm - Link
"Paul Buchheit Co-founder // FriendFeed Software designer Paul Buchheit was Google employee No. 23 and the creator of both Gmail, the company's popular email service, and the first prototype of AdSense, its highly profitable online-ad program. But perhaps his biggest contribution was coining the phrase "Don't be evil," which expresses to the world how the search giant intends to conduct business." - Karen Padham Taylor
"EVIL SLAYER Software designer Paul Buchheit was Google employee No. 23 (think of the stock options!)" - bob
Great picture! - Anne Bouey
I like how they photographed everyone in their normal work clothes. =) (btw—not too shabby of a group to be bunched together with...) - Dan Hsiao
I don't understand, Dan. Who wasn't in their normal work clothes? - Kevin Fox
No one as far as I could tell. They're all in their normal work clothes, right? - Dan Hsiao
I particularly liked Paul's choice of shoes. It was an uncharacteristically girly moment when I saw the angel costume and my first thought was not "I can't believe I went to college with Paul and don't have any pictures more silly than ones published in magazines" but "What shoes would possibly go with that outfit?". - Clare Dibble
Blogged about this photo here: http://flipzagging.livejournal... - Neil Kandalgaonkar
Paul, how come you never wear your wings to the office? - Jess Lee
GREAT photo. Beautiful light. - Ginger Makela
Wow. Paul, what did they pay you to slum with all of those other slackers? - Christopher Sacca
Wow, congratulations - that is a pretty amazing group of people to be in a story with!! - Jennie Lin
Murdoch looks very old. Paul looks very ... ugh ... white?! :) - Charlie Anzman
@charlie: what's the matter with "very white"? - April Buchheit
April - Should have seen that coming!! :) Strictly a reference to the photo hue ... Nothing more, nothing less. Is that why I can access FF?? .... JK :) Have fun! Charlie - Charlie Anzman
FriendFeed
ⓞnor posted a link
April 27 at 11:39 am - Link
"Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat." :-) - j1m
BTW, I think Pluto got cheated. - j1m
This is fun: 'She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."' - j1m
"The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London. " - bob
There are currently 884 results for the search ["cognitive surplus"]. It's fun to watch this meme ripple through the web. I wish I had a giant visualisation of the entire web that let me watch this particular concept spread through and between different online communities - Adewale Oshineye
"Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up.... However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter." (b/c for one thing, duh, mary ann) - j1m
What a really, really smart essay. It crystalizes a lot of thoughts I've had over recent years, but mine carry a tinge of backward, residual Protestantism. For example, I often feel guilty that, on the treadmill, while FF'ing through commercials on "House Hunters International", I often ask myself how I could be better self-actualized -- while at the same period in my grandfather's life, he was probably wondering how he'd feed his children on Thursday. - Erik Dafforn
At first I thought you used FriendFeed on the treadmill, and I was going to ask about that, because I've tried a couple ways to surf the net from an exercise machine without much luck. It seems to be hard to type while bouncing about. Then, of course, I realized FF meant something else. - ⓞnor
Oops, sorry! Yes, the "original" FF -- fast-forward. - Erik Dafforn
FriendFeed
Neha Narula posted a link
April 17 at 7:46 pm - Link
me want cookie. - Neha Narula
Pretty good writing in cookie monster syntax throughout. "They don't call vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood." - j1m
Reddit
MG Siegler liked a story on Reddit
March 21 at 11:50 pm - Link
I usually just type ‘THEGOOGLE’ into a word doc. - Paul Buchheit
/me secretly wonders how many are going to try what Paul wrote .. LOL - Steven Hodson
60% of the time it works every time - MG Siegler
I feel so smart now - Devin Anderson
We did a ton of usability testing at WebTV for the class of users that had limited or no experience with using the Internet. Over time we got very high percentage scores for basic tasks, such as sending/receiving mail, going to a particular website, etc. One problem though is this market may be one of the hardest to design for, yet yields the least growth. Over time, this market either learns, which in our case moved them from WebTV to a PC, or it just generationally changes. - Chris White
What's a google? Can I buy one on an intertubes? How soon will They post it to me? - Slippy Lane
Blog
Andy Baio posted an entry on Waxy.org Links
March 21 at 10:57 pm - Link
This is awesome. I worked a bunch with Cliff during our mutual time at BMUG and he was quite a character. Brilliant, but a young curmudgeon. I'm tempted to ask him to document his views now, 13 years later. I think I just might. - Kevin Fox
I love old news. "Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople. - Paul Buchheit
No salespeople? Isn't that what spam is for? - Devin Anderson
That's a funny quote. Seldom has anyone been more wrong. And iirc it was obvious in 1995 that this was wrong. - j1m
As far as I can tell, he fell off the Internet entirely. His Klein Bottles site hasn't been touched since I met him in Berkeley in 1997. - Andy Baio
"What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data." He obviously never tried typing "THEGOOGLE" into a Word document... - Numair Faraz
FriendFeed
Bret Taylor posted a link
Tech’s Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True - New York Times
March 12 at 12:20 am - Link
'“Laggards have a bad rap, but they are crucial in pacing the nature of change,” said Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster in Silicon Valley. “Innovation requires the push of early adopters and the pull of laypeople asking whether something really works. If this was a world in which only early adopters got to choose, we’d all be using CB radios and quadraphonic stereo.”' - Bret Taylor
Amen. - Anne Bouey
10-4 - ⓞnor
FriendFeed
Ana posted a link
Gray Wolf Can Be Hunted Again | The Onion
March 11 at 3:23 pm - Link
"It was really stupid to almost drive them to extinction but not finish the job. Now they're sure to want revenge." - Ana
The Onion has many endearing features, but showing that same photo of that same guy every week is not one of them. - j1m
Really? I love the professions they list below the loser's pics. Systems analyst? Ha! - Clare Dibble
The professions are fine (they change!) I just don't like those 3 photos (or are there 6?) - j1m
Flickr
Kevin Fox published a photo on Flickr
The real delegate trend
March 7 at 4:43 pm - Link
As a preemptive note to stave off "Like-abuse" criticisms, I liked this not just b/c of what it portends for Obama, but also b/c I thought it's cool that Kevin put the time into mapping this out :) - Ana
Brilliant. I've been looking for a way to say just this, and you've done it! - Stephen Foskett
Caption: "Despite the fact that the media are trained to believe that winning a state is all that matters, Clinton isn't winning hers by enough. Each time she edges out a win she loses the opportunity to get the large wins she needs. And so every primary to date has resulted in Clinton needing to get an ever-increasing % of the remaining delegates to get a pledged majority. Her situation is getting worse, not better." - Kevin Fox
Great visualization of this. - Mike Doeff
What's it look like for the popular vote? - ⓞnor
Impossible to say. The # of remaining pledged delegates is a known quantity*, but the number of people voting** in upcoming primaries is unknown. - Kevin Fox
* I have another version of the chart if Florida and Michigan have re-votes and get seated, but it's the same trendline. - Kevin Fox
** How do they count the popular votes in caucuses? I haven't seen these stats. I only see the number of caucus sites going one way or another... - Kevin Fox
Like-abuse by Ana! :-) Nice graph that tells a story. - Louis Gray
A lot of politics is "spin" and it's amusing to see Clinton spin this trend any way she can with words like "underdog" and "momentum". - Jason Kaneshiro
Kevin: Nevada caucus chair to the rescue.....With the exception of the Texas two-step, there isn't a popular vote in a caucus. At each caucus site, we have a period where we line up by the candidate. Based on the number lined up for each candidate, delegates are allocated. At my precinct, it was three delegates for Obama and two for Clinton. Supporters for each candidate then choose who among them will be those delegates .... That's why when you see the current total in Wyoming, it's Obama 3068 to 2160, - Chris Reed
Time for an update :) - Sanjeev Singh
Here's an updated version with the Pennsylvania results as well as a few minor updates to the previous contests: http://fury.com/images/post_pe... She now has to win 68% of the remaining pledged delegates to get the majority. This chart is becoming less useful though, as the superdelegates are what really matter. In the next few days I'll make a new chart that incorporates the superdelegate trend and their own undecideds. - Kevin Fox
re: nor/popular vote: http://tinyurl.com/5836py ; basically throws the entire "popular vote" discussion out the window - where it belongs - Will DeLuca
HRC is painting herself into a corner and is starting to look foolish. - Mike Reynolds
ahem, any update? - j1m
j1m: I posted an updated link 3 comments back. I'll post one that incorporates superdelegates this evening. - Kevin Fox
FriendFeed
Paul Buchheit posted a link
February 29 at 9:47 pm - Link
ROFLMAO - Voyagerfan5761
I ♥ TDWTF - Tudor Bosman
And following the link takes you to the page itself, with username and password in the page source. I don't dare "hack" it... :) - Tormod Haugen
Blog
Lilly Irani posted an entry on rahrahfeminista2
February 29 at 8:52 pm - Link
Only bummer is, the comments are closed already, a mere two days later. It's still great. - Voyagerfan5761
FriendFeed
Ana posted a link
Another crazy Japanese game show (Human Tetris)
Play
February 23 at 6:41 pm - Link
Oh my god that is so hilarious... i am out of breath from laughing :D - Dan Hsiao
Thank you for there finally being someone who commented on this! I thought it was hilarious too! - Ana
luckily for us, the japanese are no longer focusing their energies on building superior technologies. - eviltom
That game looks much harder than it should be. Nuts. - Louis Gray
:-D so hilarious I watched this twice.. - Jing Lim
FriendFeed
Louis Gray posted a link
Instrucciones para cuidar un bebé
Instrucciones para cuidar un bebé
February 23 at 12:56 am - Link
We're planning ahead and trying to learn do's and don'ts. - Louis Gray
Cages are bad now? I'm so far behind. :-p - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
I disagree with the second one .. every family should have a retaining cage or two ............... :) - Steven Hodson
Twitter
Paul Buchheit posted a message on Twitter
Reddit
Paul Buchheit liked a story on Reddit