Just got a copy of Timothy Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich“. There’s some interesting stuff here, particularly for those of us who already work some or most of our hours as teleworkers. A sample:
“What separates the New Rich (NR), characterized by options, from the Deferrers (D), those who save it all for the end only to find that life has passed them by?
D: To work for yourself
NR: To have others work for you
D: To work when you want to
NR: To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect
D: To retire early or young
NR: To distribute recovery periods and adventures (mini-retirements) throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.”
Published by Doug Furiato . . Jul 20, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
The Open Web Education Alliance is the W3C’s attempt to “help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals”. More from the charter:”Because of significantly differing curricula and standards of quality between educational facilities, students are often not adequately prepared to immediately enter the Web development profession, and prospective employers do not have sufficient information to judge applicants’ knowledge and skills. … the wide scope of the profession, ranging from presentational design, to user interface design, to client-side and server-side programming, makes comprehensive education more difficult.”
Published by Doug Furiato . . Jul 02, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
It seems like the entire world has been affected by the death of Sky Saxon , singer and bass player for The Seed,s on June 25th. Here are a couple of videos of The Seeds lip-synching their way through “Pushin’ Too Hard”.
Published by Doug Furiato . . Jun 27, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
The following paraphrasing of copy was a part of the lead paragraph on a real estate-related blog post this morning. Needless to say, it caught my eye… and put a very grumpy spin to my Friday morning.
Are you a new business in need of a logo, or are you a company that needs to update your brand logo? Well, you can hire a fancy pants graphics designer, who will take a month or so to give you something you’re not crazy about (and bill you a handsome fee)…. or try Logotournament.
So how do you respond to this kind of service? Would you throw your name into the tournament and give it shot? If not, why not? Like me, do you have a sense that the quality of this work is “a good enough value” in the minds of a LOT of people? If so, how do you compete against it? And on a related note, what are your thoughts in general to “off-shoring” design and programming?
Pick a question. I’m interested in your thoughts.
Published by Mike Houghton . . Jun 19, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
Wikipedia tells us that QR code is “matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code)” that can be read by phone cameras. This graphic 
is my “mobile tagged” name, CCLA phone number, and email address. It was generated from my iPhone Contacts with the Optiscan iPhone QR Scanner and Generator iPhone app.
More about this from The Librarian’s Bane – “QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks.”
QR codes are used on wine bottles, signs, and lots of other stuff.
Published by Doug Furiato . . May 29, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
Dell’s earnings have dropped by 63% this quarter. However, Maximum Leader Michael Dell sees blue skies on the horizon and says “We are preparing for what we believe will be a powerful replacement cycle”. One of his wish-dreams is that next year businesses and governments will rush out to buy new computers to run Windows 7. Of course, this is the same guy who in 1997 said of Apple “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
Apple’s market capitalization passed Dell’s in January 2006.
Yesterday Dell’s stock closed at $11.48.
Yesterday Apple’s stock closed at $135.07.
Published by Doug Furiato . . May 29, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
It’s hard to believe that anyone in real life could design something more ill-conceived than The Homer, but the Flying Ford Pinto was a contender. I found this gem under Wikipedia’s List of inventors killed by their own inventions. (They say ‘inventor’, but this has all the hallmarks of being designed by a committee…)
Published by Doug Furiato . . May 26, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
Quince (pronounced kwinse) is a rich, interactive user experience (UX) design patterns library produced for the software community by Infragistics at no charge.
Published by Mike Houghton . . Apr 20, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
Source and commentary: Noise Between Stations
Published by Mike Houghton . . Apr 08, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
SWSX Typography: An invaluable web font & typography resource
Published by Mike Houghton . . Mar 20, 2009 . Filed under: Thoughts
