Andrew Lark

The Wine Video...

Mark on Personal Productivity

Well worth a read. A do most of these things and find they work great.

1. Dump all tasks in to Outlook - three categories
1. Must Do Now
2. Do Later
3. Watch & Tickle Later
2. At the end of each day list on an index card the key priorities for the day ahead - do everything to get that list done
3. Don't answer the phone - everything goes to Voicemail
4. Do email three times a day - early AM, mid-day and end of the day. Leave the inbox empty. File email in the same way as you file tasks
5. Unlike Mark I keep a schedule - but I manage it myself.
6. Commit. Don't Commit. Move on. In other words, make decisions about what you are going to do and communicate the decision. Create standard "no commit" templates in Outlook - it'll help. As Mark says, "Only agree to new commitments when both your head and your heart say yes".
7. Structured Procrastination is a good thing.

Links & Blinks

• Worth bookmarking... Google command line strings
• This is sure to make the next Shankland & Hurd interview interesting... Journos to sue HP over pretexting...
• Love this campaign by Fon... classic competitive move.
• Go Kiwis Go! Great win over Luna Rosa...

Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve your Productivity

Great post. Love it. 

Link to Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve your Productivity - lifehack.org

Google Bombing... Sorry, SEO...

From GMSV - worth a read...

The New York Times reports some liberal bloggers have embarked on a "Google bombing" campaign designed to lift negative articles about 50 or so Republican candidates to the top of the search results for those candidates' names. The tactic involves widely linking each mention of a candidate's name to a single article, thus raising its profile in Google's page-ranking formula. The effort, headed by MyDD.com contributor Chris Bowers, has been labeled "unscrupulous" and "fascinatingly evil" by conservative bloggers, but Bowers says this is nothing new, noting previous Google-bombs that linked the phrases "flip flopper" with John Kerry and "miserable failure" with George Bush. His bombing, Bowers says, is actually "search engine optimization," an important new addition to the political tool box. "There are three main differences between the campaign I started and other, similar campaigns," wrote Bowers. "First, I did it out in the open with full transparency on my blog, using my name, and with my email in full view. Second, it is much more wide ranging, since it has multiple, simultaneous targets. Third, and most importantly, instead of targeting campaign talking points such as 'flip flopper' or 'miserable failure,' this campaign worked to only use non-partisan media reports. No talking points. No opinion columns. A bare minimum use of alternative media. In other words, this campaign works solely to push news reports made by trusted, mainstream news outlets into the foreground during the final two weeks of the campaign season."

Links & Blinks

• Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture: John Moore gives us a peek into the corporate culture that informs the unparalleled success of the Starbucks brand.
• Smashing Magazine | modern magazine for web-designers and developers. Great stuff.
• Pennylicious | All about money.
• If you are going to leave a coffee stain, make it pretty...
• Digg this...
• Katie's calendar is out... go get one!

Links & Blinks

• Shel says let-up on Edelman. Shel, I think people are just having too fun fun with this one to let-up just yet. I do agree though that the Edelman issue reflects broader challenges any large organization faces: first, the actions of the many will be undermined by the few (look no further than the F-H billing incident in LA); second, all organizations are challenged to get employees to live the values they aspire to - this was ulitmately about honesty and transparency; and third, we assume that organizations are very integrated - they aren't. The smarts that exist on one team don't necessarily flow unbounded to another. Finally, few if any of the industry organizations ethics policies have any teeth and why should they?
• Post your slides online for all to see...
• A meme tracker for tracking people... great idea!

Links & Blinks |

• Stowe on Goplan - a Basecamp competitor
• Musings on the value of social software
• New agency launches (in Second Life of course) - Crayon. Joseph Jaffe is behind the deal that has attracted some star players.
• Edelman gets socially responsible.
• Scrybe - new ajax-based organizer.
• After These Messages...
• Self Titled... a flash masterpiece...

Question...

If anyone can point me to great books being written as blogs or blogs as books I'd love some pointers.

Sun Brings Whole New Meaning To Metal Wrapped Software...

I remember when McNealy used to wax on about metal wrapped software. Looks like Sun is about to take it one step further by putting the data center in a shipping container.

Great Quote From Vinod Khosla

Q  U  O  T  E D

"Things go wrong. There is lots of uncertainty, and there are times when you're unsure of yourself. I've found that the less people know, the more sure they are. It's this sort of schizophrenic divide between worrying that you're going out of business and dreaming big that's needed. Sophisticated entrepreneurs know this. Less sophisticated entrepreneurs don't even know whom to ask for advice. They'll ask a marketing and a technology question to the same person. Ask different questions of different people, both those who have been successful and those who haven't. You learn a lot when you fail. It's a seemingly small nuance, but they can make a huge difference in a company's trajectory.

-- Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla offers some free advice to budding businessfolk

Link to MercuryNews.com | 10/15/2006 | Venture capitalist a techie at heart

Practice your personal Kaizen - Lifehacker

Great article on applying Kaizen to your life.

A Japanese management strategy called Kaizen roughly translates to "continuous slow improvement." In the corporate world, it's an efficiency and defect-proofing system often used on factory floors. But Kaizen emphasizes the well-being of the employee, working smarter, not harder and developing best practices so that workers don't have to think. As such, Kaizen is an ideal approach to improve one's personal workflow.

Reads & Feeds

• Stanford University is launching a wiki that allows students to share campus information and and much more. Editable only by students but open to all.
• PodZinger to Offer Targeted Video Ads: "Audio and video search engine PodZinger is launching a new advertising platform that targets video ads based on search queries and the content being viewed."
• del.icio.us Plans To Become A Social Network: del.icio.us will essentially turn into a social network, with more focus on people instead of data. Please don't change too much - I love what you do. Josh says:

"One of the amazing things about our users is how smart and far-reaching their interests are. While delicious previously has been very much about just the data, in the future I hope to allow our users themselves to come forward within the system. Additionally, I want to help people connect with others within the system, either to people they already know or discovering new people and communities based on interest."

• WriteToMyBlog web-based post editor - Lifehacker: "New web app WriteToMyBlog is an advanced, rich web-based blog post editor."
• Advertising Age - John Battelle Leads Bloggers Into Land of Ad Respect: Profile of John Battelle
• Neil Patel gives a series of great tips on how to land your blog post on the digg home page. If you care more about architecting traffic than authenticity...
• Verizon has a policy blog.
• The blueorganizer. Very cool

US Airports Take The Liquids Out, Bangkok Puts It Back In...

Gizmodo reports that the new Bangkok airport will be cooled by fluids flowing beneath the floors: "Cold water flows directly underneath the floors on all levels, keeping the air a steady 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit up to 8.2 feet above the ground." Very cool (sorry, couldn't resist that...).

Eloqua Gets A Shot In The Arm

Eloqua - a product we use extensively at LogLogic - got a shot in the arm from U.S. VCs by raising US$13-million. We're going to see more marketing technology like Eloqua which rather that existing as a standalone product runs on your dominant sales and marketing platform - in our case Salesforce.com. This has been part of the challenge for many of the marketing measurement vendors - without a dominant marketing suite or application to pivot off they can't establish any reach throughout marketing organizations or real momentum. There is a real need for a suite of applications for the communications practitioner - something that perhaps blends Salesforce, biz360 and socialtext.

Sad...

In a sad reflection of the ever diminishing rights of people and extreme reactionary - and entirely unaccountable - travel policies here in the US a company has sprung up that will ship your products to the hotel for you...

Analyst Consolidation Continues...

This time it is Aberdeen getting gobbled-up by marketing firm Harte-Hanks. Aberdeen Group will remain as a separate operating unit and keep the Aberdeen Group’s fact-based research brand. Aberdeen have been long regarded the most, well, vendor-friendly of the analyst firms so this is probably a good fit.

Wired News: Web 2.0 Winners and Losers

 Flickr wins in Wired News reader poll. Interesting that Odeo also gets high marks - need to go play with that. del.icio.us comes in at #3 - probably my fave.

Without del.icio.us, I'd be drowning in a morass of bookmark clutter. Seriously, drowning. Every article I've saved for later, every YouTube video I've earmarked for repeat viewing, every cache of free MP3s, every (ahem) NSFW page I come across. It all gets posted to del.icio.us. It's truly a lifesaver.

PR Tech Leader Doesn't Get the Blog Thing...

Paul Abrahams, ex FT hack turned flack at Wag-ED really doesn't understand what all the fuss is about...

Is blogging the 21st-century equivalent of citizen band radio, the personal radio technology that became so popular in the late 1970s that it was included in a Coronation Street plotline and spawned a generation of bad Burt Reynolds 'Good Ol' Boy' movies?

Tom fires back:

Mr Scoble created many millions of dollars in positive publicity for Microsoft, on a salary of less than $100K. I don't think WaggEd could have done a fraction of that, for 100 times the payment Mr Scoble received.

It is pretty remarkable that any communicator doesn't quite grasp the impact of participatory communications and social media - it is even more remarkable to go public with it in such a way. Don't think bad of Wag-ED though, Frank Shaw has a pretty good blog running which I follow.

If all Paul was trying to do was ignite the debate with a contrarian view - and goodness knows we need them right now - he has done a great job.

Blogs a Powerful B2B Presence @ Media Buyer Planner

Well worth a look. According to the study, Blogs have made inroads into B2B technology companies with more than 53 percent of respondents saying the content they read in blogs has an impact on their work-related purchasing decisions. Some 80 percent of respondents say they read blogs, with 51 saying they read them at least once a week.

Links & Blinks

• 21 SEO tips and tricks. Well worth a read.
• FunkySexyCool.com - power of social networking
• Google Earth gets free premium content. Once a user clicks on a featured content vendor, markers will appear on the images being viewed, designating the special features.
• The hard disk is 50 years old... And given the death recently of my Powerbook HD, the sooner they are replaced the better...
• When selling the CEO, keep it simple...
• NZ's Warehouse founder wants to take company private...
• 50 Great design resources
• The Ultimate Mac software list