The Printable CEO December 11, 2006
This is absolutely phenomenal material - sometimes the best things in life truly are free. (via)
Design your own Penguin Classics book cover
Send them a jpg of your handiwork and they'll add it to the gallery. (via)
Galleries
Added to CSS Mania this morning. And Screenalicious. A lot more people look at those sites than I thought - thanks for visiting, all...Merry Christmas.
Virb - myspace, but pretty
This morning I received an invitation to join virb, a new online community. It appears as though they're gunning after the 8 million pound gorilla that is MySpace, which they must know is a gargantuan feat. That said, virb is a hell of a lot of fun to play around with.
It appears to be built on Rails (which I've been having a lot of fun with lately) and allows for adding music, photos, videos, blog posts and the like. It seems as though they've gone to a lot of trouble developing an interface that is easy to use, and the final product is very pretty.
The music player is fantastic - you can store your playlist, get recommendations from others, etc. The player is brilliantly simple to use. You can even plug virb into itunes and access your music from there. The artists putting music up there are really good too.
They've made it easy to customize your page as well - instead of resorting to hacks like div overlays and the like, they've baked massive customization right in. I'm sure myspace hacks will run in and ugly the place up in time, but there are some really pretty pages are already up there. Hopefully when it launches folks will look to them for inspiration vs. the monstrosities they're used to.
I have no idea whether this thing can take off (maybe they don't care about toppling MySpace - what's wrong with carving out your own niche on the net and being happy with it?) but I wish them well. It's very well thought-out, and the dozens of other social networking sites out there could learn a thing or two from these guys.
Mr. Bean's Nativity Play December 10, 2006
Turn this guy's Christmas lights on or off from your computer
I can't begin to imagine how much time this must have taken.
Bigger slices of pie December 08, 2006
Your competition isn't something to be afraid of, but something to embrace. (via)
Traineo Online Workout Manager
Give your new year's resolution a bit of Web 2.0 pastel. Matches your jumpsuit. (via)
From chaos comes...a little less chaos
Anyone who knows me knows that my life has generally been controlled by loosely contained chaos. I'm always working on a bunch of things, and I rarely have taken the time to keep those things organized.
In the past, I've tried a number of things to get my life in more order. In college I tried using Palm Pilot, but that just ended up being one more way for me to tune out of my accounting class. Tetris sure was a great game...
Later I tried using a Franklin Covey planner, but I couldn't handle carrying that bulky thing around. You know, bulky. Like a laptop case. Ha.
Luckily, most of my life has been governed by order imposed from outside forces. Whether it was parents telling me to get up, class schedules or the demands of office life, I had a system of checks and balances to keep me fairly organized. When I was doing Zosima back in the day and lacked all these things, I was a wreck. And eventually so was the business.
Given all this self knowledge, once I found out I was moving to Chicago, I had a reality check. Though still employed, I was now in a position to control what I did and when. And while the past three months have been very liberating and mostly stress-free, it's only because I took the plunge and finally imposed some order in my life.
Avoiding Edge Cases December 07, 2006
A process for avoiding convoluted style sheets, scope creep, and headaches. (via)
Packaging Web Products
Fantastic article on creating a good experience for first-time users of your service.
DIY Photo Block Kit
From our good friends at Photojojo comes an awesome way to give photos to those you love.
AIGA wrapping paper December 06, 2006
The coolest touchdown run I've ever seen
A reenactment of my winning touchdown on my brother at this year's Turkey Bowl.
The 6 Week Blog Marketing Plan
Over Thanksgiving I sat down with a guy looking to create a blog to build his consulting business. On the flight back from Colorado I put together some suggestions on how his team could get a blog started and generating results over the next two months.
In putting this together, I thought there might be some value for other business folks looking to dip their feet in the blogging waters. First, it should be said that my blog is not one to follow for inspiration - it is what Seth Godin calls a "cat blog" - a place first and foremost to get thoughts out, not generate business. I break a lot of my own rules here, but that's okay - as long as you know what you're building your blog to do you'll make out fine.
I believe that it's possible to get a successful blog going within two months in about 5 hours a week, tops. These suggestions aren't comprehensive - you might find things you agree with, things you disagree with, things I left out. Feel free to add or change anything you like - hopefully you find it valuable in some way.
Renewal
In the past, I've found nothing gets you quite out of a rut like starting over. With that in mind, I decided late last night to tear things down and rebuild again. I've got a ton of work still to do (for example, any page but the front) but I'm happy with the overall direction.
For the redesign, I decided to group everything into "living" or "working." I've also decided to try and lighten up a bit - there is certainly a place for the thoughts that have dominated my writing over the past year or more, but lately I've felt like I can't write unless I have something big and important to say. And since my life these past few months has largely been an exercise in getting immense enjoyment out of the mundane, why not embrace that instead of fretting over having nothing to say? Life is really good, and I should enjoy it.
I'm hoping this latest iteration will give me the inspiration to explore the other interests that haven't been getting enough love from me the past few years. I'm hoping you enjoy the realignment. At the very least, I'm hoping you don't go to the effort of printing this out, just to light it on fire, standing over it and cackling into the cold evening air.
Swivel Loves Data
Now we might finally be able to quantify what is and isn't worth all the tea in china.
living intentionally
working intentionally
past
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