Airport Terminal Seating With A Tude

I love the simple design of this functional artwork. Also, if you’re working in a terminal and do not want someone sitting next to you, all you need to do is remove the back-rest and –tadaa! — instant work surface :)

By Tomek Rygalik. Posting from designboom.com | Dustbowl

Kevin Kelly of WIRED Talks At TED About The Web’s Next 5000 Days

Kevin Kelly is one of those guys I could listen to for a time and then have to walk away and ponder on all the implications of the information I have just received. He is one of a handful of people I greatly admire. At the “5000 Day” mark, Kevin talks about the next 5000 days of the Worldwide Web and makes some interesting predictions. The clip is about 20 minutes long, but well worth the time. Sit back and listen to what Kevin has to say.

Top 5 Reasons To Be A Jack-Of-All-Trades

By Tim Ferriss

Are the days of Da Vinci dead? Is it possible to, at once, be a world-class painter, engineer, scientist, and more?

“No way. Those times are long gone. Nothing was discovered then. Now the best you can do is pick your field and master it.”

The devout specialist is fond of labeling the impetuous learner–Da Vinci and Ben Franklin being just two forgotten examples–”jack of all trades, master of none.” The chorus unites: In the modern world, it is he who specializes who survives and thrives. There is no place for Renaissance men or women. Starry-eyed amateurs.

Is it true? I don’t think so. Here are the top five reasons why being a “jack of all trades,” what I prefer to call a “generalist,” is making a comeback:

5) “Jack of all trades, master of none” is an artificial pairing.

It is entirely possible to be a jack of all trades, master of many. How? Specialists overestimate the time needed to “master” a skill and confuse “master” with “perfect”…

Generalists recognize that the 80/20 principle applies to skills: 20% of a language’s vocabulary will enable you to communicate and understand at least 80%, 20% of a dance like tango (lead and footwork) separates the novice from the pro, 20% of the moves in a sport account for 80% of the scoring, etc. Is this settling for mediocre?

Not at all. Generalists take the condensed study up to, but not beyond, the point of rapidly diminishing returns. There is perhaps a 5% comprehension difference between the focused generalist who studies Japanese systematically for 2 years vs. the specialist who studies Japanese for 10 with the lack of urgency typical of those who claim that something “takes a lifetime to learn.” Hogwash. Based on my experience and research, it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year.

4) In a world of dogmatic specialists, it’s the generalist who ends up running the show.

Is the CEO a better accountant than the CPA? Is Steve Jobs a better programmer than the iTunes VP of Engineering? No, but he has a broad range of skills and sees the unseen interconnectedness. As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to power fastest. There is a reason military “generals” are called such.

3) Boredom is failure.

In a first-world economy where we have the physical necessities covered with even low-class income, Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs drives us to need more for any measure of comparative “success.” Lack of intellectual stimulation, not superlative material wealth, is what drives us to depression and emotional bankruptcy. Generalizing and experimenting prevents this, while over-specialization guarantees it.

And what are the #2 and #1 reasons? Find out here…

10 Cool Tips About Gmail

1. Gmail’s system of organizing emails into conversations (a collection of all the messages in an exchange) makes it easy to keep track of the various messages in a discussion.
2. You can access Gmail from a cellphone or other mobile device. Just start up your phone’s browser and point it to http://gmail.com to sign in.
3. Although you can have periods in your Gmail address, Gmail doesn’t actually recognize periods—it treats the address exactly the same with or without the periods. So if your Gmail address is jesse.smith@gmail.com, emails sent to jessesmith@gmail.com or even j.e.s.s.e.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com will reach you.
4. If you’re reading an email and want to set up a filter for this message and similar ones, click More Actions and select “Filter messages like these”. (You can also select messages in a mailbox, and then choose this option.) Gmail shows the filter options with the sender’s From address already filled in. From there, you can filter by sender and/or any of the other filtering criteria.
5. Gmail scans your emails, looks for keywords, and then pairs the email with advertising that relates to those keywords. Usually, one ad’s displayed above the message you’re reading and several others are on the right-hand side of the page (they’re easy to ignore). But Gmail tries to keep things tasteful, so if you receive an email about a tragedy, such as a death in the family, you won’t see any ads at all.
6. You can set up your Gmail account so that messages sent to your other email accounts arrive in your Gmail inbox. That way, you can check all your email accounts in one place. Even better, in Gmail, you can send emails so that they look like they come from your various email accounts.
7. If you write emails in more than one language, Gmail tries to guess the language of the email you’re working on and uses the appropriate dictionary. (If Gmail’s wrong, next to the Check Spelling link, click the arrow, and, from the list that appears, select the language you want.)
8. You can chat with your AOL Instant Messenger buddies through Gmail’s version of Google Talk. In Gmail’s left-hand Chat section, click the Options link and select “Sign into AIM”, then follow the directions.
9. To help protect you from viruses and other Internet threats, Gmail neither sends nor receives executable files—they typically have the file extension .exe—which can launch programs and wreak havoc on your computer.
10. Instead of folders to file your messages in, Gmail uses labels to organize messages. You can assign more than one label to a message, so you have several ways of finding it and don’t have to remember which folder you put it in.

Source: Amazon.com, Google Apps: The Missing Manual

14 Best Google Doc Tricks

1. If you install Google Gears, you can edit Docs word-processing documents offline, and Docs automatically syncs them with the online version the next time you sign in online.
2. If you make other folks collaborators on Docs documents and spreadsheets, everyone can work on the files simultaneously. To invite collaborators, head to the upper-right Share button (for documents) or Share tab (for spreadsheets).
3. It’s a snap to publish documents created in Docs as blog posts—just select “Publish as web page” from the Share menu, and then click the “Post to blog” button.
4. If you want to embed a Docs presentation in a Web site, just go to the Publish tab, click “Publish document”, and then copy the HTML that appears in the Mini Presentation Module box. Paste the code into your site’s HTML, upload the revised version of the site, and voilà!
5. Google gives you a whole slew of functions to help make working with spreadsheets more efficient. (The GoogleLookup function is particularly nifty.)
6. If your Docs list is getting cluttered, you can hide files (documents, spreadsheets, or presentations) to keep your list clean. Just turn on the checkbox next to any file you want to hide (you can select more than one), and then click the Hide button. To make a hidden file reappear, find All Items in the left-hand menu and, if necessary, click its + sign to expand it. Then click Hidden to see your hidden files; select the one(s) you want to see in your Docs list, and then click Unhide.
7. You can easily turn spreadsheet data into all kinds of charts: column, bar, pie, line, area, or scatter. To create a chart, open your spreadsheet to the Edit tab, select the range of cells you want to convert into a chart, and then click the “Add chart” button. In the Create Chart box that appears, tell Docs what kind of chart you want to create and fill in the other info it needs, and then click “Save chart.”
8. If you create a chart based on a Docs spreadsheet, you can save it as an image and insert it into a Docs document. After you create your chart, click its upper-left Chart link and select “Save image”. Save it to your computer, and then open the document you want to put it in. Click Insert and select Image, then tell Docs where to find the file on your computer.
9. If you don’t like a change that you (or someone else) made to one of your Docs files, no problem. Just head to that file’s revision history (click File and then choose “Revision history”) and pick a previous version that you like better.
10. If you’re working on a computer that doesn’t have Adobe Reader and you need to print a document, click Share and select “View as web page (Preview)” to open the formatted document as a Web page. You can then print it from your Web browser. The formatting isn’t quite as good as if you print from a PDF—and you’ll probably have the browser’s header and footer—but all the content is there.
11. If you’ve published a Docs document as a Web page, you can make the Web page update automatically whenever you edit the document. Just click Share and select “Publish as web page”; then turn on the “Automatically republish when changes are made” checkbox.
12. To see how your Docs document will look to folks you share it with, click the Share This Document page’s “Preview document as a viewer” link. If the preview doesn’t look quite right, then go back and edit the document before you share it.
13. You can add YouTube videos to your Docs presentations. In the blue bar above the edit pane, click “Insert video”. Google opens a box where you can search YouTube videos by keyword. Find the one you want and click it to select it. Then click the Insert Video button to put the video on your slide. Once it’s there, you can move, resize, or delete it, just like any image or shape. During a slideshow, viewers can play the video by clicking the Play button on its slide.
14. When you’ve got several collaborators editing the same document all at once, have each person choose a different color for his text to help sort out who made what changes. (The simplest thing is to have each person use the same text and highlight color.) Then, when you finalize the document, simply select the whole thing and click the “Text color” button to change the rainbow of text colors to basic black.

Source: Amazon.com, Google Apps: The Missing Manual

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WeirdGuy Blog Needs You!

Message From Eric - a.k.a. the WeirdGuy

As a reader of WeirdGuy blog I’d like to humbly ask you to help me. I have a short 10 question survey running from August 28 - September 7, 2008 on Zoomerang.  The survey should take 2-3 minutes to run through. Your thoughtful responses will aid me in future developments for this blog.

I realize I am asking you to volunteer your time, but I value your opinion. Please follow the link provided today — the survey is only available for 10 days.

And, if the survey takes longer than 2-3 minutes then you can feel free to spam me with your hate mail.

Thank you for your patronage…can I say “patronage”?…whatever, you know what I mean.

By the way, I’ll reveal the findings here on WeirdGuy when the survey is up, so if you want your response to count, now is the time to act…now! If you do not care, then what are you doing here at WeirdGuy blog to begin with?

10 Jobs For The Future - They Are Closer Than You Think!

Quick! Change your major and prepare for the jobs of the future.

1. Organic food producers, retailers
2. Computational biologists
3. Parallel programmers
4. Data technologists
5. Simulation engineers
6. Boomer companions, caretakers
7. Genetic counseling
8. Brain analysts
9. Space tour guide
10. Robot builders, tenders

So, what are you waiting for? Strap on your rocket pack and zoom over to the nearest talent agency. You may be the outer space entrepreneur.

Bubble Wrap Calendars — Why Didn’t I Think Of That?

Your friend, co-worker, or roommate gets a package. When they open it you see the object protectively shielded in bubble wrap. Then the urge overtakes you and you start popping the small air-filled cells as quickly as you can. Oh, what a delight. It reminds you of your childhood, but then your parents were quick to say, “would you stop making that noise?” You look over and your friend has a similar look on their face. Oh well, some things never change.

Yet, you can still have fun — every day of the year with Bubble Wrap calendars! Who’s gonna stop you now? You can always say, “sorry, I was just check off my calendar.” :)

See more about Bubble Wrap Calendars

Amy Tan Talks About Creativity (TED Video)

Here Amy Tan talks about, “Where does creativity hide?” Tell me your thoughts.

For Some Companies, Like Zappos, Twitter May Pay Off

By E. Brown

I am still not sold on the value of Twitter (See Twitter for the ADD Generation). Yet, Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, sees great worth in using the socila medium for spreading the word and getting feedback about his company.

Here is a brief piece from an interview with Inc. Magazine:

You have 5,681 “followers” signed up to read your Twitter updates — that’s not just employees. Who are they?

We have eight million customers. It’s been great for getting feedback. For example, we have a new website that’s still in beta. As we make improvements, I’ll send out a Twitter message asking people what they think.

And you additionally can track anyone who mentions Zappos on Twitter. Here’s an actual example: “Just bought boots on Zappos. Grt cust svc–sent an email last night asking about hiking boots for flat wide feet and had links this AM.” Are Twits a good focus group?

It’s been really useful, finding out what actual word-of-mouth conversations are out there.

Of course, all the Twitter updates from Zappos employees are public, too. Anyone can read about your employees finding good bars to meet at and drink at. You posted a message about your nipples being chafed from surfboard wax. Couldn’t that kind of candor scare customers or business partners or investors?

There may be some times when an individual Twitter message out of context can give a bad impression. But generally people on Twitter aren’t just looking at one single Tweet. They see what we do over time. For customers, I think it’s a way to get an inside glimpse of what our people are like and what our culture is like. Our belief is that your culture and your brand are, ultimately, the same thing. Your brand might lag your culture, but eventually it’s going to catch up. I think where companies are finding challenges now is they want to project this great brand, but if inside the company it’s not a great culture, then they’re going to be in trouble in the long term. For us, I just think it’s important to be real and authentic.

See the entire article on Inc.com to find out more.

Related Articles
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation - Part 1
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation - Part 2
- Twitter For The ADD Generation - Response
- Now, Some Possible Value In Using Twitter

Time Off WeirdGuy Blog - Just One Week

By E. Brown

I’ll be taking a week off to focus on closing out a project (July 28-August 1). More to come from the lessons learned during this engagement. It’s a really cool online course with custom hooks into a client app. The back-end was designed as “plug and play” so content can quickly and easily be swapped out while still being applicable to the course testing and grading scenarios.

See you in a week.

Big Buck Bunny - Buy Or Download

Given the look on Big Buck Bunny’s face, you’ll want to buy this DVD and add it to your animation collection.

Related Articles
- Peach Open Movie
- Peach Of A Movie Now Has A Name: Big Buck Bunny

Shake Up Your Business - It Can Be A Good Thing!

I saw this article from Dan and had to share. Simplicity and creativity are often themes you’ll find on WeirdBlog. Enjoy!

By Dan Coughlin

Barb and I have a special marriage bonding ritual. On Sunday nights we put the kids to bed and then we cuddle up and watch Desperate Housewives. No matter what challenges we’re facing nothing compares to the lives on Wisteria Lane. Hey, don’t blame me. Barb was the one who wanted me to watch Teri Hatcher and I just got hooked.

At the end of season four, something very strange happened. The last scene started with three words: Five Years Later. Everything seemed turned upside down. Susan had a new husband, Lynette and Tom’s young children were suddenly teenagers, Bre was a mega–successful party planner, and Eva Longoria inexplicably looked frumpy. We thought maybe it was just an end of the season joke, but we found out the next day that the producer, Marc Cherry, had created these changes with a purpose in mind.

He said he just wanted to start the next season with a clean slate. He found that he was falling into a trap of extending story lines from the first three seasons, and he wanted an opportunity to energize the creativity on the show. So he shook things up and took a chance. The show might bomb, but at least he demonstrated the courage not to settle for the status quo. Instead he reached for something new, within the framework of the show he created.

Apple’s Forays into the Wilderness
Sometimes we forget that Apple was not always Fortune’s most admired company in the world. Back in the late 1990s Apple was doing everything it could to reduce inventory, get focused, and avoid bankruptcy. So they decided to shake things up, with a purpose in mind. They decided to open up Apple retail stores so that customers could see their products up close and get to know them better. They were also able to provide great hands–on training. Gateway Computers had just exited retail stores having lost a ton of money. Critics said that Apple would regret opening up stores. Well, let’s see. They soon generated a billion dollars a year through those stores, and later generated a billion dollars a quarter. Sometimes it’s worth it to shake things up.

New Ideas Don’t Always Work, But They Do Open Up New Possibilities
Thomas Edison was always shaking things up and oftentimes failing spectacularly. Not just in light bulbs, but in concrete and phonographs and telephones and on and on. But even in his failures he found some nuisance that could be used in combination with other ideas. Same could be said for Walt Disney and GE and virtually every successful person and organization. Be willing to mix things up.

To be Purposeful You Have To Have a Purpose
Why does your organization exist? Don’t look at your corporate brochure, just tell me conversationally why your organization exists. What is its purpose? I’ve helped dozens of organizations and groups answer that question for themselves, but I almost never took the time to think about it for my one–person business. Then it dawned on me that no matter how big or small a business is, it has to have a purpose in order to shake things up with a purpose.

On a flight home last week I started doodling around in the back of a book and I landed on my company’s mission and philosophy. Those words seem so fancy for such a small enterprise, but the impact a company has on other people is not based on the number of employees it has. It is based on the value contributed to the customers.

Here’s The Coughlin Company’s Mission & Philosophy:

• Provide practical processes to propel great performances.
• Embrace simplicity and avoid process creep.

Those 13 words summarized my whole approach to creating value for customers. At the end of the day, my work is to give you a process you can consider using to improve your results. Also, as I have written before, I’ve noticed that smart, hard–working people tend to want processes that are really complicated because simple ones seem too easy. Smart, hard–working folks tend to take simple processes that are delivering really good results and make them really complicated in the hopes of achieving amazing results. It doesn’t usually work that way. My philosophy is to encourage people to embrace simple approaches and then work to hone them to an even greater degree of simplicity rather than a greater degree of complexity.

Clarify Your Purpose
In order to shake things up for yourself or your organization, clarify your purpose. Then within that purpose ask yourself, “What can I do or we do to mix up what we’re doing and generate new levels of innovation, creativity and customer value?” Don’t try 20 changes. Just select one or two things you’re going to shake up a bit and see what possibilities those changes create.

Book Recommendations
I read two wonderful books this month: “The Enzo Ferrari Story” by Enzo Ferrari, and “Inside Steve’s Brain” by Leander Kahney. Both of these books talk a great deal about the importance of shaking things up with a purpose in mind at Ferrari and at Apple.

Soak up the ideas, good and bad, from everything you do and see, in and out of the office. Then decide what aligns with your purpose. Determine what’s worth giving a shot. And ensure the process is simple. Sometimes it’s hard to fathom that it can be, just that easy.

Dan Coughlin is a management consultant and author of “Accelerate: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum”. He speaks on entrepreneurial habits, quality, leadership, branding, sales, and innovation

Related Articles
- The Art of Simplification
- The Tao Of Presentations
- Peter Pan and Willy Wonka On Creative Thinking
- Creative Ways To Make Complex Information Simple
- Creativity, Innovation, and Online Learning Reading List and Links

Weird Week In Review - May 30

In case you missed last week, here is your one stop review of all things from WeirdGuy blog. Have fun!

Is The Market Ready For Modbook?

Top 10 Excuses To Stay In A Bad Workplace

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (May 23)
- Weird Week In Review (May 16)
- Weird Week In Review (May 9)

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Is The Market Ready For Modbook?

By E. Brown

Former Apple employee, Andreas Haas, thinks he has a niche market. He’s taken the MacBook and modified it into a tablet PC. Is the market ready?

Haas founded Axiotron in January 2005. The official ship date for the Modbook was Decemnber 2007. How many units have the they sold? I could not find the answer to that. How does Axiotron intend to stay in business? From their own Web site comes this insight:

Axiotron determines a potential project or market to be a viable case of Solution Hardware if all of the following characteristics are met

• Off-the-shelf hardware is insufficient.
• Market size warrants full product cycle.
• Profitability can be achieved early in product life cycle.

Could I also use the Modbook as a digital notebook? Yes! Take a look at how to use Inkbook as a way to write notes and then transcribe or export them as you’d like.

But, the question stills remains, “is the market ready?” Just because you build it does not guarantee they will come. The buzz may be out but unless the dollars are coming in, Modbook may go the way of the Apple Newton.

Related Links
To see what others are saying you can visit links to CNet, Mahalo Daily, and more.

Weird Week In Review - May 9

In case you missed last week, here is your one stop review of all things from WeirdGuy blog. Have fun!

CMO Guide to Brand Management Using Social Media

Becoming a Precisionist

Quotable Quote - Mark Twain

Creativity In The Process

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (May 2)
- Weird Week In Review (Apr. 25)
- Weird Week In Review (Apr. 18)

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Digital Notepads - Are They Any Good?

I attend a lot of meetings. I find that I take better notes when I write with pen on paper than trying to type with my 4-finger method. Consequently, I find myself transcribing my notes into my laptop so I can have electronic copies of them.

This takes a LONG time for me.

I have tried scanning in documents and using OCR software, but with handwritten notes it is terrible. I will not even attempt to clean up the documents. It is faster to transcribe.

I have been looking into digital notepads and wondered how well they worked. If you have used one or know someone who has, drop me a note in the comments section below. I wonder if it would be worth inversting in one….

Peach Of A Movie Now Has A Name: Big Buck Bunny

By E. Brown

I first wrote about “Peach” last December around Christmas time. I was inspired by the collaborative approach the film makers took in creating this 3D movie. Afterward, some of you asked me to keep you updated on the project. So, here we are…

In February ‘08 the movie was christened with the name Big Buck Bunny after it’s main character — Big Buck, of course. The producers and developers were very excited to make this announcement — the project had become much more viable.

Now, after much work and rendering, the movie is about to be premiered. If you happen to be in Amsterdam on April 10th you might stop by the doors of Cinema Studio K and beg for them to let you into the showing, dinner, and party. If you’re like me and will not be anywhere near the Netherlands on that date, feel free to stop by the Peach blog and pre-order your version of the movie. While there, you can also catch up on the final details of the making of the film and watch several videos about the collaborative effort.

Have fun!

Related Links
- Peach Open Movie
- Elephant Dreams
- Blender

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