Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: rands

  • Tinkering

    Another Rands In Repose gem. Tinkering is a deceptively high-value activity. You don’t usually allocate much time to tinkering because the obvious value of tinkering is low. You don’t start tinkering with a goal in mind; you start with pure curiosity. I’ve heard about this thing, but I’ve never used it. How does this thing…

  • Blogs in a post-truth society

    I love Michael Lopp’s writing in Rands In Repose. His entry The Likeability Feedback Loop captures why I still have my RSS reader and try to comment on posts that engage me. Social media gleefully feeds a post-truth society and it does so by design, but social media is not the problem. Fake news is…

  • Asking the Impossible

    Ahhh, Rands keeps letting the secrets out of the bag. I don’t know how many impossible requests you get, but I do know that frequent impossible requests result in an erosion of respect and a decaying of credibility. And that means when the CEO is standing up in front of the troops asking them to…

  • Maybe Now We’ll Be Heard?

    Its funny. Apparently its time consuming for companies to conduct brand analysis (just know what is being said about them). So a niche has been filled by Scout Labs and others. (Hopefully Scout is paying attention and is reading this. Maybe Umbria will also comment their product is better. :D) On the one hand, I…

  • Social Marketing

    Normally, I consider John Dvorak a crotchety old-timer who doesn’t get human-computer interaction due to his myopic self-centered view. (His use isn’t usually my use, so he gripes seem inapplicable.) Finally, he got one right… almost. In his most recent blog post… er… opinion article, he described people using social networks as “marketing” themselves. Actually,…

  • Apple 1 – Apple 1

    So selling music online does not violate a deal which “forbade Apple [Computer] from distributing music on physical media such as CDs or cassette tapes”. Wow… if only that has been a Supreme Court decision here in the US. That would have made the Napster case much more interesting. Sounds like Apple Corps should have…

  • Company Culture

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    In this article, Rands describes the building of a company culture in getting a software product to 1.0. Company culture has become a topic of interest to me lately. In taking a new job in a place with a very different mindset, I want to better understand my component in this machine. Thoughts in my…

  • NADD Free Electron Completionist

    Rands in Repose has been on my mind lately and re-read. This gem of a web site contains descriptions of techie and management personalities that I recognize. Okay, several personality description are of me. NADD? My laptop connected to blogs and other web sites, a blaring TV, and desktop playing music, say “Totally!” I am…