Twistori is absolute genius
Twistori is a very interesting way to waste time and yet feel like you’re doing something significant.
It follows the twitters of thousands of people whose messages start include the words
- I love
- I hate
- I think
- I believe
- I feel
- I wish
Pure genius … and hard to keep your eyes off.
What do you love, hate, think, believe, feel, or wish? Tell the world!
Amazon Marketplace: not for you or me
I just spent 20 minutes prepping a no-longer-needed-textbook for sale. One of the places I thought I might sell it was Amazon Marketplace, only to be presented with this:
Obviously, Amazon Marketplace is not looking for your average Craigslister, and probably not your media eBayer as well. Rather, they’re looking for bookstore owners, high-volume eBay retailers, and so on.
It’s an interesting strategy - definitely designed to capture the fat front end of the long tail and not the thin whippy extremity. It probably results in a lot less hassle for Amazon.
But it also does leave a significant portion of the resale market for eBay and, increasingly, Craigslist. And it leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth of loyal Amazon clients, such as me, who have bought thousands of dollars of books and other products from Amazon, but can’t use the same service to recycle redundant items.
Get yer textbooks here
In the extremely unlikely event that you or anyone you know might be looking for an educational technology textbook, I’m selling one.
Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications is yours, all yours, for a steal: $10.
Of course, I have almost zero eBay history, so you’d kinda have to trust me …
Quote of the day
Saw this today and kind of like it:
In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally.
From Paul Graham’s You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss.
New Dilbert Mashup: cool but broken
Scott Adams has a new Dilbert mashup on his main site, Dilbert.com. Very cool.
The question posed is: are you funnier than Scott? You then get to change the punchline on the final pane of a Dilbert cartoon to something else … and people can vote on your version.
Only problem: it didn’t work as advertised. Not cool.
Here’s my cartoon, and the ostensible problem: “invalid panel count.” I’m not quite sure what it’s referring to …
Brands are results, not causes
Here’s a response I posted this morning on a Seeking Alpha story on Apple’s brand that seemed to imply it was all about marketing:
“All Day Breakfast” hit the nail on the head.
What people who don’t really understand branding don’t understand is that the best branding, the longest-lived branding, and the most financially remunerative branding is branding that is a result, not a cause.
The brand is authentic because it first arises from actual value and actual experience.
Brands that are invented via marketing alone are typically short-lived, expensive, and doomed to crash and burn. The product and the client experience need to be what the branding says in order to generate long-term value.
(The comment’s not showing up yet on Seeking Alpha … I had to sign up … they have an email authorization … I haven’t got the email yet … )
Scoble Shnoble: who’s who
Check out
http://scoblerizer.wordpress.com/ versus
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/.
That’s Just another little reminder from the universe that URIs were never designed for humans. And that identify theft is all-too-easy online.
It’s somewhat amusing … whoever started the scoble-like blog started blogging on April 13, 2006 with a classic “I’m blogging at last” post, and apparently ended that all-too-brief flirtation just two days later, on April 17.
Someone probably warned him/her that identify theft, even in the blogging world, is a bad idea.
Backed up on Beyond Booked Solid
Michael Port sent me a manuscript of his latest book, Beyond Booked Solid a couple of months ago. It’s the follow-up book to Book Yourself Solid.
In spite of all good intentions, it sat on at table in my office for two months. I’ve just now started to crack it open and check it out. I have to say, I like it.
More as I get farther into the book …
Consistency of message
If you’re writing an article about the aesthetics and usability of web typography, can I please suggest that you don’t have a page looking like this?
(The suggestions in the post are pretty good, I have to say. But I’d prefer that the medium and the message aligned better.)
Maybe I can make the 2008 NHL entry draft
OK, so I’m fully aware this is ridiculous and shameless self-promotion, but I’m doing it anyways.
It’s been years and years since I’ve been on a hockey team. And years since I played hockey competitively. The years and years is due to a crazy schedule mixing together 3 kids, a spouse, a very demanding job, and a house that always needs just one more thing done. The years is due to the fact that I’ve had major issues with my neck following a number of rear-enders and other accidents.
But this spring hockey season I’m unaccountably playing on not one but two teams, and I was pretty pumped to see I’m among the league leaders in Centre Ice’s Division B scoring. (Please ignore the fact that it’s only 3 games into the season and keep any snide remarks that even a trained monkey could lead scoring that early in a season.)
As previously hinted, I am inordinately proud of this, but fully aware it’s likely to be a momentary flash-in-the-pan. I’ll enjoy it while I can!
In a trick of fate, I’m also fourth in league scoring on my other team, which plays in Abbotsford Training Rink’s 3-on-3 league. I better also take a screenshot of that … it’ll never happen again:
My team in that league, by the way, is the Lightning, and we do actually live up to our name. Mostly because Sam Maerz is on our team and we’ve got a great goalie, Ralph Vos.
OK. Enough shameless self-promotion (or documentation of momentary glancing acquaintance with actual talent). Back to our regularly-schedule programming.
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About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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