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When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant. -- John Phillips Marquand
I come not to praise the blogroll, but to bury it. The problem with the blogroll is that it is too static. I have no idea if half those links are alive or dead. I have no clue when the last post was for a given blog, although some blogrolls give a kind of visual cue to suggest that it was recently updated.
Seen Netvibes? Pageflakes? These allow you to create a page full of RSS feeds. So what if the blogroll was replaced by a page entitled, "What I'm Reading," and it showed the blogs that would have been listed on a blogroll, but instead showed the most recent post from all the blogs that I do read?
Andy Brudtkuhl did something like this when he created Central Iowa Bloggers' News River page. This page takes the most recent posts of a bunch of us Iowa bloggers and streams them together.
Now combine the two concepts and I think that's a much better presentation of the soon-to-be-dead blogroll.
This replacement should appear almost like contacts in a contact list. Picture, name, blog link, description of the blog, perhaps a statement on why I read it regularly, and then the blog's most recent post. Then when people see my blogroll, they get a much better understanding of why I browse the blogs that I do.
And of course, at the end of it all, a link to the OPML feed so that they can import it into their news reader. But better if I can checkmark those that interest me and then create a dynamic OPML file for myself based on the blogs in the list that I fancied.
I wish I had time to work on this, but I don't. I'm very busy with wedding plans and moving into a new house. But if you like the idea, how would you tweak it to make this concept better?
How do you define credibility? How do you know that someone is credible? How do you know that their word is golden?
My answer: they do what they say they will do.
That sounds easy, but it's not. In fact, most of us willingly agree to the tasks that people ask us to do, whether at work or at home, until we find ourselves overburdened and stressed out.
Is your to-do list packed? Is it so packed that it affects your credibility?
Remember: it's okay to let some items that come your way to end up on your to-don't list.
Credibility is hard to earn and harder to earn back. Don't squander it away in an eagerness to please others.
The iPhone has been hailed as revolutionary. But to me, it feels very last week. Yes, as a phone it melds together many different devices - cool. But since it is tied to Cingular, I'm not in its reach. As is true with millions of others.
For some reason, I'd completely forgotten Skype in all this, but Tom Evslin reminded me of it. He also shows the economics behind this: "the network operators subsidize the cost of the phones to us endusers in order to get us to sign long term contracts with them."
Let’s do a thought experiment: There are lots of users of Verizon Wireless in the US. Many of them are not going to be willing to switch to Cingular because Verizon really does have better coverage in many places. But they can’t get a Verizon iPhone according to this announcement. If they want music and video integrated on their phone, they WON’T be able to get it on Apple device. So now there’s a huge opportunity for a competitor in the entertainment space that Apple currently owns.
At first I thought that maybe Apple was somehow genius by limiting the availability of the phone, and acting like the gorgeous woman at the bar shooing away guys and making them want her all the more. But I gave Apple too much credit.
As my cell phone starts acting weird lately, from too many drops, I suppose, I'm thinking of what phone I might get. But even if I were a Cingular customer, I don't think I'd get the iPhone. I have a feeling a truly revolutionary phone isn't far away. There's too much opportunity to get it right when no one else has.
I don't know Charles H. Green. Never read his books. Never attended his speeches or visited his company. But I do read his blog.
Today, he has a brilliant post about how we all deal with each other. I don't want to steal his thunder by redoing what he has written, but in essence, he remakes pop psychology's "I'm OK; You're OK" into the far more valid:
"I'm an idiot, you're an idiot. So let's get over it, let's work together and let's do something great."
Then he gives this, which is what he sees as the true positives of this mindset:
We can seek each other's advice - and offer it freely
We can produce some really, truly, scary good work.
What really happens if we lower our expectations of each other and forgive each other now and in advance and often and set about accomplishing the remarkable? It's the goal, not the process, that counts, and it will be wonderfully messy along the way - and we'll have a great time and maybe achieve the fantastic.
There's freedom in being able to be an idiot. There's freedom in others who allow us to be idiots - and love us anyway. There's freedom in accepting the idiocy of others.
Conformists never change the world. Those "stupid" enough to try something different do change the world. Yes, it might look like idiocy in the process, but the results can be breathtaking.
I like to think we can keep the edge. A Netscape programmer in the heady early days of Web 1.0 wrote, "We come into this world naked, bloody and screaming; but if you play your cards right, it doesn't have to stop."
76% of married women keep secrets from their husbands
84% of all American wives would want to be told if their husbands were cheating
49% of them have suspected or even caught their husband having an affair
39% flirt with other men constantly
32% sleep on the opposite end of the bed from their husband
It makes me want to run out and buy these folks a really good book or something...
ETC: Tamara reads this and says to me, "And the men?" So I searched, and found a survey with a difference of opinion:
When the 1,001 married people surveyed were asked if they would marry their spouse all over again, 71% agreed they would.
62% of respondents said "I love my spouse even more than when we were first married."
61% of respondents married for 21 years or more find their marriage is better than the typical American marriage.
The first is from Womans Day magazine. The seond is from Reader's Digest. Is it the difference in audience? We are what we read?
And from the guys in the second survey:
In the survey, participants were asked to write verbatim answers to questions regarding their marriage. In reviewing the hundreds of responses from men, researchers were struck at the preponderance of highly emotional, positive and sensitive responses. The comments were in strong contrast to common stereotypes of men as emotionally detached. When asked to describe their most cherished marriage moments, men said:
- "Kissing in the Snow." - "The look of joy and happiness on her face as she came toward me at the altar." - "The first and every time we make love." - "I can't believe how lucky I am to have the woman of my dreams. I cherish every moment of every day that I'm with her."
Yep. Us guys are romantic too. Speaking for myself, I love reading with Tamara and talking with her. And kissing her... mercy. That alone might be responsible for signs of global warming lately.
Lots of things are changing. Social networks run amok and revamp the way we market. "Experts" aren't so much experts any more because the Internet is the research tool that makes any Joe Bag o'Donuts smarter. Less consultation, more collaboration. Less selling, more invitation.
The workplace is also changing. Wave of the future? Check this out:
When our passions become our job, the workplace is not the office, but a lifestyle. That's the moment at which we might tattoo the company logo on our body. It's part of us and we identify with it.
If you were to ask what area of the company will be the most changed 10 years from now, some might suggest the marketing department. Some might suggest production or product services. Me? I'd say HR. A company is the sum of its people. The more deeply a company can tap into the rich resource of its people, the more energy and customer orientation each employee will bring to their work.
A broken bone, set well, will repair stronger than before it broke.
A broken bone, set incorrectly, will be weaker and more likely to break again.
Sometimes, in relationships, no matter how long ago an event has happened, there's hurt, and in the aftermath of it, people repair. The repair happens to each person and to the relationship itself. But it's often the case that we don't know how to reset what was broken. We do what we think is best, and we mend. It heals, but it's off. It looks right, but with the right movement, we're aware again of the pain. It never repaired as it should.
A doctor will look at it and, without hesitating, will break it again, set the bone right, and then let it heal.
How do you do that in a relationship? Harder question: how do you do that in a years-old relationship?
Everyone copes with hurt in their own way. We set about doing what we think is the right thing to do. Sometimes we think of the other person. Sometimes we think of ourselves. But we proceed as seems best after a hurtful incident. It's hard to tell when what was broken has been reset correctly. X-rays of the body tell the tale explicitly. Relationships have no x-rays available to them. Only the wince of familiar pain later can show the evidence of what has been poorly set, and it's sometimes hard to recognize this for what it is.
It hurts to reset a bone. You start over, really. It starts with the admission that it wasn't done right. That requires honesty. It is what it is, and if it's broken, it's broken.
And then the re-alignment. More honesty. There's nothing mamby pamby about taking the broken ends and lining them straight and then setting them against each other. The effort is strenuous and painful. It's raw. But it's the only way to do it.
I don't know that when it comes to old hurts healed improperly that it takes both people to address it, but it does at least take one. The other person might notice that things don't line up like they once did, and that will feel weird, but at least someone is being honest and working for the right connection.
Straight vision with straight talk produces straight bones. Set well, they'll repair stronger than they were.
When I first read about the iPhone, my gadget genes got excited. What an amazing device! But then I read that the iPhone is only available through Cingular. What kind of stupidity is that? That kind of thinking forgets that I'm locked into my contract with Sprint for two years.
I'm not totally surprised that Jobs would proprietize the carrier - Apple doesn't really play with others well in the first place. But c'mon... what a boneheaded move.
ETC: Thinking about it... maybe Apple's deep desire is to not have broad accessibility to their products. People want what they don't have? Maybe that drives up the mystique. Playing hard to get with the market... hmm...
In the comments, Pale Rider is right - Apple reaped big, I'm sure, from Cingular, which got the exclusive deal. And it has him thinking of staying now with Cingular.
A broken bone, set well, will repair stronger than before it broke.
