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Best Places to Work (2009) via Glassdoor.com

The Top 50 were selected from more than 11,000 companies reviewed by the nearly 75,000 employees who completed a 20-question survey on Glassoor.com in 2008.

Preview of top 5: 1. General Mills, 2. Bain & Company, 3. Netflix, 4. Adobe, 5. Northwestern Mutual.  Click on the headline for the full results.

All content above was posted on January 6, 2009
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Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 34 percent versus year ago.

comScore press release

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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-1-4)

  1. Wilco (15) 
  2. Bob Marley (12) 
  3. Crooked Still (11) 
  4. Grateful Dead (9) 
  5. Dire Straits (9) 

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

All content above was posted on January 4, 2009
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In this TED Talk, Benjamin Wallace explores some of the world’s most luxurious products all the while asking the question, “Can happiness be bought?”

His findings are interesting and suggest that if we perceive something to be more expensive we will in fact enjoy it more than something less expensive.

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Ad Agencies Fashion Their Own Horn, and Toot It

This article in the NYT (click on the title of this post to read the full article) details Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s latest attempt at redefining what an ad agency is / does to make money.  Instead of merely creating ads for clients, agencies are now creating products and services themselves.  In the case of BBH, it’s a blog, called Mrs.O, that chronicles Michelle Obama’s fashion and style.

It seems that agencies are hoping to refocus their creative energy into building new companies, not just new ad campaigns.

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We spend so much time smoothing things out, we lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity.

Instead of working so hard to make everything okay, perhaps it is more helpful to work hard at living with a world that rarely is.

Seth’s Blog

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The curious nature of an insight

In order to do my job well I need to ask interesting questions of people and listen intently to understand their underlying motivations, which is actually quite difficult because I have (we all do) all sorts of biases about why people do what they do when they do.

But our biases block us from actually hearing what people are saying.  And if we don’t actually hear what people are saying, we can’t effectively uncover insight into anything.

Additionally, in order for me to effectively convince others that an insight is important I need to help them understand their own bias so that they can then see the insight afresh.  And the only way I can do this is by fully understanding my own bias first.

But the curious aspect of most great insights is that they are fairly obvious, but we are just blind to them because of our biases.

So a good place to start when trying to uncover insight into a given topic is with oneself.  Try to recognize your own bias as a starting point as it will make you much more effective in both uncovering and communicating great insights.

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All content above was posted on January 3, 2009
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A comedy group out of Chicago, The Vacationeers, made this hilarious, and all too true video.  Google seems to consistently toe the line between being useful and overly knowing / creepy.  That’s very interesting for a company who’s moto is, “Do no evil.”

(Via NewTeeVee)

All content above was posted on January 2, 2009
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What we call “authority” is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us.

The human need to increase what we know, and to help each other do the same, is what the Net at its best is all about. Yeah, it’s about other things. But it needs to be respected as an accessory to our humanity.

Doc Searls

All content above was posted on January 1, 2009
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The Internet = haven for fans

This quote from a WSJ article on Justin Vernon of Bon Iver got me thinking:

“The Internet played a significant role in feeding people the music…. It’s like wildfire [how it] spreads,” Mr. Vernon, 27, said before a show earlier this year in Philadelphia, where the band performed to a boisterous crowd of about 500 in a church basement. “That propelled us right into being able to choose what kind of record label we wanted to work with.”

I’m a fan of Bon Iver, but I must say he’s not doing anything too different in the online world.  I think his success has more to do with his talent (and a unique sound) than anything unique he is doing on the Internet.

I wish he wouldn’t have just USED his Internet success to then become the same as any other musician (not that there is anything wrong with that), but rather made his Internet success part of his story by creating a rabid fan base online and rewarding them with unique access to music, photos, reflections, journals, videos, etc.

Perhaps he could learn something from The Grateful Dead.  According to a past CMO of Booze Allen, Sam Hill, “The Dead established a long-term personal relationship with their customers and that was the basis of the brand.”  They also allowed fans to tape (and then distribute) live concerts, order tickets in advance through a mail in system, and they welcomed the vendors from the parking lot (which is where all of their rabid fans hung out) as licensees.

Now if only Bon Iver would do something equally unique.

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All content above was posted on December 30, 2008
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I am excited about the power of blog commenting to bring ‘intellectual discussions’ back to the mainstream. We’ve had forums on the internet for as long as I remember but they’ve been largely for a niche audience. Blogging has brought a more mainstream audience to the idea of ‘discussions’ but the friction in the system is still too large.

Fred Wilson - I couldn’t agree more.  In fact, I’d rather this blog be more of a forum for ‘intellectual discussions’ than just a place for me to rant.  So join in the discussion.

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The questionnaire contained information about the network’s plans to “offer online streaming of programming free for people who subscribe to HBO through their cable provider.

EngadgetHD

All content above was posted on December 29, 2008
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Brainstorm: ways to improve "tumblr explore"

As I’ve become more and more hooked on tumblr as my place online to share thoughts, ideas, pictures, critiques, etc., I’ve also been finding myself more and more interested in finding other tumblelogs that I might find interesting, which has led me to the tumblr explore page.

The tumblr explore page is divided into 5 sections:

  1. New Posts - a section showing the number of new posts thus far, with 18 icons of posts that contain pictures.  (This section seems too random to be useful)
  2. On Our Radar - presumably this is a staff curated section of some of their favorite posts of the day.  (This is interesting, but has nothing to do with me at all as it’s all about an anonymous editor with no justification as to why it was posted).
  3. Browse - this section is basically a directory with 6 categories: staff picks, music, arts & artists, sweet themes, the tumblettes, and on our radar.  (This could be useful if there were more categories, especially ones that focused on the type of content typically posted).
  4. The Tumblverse - a visual representation of current posts overlaid on a map.  (I wish it weren’t so much work to find tumblrs near me using this functionality)
  5. Into Your Music - this section is very confusing to me.  It categorizes 9 tumblelogs based on a particular artist, say Sufjan Stevens, but then when I click through there is no music posted by that artist (and sometimes at all).

So, in my opinion, this page has a lot of room for improvement, and I’d like to offer up a few new ideas in hopes of sparking more ideas from all the people that read this blog.

  • Dashboard: I would love to have a dashboard with basic stats such as number of followers, number of posts, average posts per day / week / month, # of posts liked or rebloged.
  • Top 10: “liked” posts of the day, “rebloged” posts of the day, most obscure, and closest to you (both geographically and based on content)
  • Tumble Like This: I would love to be able to read a post and then click “Find more like this” which would then provide me a list of similar posts / tumblelogs.

I’m sure there are better and more useful ways to improve the tumblr explore page, so please reblog this post or leave a comment with your suggestions and who knows, maybe this post will make it on to the tumblr explore page.

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Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us.

Henri-Frederic Amiel in Journal Intime

All content above was posted on December 28, 2008
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This graph illustrates the percentage of startups still in existence after 10 yrs (92-02).

— Via smallbiztrends.com

The failure rate is pretty astonishing and, I would think, would deter most people from starting a company (which it probably does), but it also makes the obstacle to starting a company so high that it becomes very attractive to many.

And, I would think these numbers haven’t changed much over the last 6 years (well maybe it takes longer for an Internet company to die since it also takes much less capital to start one).