I have become more and more data-driven as I get older, especially when it comes to “big picture” things like politics, economics and security. Although like anything it can be manipulated, it is much easier to spot the manipulation if we can all look at the model and the underlying data. One of my favorite [...]
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Personalization, Perception & Procrastination
While the cool kids like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube get most of the attention when we think of how the Web has changed over the last few years, I was reminded this week of what is in many ways a more important but much more subtle change that has emerged in the form of personalization. [...]
As Simple As Possible but No Simpler
ReadWriteWeb has a short but great post discussing some key trends on how to build clean, simple interfaces for web applications. I am particularly a fan of the concept of gradual engagement that is discussed. Make it drop-dead simple for people to try your application and only force them through a sign-up process once they [...]
Finding Hard Data on e-Learning Effectiveness
Colleague Pierre Khawand was recently rounding up links to hard data on e-Learning effectiveness and I contributed a few based on my own past experiences with LMS and LCMS deployments. Pierre has now summarized his findings in a blog post and its well worth a read. Getting hard numbers on e-Learning effectiveness is notoriously difficult [...]
Focus Is About Saying No
Two Apple posts in a row is really starting to risk blowing a hole in my objectivity but I couldn’t allow this one to slip by. In a current interview in Fortune, Steve Jobs has plenty of interesting things to say but by far the best comment for my money is his view on focus. [...]
What The Apple Store Can Teach Us
I have been thinking about writing about Apple Stores for a while now. I think there is so much to learn about how to interact with your customers and what it means to market to them in the age of the Web. I have resisted because I am, as many people know, a self-described unabashed [...]
Do Not Read This Book
One of my favorite sites (and pretty much the only one worth reading on good presentation style) is Presentation Zen. I really like Garr‘s approach, which is highly visual. Despite the fact that I have been giving public presentations for over a decade, I must admit I have often been guilty of many of the [...]
The single best reason to go vertical
If you have ever struggled to convince your management, investors or team members why successful software companies have almost always focused on a given vertical or niche market on the path to glory, Seth Godin sums it up well in his short post “The more people you reach the more likely it is that you’re [...]
PowerPoint is evil. Duh.
Kevin pointed me to an article on Wired1 by well-known visual presentation guru Edward Tufte, with the awesome title "PowerPoint Is Evil". Tufte is probably best known for his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Not the easiest read (ironically) but well worth it if you are interested in learning how to improve your [...]
Welcome to the Enterprise Social. Fo’ shizzle.
With apologies to Microsoft for ripping off their Zune tag line and apologies to everyone else (and Snoop Dogg) for using such a bad tag line in the first place, some significant developments are underway in the world of social networks. Most people think of MySpace, Facebook and Friendster when they think of social networks. [...]