Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: email

Daily Reading List — July 10th

Homeschooled Weirdoes And The Culture Of Conformity

DC Administrator Expects Good Schools "Sometime in the Next 10 or 20 Years" – Ugh. Homeschool soap box here…

If something isn't working for you kid, you can change it now. Immediately. You don't even have to wait 10 or 20 minutes.

Why America Is So Obsessed with Florida (man)? – Keep Flarda weird.

Soon you’ll be able to Cast tabs from Chrome without an extension – Yaaaaas

All the OK Google commands. Or at least a lot of them.

Strength Contests from the WWII Era – AoM – Do this kind of stuff daily with a friendly neighbor if you can, and toughen up.

You can’t kill email – This is way more depressing than the articles I read claiming we are headed for a political and financial meltdown.

The End Game Of Bubble Finance – I think they may have at least one more bubble in them.

Daily Reading List — September 5th

8 of the Best Hikes Close to the Valley – Going to make a big dent in this list soon

How to Make Your Own Bitters for a Signature Stamp on Every Cocktail – Easier than home brewing. And gluten free!

The Most Violent Man in Wrestling Lays Down His Staple Gun « – New Jack. One scary dude.

This is What Happens to Your Body When You Stop Exercising – The biggest reason I clicked on this article was because I expected to see a picture of me on such a popular site.

Very disappointing.

How to Make Flavored Spirits That Are Way Tastier Than Store-Bought – Some good tips here. None of my previous attempts have been widely successful, but I haven't had anything come out undrinkable either.

Yet.

3 Families Every Young Man Needs – Worth your while to read the whole thing.

The Next Wave Of Enterprise Software Powered By Machine Learning – Some pie in the sky here, but I hope it pans out. There are several industries I can think of off the top of my head that are ripe for disruption *coughcough*

It’s Your Fault Email Is Broken – Limiting participation seems to work pretty well. Soon people start realizing that's just not the best way to communicate with you. That, or stuff gets solved without you intervening.

Either way…

Daily Reading List — December 18th

The 16 Best Books Read by the AoM Team in 2014 – Need to get my nose back into some books as well now that things have settled down with the move a little.

Why a Hyped New Lottery Game Went Bust in a Hurry – If only they'd rented a hot air balloon…

App Calculates Where You Need To Go And Sends You A Bike Or A Tesla In Five Minutes – I got to go by and see Shift's place a couple of weeks ago, and they have a really cool model. One of the most innovative ideas they have is to include Shift memberships as part of ownership in high-rise condos–saving the builders a big chunk on dedicated parking spaces for each tenant, and eliminating the need of car ownership for residents. There would always be an appropriate vehicle available for use in your building's garage if you had to drive.

Finding the Right Metaphor – This one resonated with me like an episode of Grizzly Adams!

Can IBM’s Mountain Of Data Fix Your Email Nightmare? – "Everyone is doing something about solving email nightmares. Except the people who are responsible for causing email nightmares." Mark Twain (paraphrased)

An Exercise to Become a More Powerful Listener – Wait…what'd you say?

5 Sun Belt Getaways for Trail Runners – Coming to an out of shape jabroni like me this weekend!

F1 Race in Las Vegas? – I'm not big on auto racing at all. But..

This. Would. Be. Awsum.

Daily Reading List — October 17th

"Let’s go around the room" – Dang. Seth Godin has smarts real good. I was in this exact situation a couple of weeks ago. I always feel challenged to make whatever I'm sharing the best…

Or the shortest if I don't think I can pull off being the best.

More than just driverless cars – "Driverless cars are the Ptolemaic Systems of transportation. They’re an over-engineered solution to a relatively simple problem., but because they are compatible with things like existing infrastructure, cultural expectations, and well-established economic and political power structures, they probably have a much better chance of success in areas where public transportation hasn’t already taken hold."

Don't discount those cultural expectations. People love having their own little pod.

4 Ways to Retain Gen Xers – Gawsh. Hewlett has me so pegged. She names the four most important things to me much better than I could for myself. So I guess I'm stereotypical Gen X. And, being Gen X, I'm very irritated that I'm so typical.

I banned email at my company – Hopefully he didn't use email to announce the ban. But stranger things have happened.

Why You Should Hire For Potential, Not Experience – I would add to this that, at least for technology and information systems, much of your experience past the last couple of years is irrelevant to the current environment. But the ability to learn and adapt is a skill that you can take with you into any situation.

IT Departments as Disney Parks–Learn to “Plus” – I think there's a lot of catching up to do here before we can even begin to "Plus". Even as an IT group member, it's frustrating to have so many great tools available to you as a consumer, only to open a hatch and crawl into a time capsule to work in "a-few-years-ago" style.

Big Data May Be Hot, But The Server-Management Tool Puppet Is Hotter – Is that writing I see on the wall?

One thing I think is really interesting with stuff like DevOps and Big Data is that the technology matures faster than the workforce's skills do. I know that I'm constantly trying to keep up, just to be *aware* of what's out there, much less knowledgeable about it.

Technology doesn't seem to be a limiter for anyone. It's the skills that are holding us back.

The renovating Casino Royale is a sliver of independence (and affordability) on the Strip – Hard to believe that Casino Royale can get any better than it already is. The only suggestion I'd make to management would be to bring back $2 craps with 100x odds. This $5/20x stuff is a little high dollar for some of us.

"Make a pass line bet for the price of a footlong!"

And, for the record, I'm not joking or making fun. I <3 this place!

Daily Reading List — August 6th

Monotasking Is The New Multitasking – In other words, turn off email and Twitter and only check them on a schedule.

The Case for Replacing Family Dinners with Family Breakfasts – We do both. Plus lunch too on lots of days. Then there's the afternoon communal green smoothie. Studies would predict that my kids will all win Nobel prizes. Me…not so sure about that. 🙂

How To Tap Into Fat For Your Fuel – Working the program, taking a lot of trust. I bought a case of Gu a couple of weeks ago and haven't touched it yet.

Working From Home? Boss May Be Peeking Over Your Shoulder – Shoutout to @simplysql. 🙂

Post-YamJam12 Email Reduction Exercise

I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming since YamJam…lots of ideas tumbling around in my noggin about how a Yammer network can be energized. Here’s one I came up with and proposed internally that drew the sound of crickets. I still think it’s a good idea, so please tell me why it’s not.

You may have heard of No-Email-Fridays, when people shut down Outlook for the day and refrain from sending or receiving emails. That idea has always intrigued me, but I realized that there are two big problems with it. First of all, it doesn’t really stop you from using Email (The Missus coined the phrase “Stale-Mail”, which I really like), it just changes when you use it. You’ll more than likely set up an auto-response the night before letting anyone who contacts you know what you’re doing, which actually adds messages to the mix, and then spend Saturday or Monday responding to the messages you would have normally responded to on Friday.

What have you actually achieved there?

Secondly, you’re going to annoy everyone who isn’t playing along. The people who get the auto-response explaining what you’re doing will likely think it’s ridiculous, and if you don’t set up the auto-response you are going to be ignoring people. People tend to dislike being ignored.

But what if you entered into mutual “blacklist” agreements with people who understand the need to reduce emails? It’s pretty simple–you simply agree to stop emailing each other. You can call, you can use a tool like Yammer, you can Skype…whatever.

But no emails.

To gamify it, you could implement a rule that anyone who slips up and sends an email has to donate $1 to charity or buy the other person a cup of coffee. The penalty phase of this could get really fun and creative.

I think this would be an easy way to immediately reduce email. So easy in fact, I thought up a wrinkle to make it challenging. What if you were required to recruit one more participant in this program every week or month? It would require some evangelism, but I think it would be worth it.

Shoot holes in this idea for me please.

Random Link Dump of Recent Readings

It’s been a while since I posted a random sample of the stuff I’ve been reading. If you only read one of these articles, read the very first one.

Everyone a Harlot

In healthy patriarchies, men push themselves to earn the respect and admiration of other men. They work to prove their strength, courage and competence to each other. Men pride themselves on their reputation for mastery of their bodies, their actions, and their environment. They want to be known for what they can do, not just how well or who they can screw.

‘Marathon blues’ can affect Olympians and recreational athletes alike – Someone once told me there was a high rate of alcoholism for former top-level runners and former astronauts for this very reason. I haven’t seen numbers on that though.

This Handmade ‘Game of Thrones’ Board Game Is Gorgeous – The young’uns are loving strategy games these days. Can I justify this?

Cycle Workouts To Improve Your Cadence – Perfect for cross training workouts while marathon training, and a good investment.

Lost Photos – discovering lost photos in your email account – One of these days…

How To Make Caricatures Using GIMP – I hope to get around to doing this at some point.

The Benefits Of A Negative Bike Split – Wait…tell me one more time. It may actually sink in this time around.

Importing SharePoint 2007 list templates (STP) into SharePoint 2010 – Kick Aise. Quick and easy!

How the Lunar X Prize Is a Preview of the New Space Age – Popular Mechanics

How to Develop Film Using Coffee and Vitamin C! Srsly! | Photojojo – Is there anything coffee can’t do?

TURNING TURDS INTO TRIUMPHS – What she said!

An Act of Great Cunning – Whoa!

Senate rules do not allow a filibuster when the bill under consideration has to do with imposing or repealing a tax. If the Republicans take the Senate and the Presidency, they can now repeal the individual mandate. They will not need sixty votes.

Yammer Should Be Called “Sweet Potato-er”

Sweet Potato Yammer

Don’t “sweet potatoes” sound so much tastier than “yams”?

I posted this to our network this morning, but it’s also worth stating publicly.

My new favorite thing about Yammer:

It’s so much more convenient to come back from vacation and read what people wrote in groups/threads on Yammer over the past couple of days than it is to try to sort through all the messages and replies on email. I can quickly sort out what’s important using the groups and tags, get to the meat, find out what issues are already resolved, and see what I’ve missed. It’s already organized for me!

I’ve loved Yammer for quite a while for reducing emails and helping me sort through information real time, but I hadn’t really considered the benefit of easily catching up from a vacation until our usage at work increased to a level that I could really tell the difference.

Of course, I was never too far behind anyway because I could follow along through my mobile device the whole time I was gone and have a good idea of what was going on. This was pretty easy to do too because I could cut out all the peripheral noise on Yammer and just watch the groups that are of highest priority.

There’s such a high signal to noise ratio compared to email!

Sweet.

Google’s Moats, “The Wire” Reviewed, and Hagar Abduction Link Dump

Android as Google’s Moat – I like this take on Android as a defensive product for Google. I also like what that implies for us as consumers–costs keep decreasing while functionality keeps increasing. Can you believe someone wanted to charge for a web browser at one time? Now there are several free browsers, and they are still trying to out-do each other in features and speed!

The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire” – Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Are We Better Off Today? – Definitely. I think the problem is that we have a skewed idea of "comfortable". If I have food in my belly and shoes (hopefully some $1 Old Navy flip-flops) on my feet and I'm not bleeding, chances are I'd say I'm comfortable.

6 Common E-Mail Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make – Read the bold points as a checklist before you hit send.

Integration Of Google Voice and Sprint – A daddy of an announcement. Now…do I have to pick one number or the other to have seamless integration? I like having both.

"Red" rocker Sammy Hagar says abducted by aliens – Still trying to "Out-Dave" DRL. You sir, are no David Lee Roth

NYT’s DIgital Pricing Plan Discriminates By Device – Alternate Headline: Requiem to an Ass Biter.

I’m reading– December 17th through December 21st

I’m Dreaming of a Tight Christmas – “I’m dreaming of disappointing the analysts and economists and politicians who are crossing their fingers in hopes that spending will be up. I would not have us die of consumption. I would have us live, each in his place, each knowing it well and loving it too.”

I’m down like four flat tires.

How To Write Brief Emails Without Being A Jerk – Twitter is good training for being succinct and clear.

On Princesses – I’d like to see more “Part II” type movies, where we see not how to become a princess, but how to act like one. Less focus on the “saved by a Prince” story, and more on “being kind to others.

Mind-Blowing Translation App – Even a 13 year old I know is impressed. That’s impressive.

Nine Writers Carrying the Torch for Men’s Fiction – As much as I read, it’s hard for me to say that I should read more. But I should read more books, and I should read more fiction.

Delicious Link Dump– October 9th through October 12th

I Married a Mad Man – This sounds more like Mad Men: The Movie

The End of the Email Era – Someone faxed this to me. I made photocopies and sent it to several friends via USPS: "Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave…"

Hot Pink Mess – Oh. My.

Rob Golding » phpBB3 WSOD (White Screen of Death) – Thanks to these guys for the solution. Short answer…log in to the admin panel and clear the cache. This is something they need to fix. Oh…maybe I should check for an update while I'm at it. 😀

10 things you need to stop tweeting about – I don't violate many of these too often. There are so many other ways to get people on Twitter mad at you without even trying.

The Nobel Intentions Prize – I'm so glad BHO won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's brought out the comedic genius in lots of people on Twitter.

Levels of business intelligence – Nice article that 'splains a lot.

Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize – "…some sort of bizarre Onion gag?" Now that's funny.

Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and More!

From  No Silence Here.

Blogging is often cited in the obits of newspapers. Twittering is often cited in the obits of blogs. And now I’m hearing Facebook and MySpace cited as the killers of Twitter. Some soon-to-be freshmen in high school told me last week they’re not on blogs or Twitter. They’re strictly Facebook or MySpace.

And just wait for Wave to ramp up. I think it may eventually kill email, along with marginalizing all of these other communication tools. Ok, “kill” may be a strong word, but the future of communication definitely lies in a One-Stop-Shop, real time type of communication instead of these various distributed and semi-connected tools we’re using now.

In the future, every communication tool will be useful for 15 minutes.

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