Here’s this week’s links:

• Great post about how experts cause more failures. Nice comparison between software and other processes, and how communication is often the main reason for failure, not how skilled or talented individual performers are.
• Top 200 blogs for developers.  When I see these lists I’m reminded first how many blogs there are, and then how many I don’t know about.
• Tools of Escape. In this case necessity is the mother of invention, as these ingenious tools were made by inmates in German prisons. These are AMAZING.
• A brief history of social media. Nice graphic showing the history of digital social media from 1997 to 2007.

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Sorry its been awhile - on the homestretch for the new book, had a vacation, and also a total ISP meltdown. It’s been an interesting month :)

Here’s this week’s links:

• Fifth major delay of the Boeing 787. The story of airplane project management is interesting as unlike most projects everyone knows people will die if they don’t design it right. The way people respond to the 787 project has been interesting. The plane has still has not flown, but orders are still high.
• Iran’s Internet spying gear (built w/help from Nokia and Siemens).  The story makes it hard to go to far, but “If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them,” said Mr. Roome, the spokesman for the project.
• A brief history of Agile project management. The curious thing is how most of the criteria defined by MacCormack match what Microsoft was doing in the early 1990s. (See the book Microsoft Secrets, it’s all in there - daily builds, frequent releases, etc.).
• NYC selling subway station names. I suspect this always annoys the current generation, but later generations won’t even notice.

And here’s what’s new on Speaker Confessions:

• I want your worst speaking disasters! Can be your story or something you saw. $200 in prizes. Great list of 20+ stories already.
• Instant speaker feedback.  I saw a clever method for collecting feedback on speakers at a conference this month.

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Here are this week’s links:

• Sporks and more. I have and will always have a love affair with the spork.
  
• 10 beautiful world records.  Some are cheezy but some are in fact beautiful. Wonder how many are photoshoped though.
• Michael Jordan on failure.  I will always love this commercial.
• This is not a game. They held a competition of driving video gamers and the winner got to race in an actual driving race.  Interesting story about the process.

From Speaker Confessions:

• How to give a great Ignite talk.  What I’ve learned from doing 4 different ignite talks, including an actual ignite talk on how to give an ignite talk!

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• Sketching is thinking. Just about anything you do without judgment likely helps your thinking. And you don’t have to draw well or have any training to sketch, doodle or keep a notebook.
• AMAZING photos of the Hubble repair mission. Forget what we can learn from Hubble, these photos remind me how amazing it is we put people in space.
• Bad reporting in action: NY Drivers worst in nation. The written test is almost irrelevant, don’t you think? At least it was when I took it way back when..
• If you are having a day without wonder, watch this. A time lapse video of the night sky, in the middle of nowhere, showing the milky way. Before these city things, we all could see stuff like this.

From Speaker Confessions:

• Why we say ummmmm. Some facts on one of the most annoying things about public speakers.

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Here are this weeks links:

• A story of working for the New Yorker. The good news is it’s candid and tightly written. The bad news is it’s written in twitter - here’s the archived and easier to read version.
• Small and Special (Seattle) - event in Seattle on June 30th about people who run small and special companies. Run by Hillel from Jackson Fish Market
• Obesity and overweight trends in the U.S. - if only you could buy stock in how fat we are.
• The makers of things. Nice essay on one of my favorite objects in the world - The Brooklyn bridge (here’s my essay on lessons from it)
• Stats on twitter use - it’s a small sample size but the data says about 5% of Americans use twitter.
• The paradoxes of lectures - there’s no way around it. There are strange things about the world of lectures and the quality of speakers. Here’s 3 observations.

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Here’s this week’s roundup of good stuff.

First some new stuff up on speakerconfessions.com:

• Should speakers ban or support twitter? - some nice data about how twitter was used at one popular talk.
• Learning from Make TV’s Bill Gurstelle - He’s the author of Backyard Ballistics and does live lectures as well as appear regularly on a TV show. Good stuff here.
• The myth of the tough crowd - What makes a tough crowd so bad? Do speakers create their own problems? Here’s my opinion.

And the regular web round-up:

• In defense of eye candy. Some great examples of why making things ‘pretty’ isn’t of trivial importance, and does effect people’s behavior.
• 13 things that do not make sense. It’s a great mystery to me why, given how little we know, how little time we spend talking about all the stuff we have not figured out yet. I love these lists.
• Empowerment, whether you like it or not. This hits at one of the roots of micromanagement - often the boss has less information than their report on something and needs to force them to make the call. Good stuff.

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Here’s a gaggle of links for this week:

• Take criticism like Trump. The weird thing about modeling anything on Trump is how random his decisions on his TV show often are.
• The post windows era. Articles like this have been written for 15 years. The thing is Windows will be around for another 15 years, and will probably be a billion dollar business for that long just on inertia. Windows might be less relevant each year, but it will still sell. Frankly Windows has always been less relevant to people than the apps that run on it and that was true before the web.
• Reality of a Times bestseller. People are really surprised by how little writers get paid, yet at the same time people have no hesitation borrowing or going to the library instead of paying money to get them.
• Liner notes from the game Spore. This stuff is just cool - it’s a bit technical, but I always like behind the scenes stuff from people who were not the head honchos.
• Your business card is crap. Beyond explanation. I just hope this is a joke.
• Why discuss project failure?. Nice little list that dovetails well with why designers fail.
• Great interview with David Simon, creator of the Wire, by Bill Moyer.

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Here’s this week’s linkfestage:

• Science fact about twitter (NSFW). This is the kind of diagram I wish was more commonly used by people who use diagrams.
• The Mistake bank. An attempt to create a web community around failures and discussing mistakes.
• Long live the Atari 2600. I still think some 2600 games are more fun to play than the latest games - they had to have great gameplay since the graphics were a joke. I wrote about this years ago in teeny tiny piece for Wired, and it’s still true. Warlords, Air Sea Battle and Yars Revenge baby.
• The latest biggest thing. Article about how twitter ruins relationships. Not saying it doesn’t, but this is the kind of article that has been written every 5 years about whatever the new thing is.

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Link joy for your browsing pleasure:

• Almost perfect: the story of WordPerfect. Anyone who used PCs before Windows knows about the glory and power that was WordPerfect 4.1. Here’s the story of how they imploded, written by one of their executives.
• The 10 worst Microsoft product names of all time. Some digs at MSFT are unfair, but the name thing is righteous. Most of these stink of naming by committee (no one in the room liked them either). Although I always thought Bob, for the name and the product, deserved more respect than it got. (hat tip, phil simon)
• Drucker on the five deadly sins of management. Good old Drucker is always a good read. Wonder what he’d say about our current recession.

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Here are these week’s interesting reads:

• What I learned in four years at amazon. My favorite part is how he says innovation and frugality go hand in hand. My least favorite part is how he doesn’t say what job he had there.
• How designers fail. More about attitude problems among young designers (sense of entitlement) but a good read nonetheless.
• Whatever Happened to ? - Nice list of tech products that dominated for awhile and disappeared. Anyone remember Hayes modems? This list is for you. It’s an inventory of case studies of innovators dilemma.
• 10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of | How-To | Smashing Magazine - #9 is the killer that makes me want to hunt web developers down and make them use their own pop-ui 5000 times a day.
  
• Why advertising is failing on the Internet - This article has some major assumptions that I don’t think pan out, but it’s well written, relatively short and makes it’s points clearly.

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Tons of good stuff this week:

• The evolution of a project manager - Interesting take on the various levels of impact a project manager can have, from paper pusher to team leader (hat tip, Raven)
• Harry Beck: The Paris Connection - Some of you may know I worked on a book about the london subway system. Beck is the guy who designed the famous 1930s version of their map, the basic design that lives on today. It was news to me, but he also proposed a map for the Paris subway system (hat tip, Paul).
• 8 Brilliant Scientific Screw-ups - the problem with articles like these about accidental inovation is they overlook the important part. After the accident, all these people did tons of work to figure out why the accident happened, something few of us ever do.
  
• Wall of Deliverables - I love the idea of a place for designers to share prototypes and work for critiquing and exchanging ideas. Hopefully this will take off. It’s funny to me how most dialog in the design community is over text based email - for all our tech, we still mostly describe our designs with words instead of showing them.
• A Medical Madoff: Anesthesiologist Faked Data in 21 Studies: Scientific American - another reason to always ask basic questions about research that seems too good to be true.
  
• Mapping the Innovation Gap - This is the most important chart I’ve seen in months about understanding how innovation happens.
• Abraham Lincoln: A Two-Way Innovator - Nice article about how important problem defining can be.  Many creators I know can work either way, they might have a preference, but once they have an idea they like, or a problem they’re interested in, they don’t really care.
  
• BrokenPictureTelephone.com - The Game of Miscommunication - Home - If this doesn’t make you laugh you need to seek help.  Only gripe is registration is a bear and there’s no easy way to just invite 5 friends to play. This one about a tornado is one of my favorites.
  
• Book Vs. Film: Watchmen | Books | A.V. Club - Interesting website focused on writing reviews of books made into films. This review is about the watchmen (a book and film I liked in both forms).
  

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Here’s the good stuff I’ve found recently:

• How the ideas for Raiders of The lost ark were developed. The transcript of conversations between Speilberg, Lucas and Kasdan for the plot and characters for Raiders of the lost ark. There’s a well written analysis as well as a link to the actual transcript.
• The mark of a minimalist blog. Some good examples of how less is more. I think everyone knows this instinctively, but can’t resist how tempting it is to add more.
• Writing for a living: joy or chore? Nice list of short interviews with writers who answer the question.
• Serious problems at nations airports. Anyone who flies knows how silly the security procedures are, but this report captures on video airport workers getting in without security checks. It’s certainly not news, but a better read on all this is this essay at the Atlantic on airport security as theater.

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