links, ideas and geek stuff

“Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.”

—Seth Godin

Careers: How Do I Work This?
In A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Pink asserts that right-brained “R-directed thinkers … exemplified by creators and caregivers, [though] shortchanged by organizations, and neglected in schools, deliver right-brain results.” The ability to see out of the box, to synthesize or invent new ideas, products, solutions or services will be more prized in the Conceptual Age than it was until now

Technology Review: The Secret of Apple Design
“There were three evaluations required at the inception of a product idea: a marketing requirement ­document, an engineering requirement document, and a user-­experience document,” Norman recalls. Rolston elabo­rates: “Marketing is what people want; engineering is what we can do; user experience is ‘Here’s how people like to do things.’”

Why Apple is the best retailer in America - March 19, 2007
“One of the best pieces of advice Mickey ever gave us was to go rent a warehouse and build a prototype of a store, and not, you know, just design it, go build 20 of them, then discover it didn’t work,” says Jobs. In other words, design it as you would a product. Apple Store Version 0.0 took shape in a warehouse near the Apple campus. “Ron and I had a store all designed,” says Jobs, when they were stopped by an insight: The computer was evolving from a simple productivity tool to a “hub” for video, photography, music, information, and so forth. The sale, then, was less about the machine than what you could do with it. But looking at their store, they winced. The hardware was laid out by product category - in other words, by how the company was organized internally, not by how a customer might actually want to buy things. “We were like, ‘Oh, God, we’re screwed!’” says Jobs.

Hacker. Dropout. CEO. - Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook - Social Networking
When Mark Zuckerberg showed up in Palo Alto three years ago, he had no car, no house, and no job. Today, he’s at the helm of a smokin’-hot social-networking site, Facebook, and turning down billion-dollar offers. Can this kid be for real?