Big move to Alberta today.

Will be offline for several days.

Be back soon … ish.…

Hugh MacLeod from Jeff Jarvis on Dell:

“The thing is, when you start turning your products into commodities, you start treating your customers like commodities.”

Wondering: Is this what it takes to make a million $1 sales? Treat customers …

Love this stuff.

Ever hear of the The Ad Lib Game Development Society (ALGDS)? The ideas behind it go anywhere. ALGDS is an attempt to rapidly gain experience which is usually hard-won and takes tonnes of time to build. …

Dan Shaffer on “design thinking“:

“… design thinking is creative, innovative, and focused on problem-solving. But so is the thinking of many different types of professions: lawyers, engineers, and contractors, to name only a few. So lets remove

Design as Story-telling by Thomas Erickson.

(via cph127)…

The cool part of Albert’s story is its utility. There’s no riddle to solve. Just choices to make.

You can choose high design, narrowly defined clients, exceptional service, concierge-level attentiveness — and the lifestyle that goes with it.

Or you …

Keynote by David Kelley, Founder and Chairman, Ideo, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Founder of Stanford’s New “D” School:

– doing well in technological innovation, rounding the corner on business innovation, but still have lots to do on human-centred …

To me this is incredibly interesting. And maybe it’s obvious to the rest of you and you wish I’d clam up. But the gorgeous climax of these dynamics is the lifestyle and ether it affords Albert.

Ever been to LensCrafters? …

Thought I’d try an experiment: Pass protected posts.

My posts are sometimes a bit mysterious. Leave the punchline out. Let you think a bit.

I’m trying harder to see what sings for people. But I often get questions like, …

Kottke writes:

“… can we have a discussion about where technology and user experience on the web are headed without using any of the following words or concepts:

Ajax, web services, weblogs, Google, del.icio.us, Flickr, folksonomy, tags, hacks, podcasting,

When I went to Albert we must have tried 40 pairs of glasses … 40 pieces.

Stacked up on the table in front of me were frames nearly indistinguishable from each other. And tirelessly he placed them on me, stepped …

In the theme of all things gamble — Steve Pavlina on blackjack:

Novices miss golden opportunities.

“Novice blackjack players will almost invariably play their hands too conservatively. They’ll stand too often when they should hit, and they’ll fail to double

Rich Pan’s got some great questions on innovation.…

Stuck in a rut? Maybe these ideas will shake you loose.

(via Business Opportunities Blog)…

Groove, watch Wikipedia grow — and mourn with London (or drink tea).

This is absolutely stunning in its implications.

(via Amit Gupta)…

Biomimicry.net:

“Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems.”

“The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of

…

Into the room walks a professor. In his hands is a jar, filled with water, and in the water swims a goldfish.

Placing the jar and fish on his desk he turns to the single student in the room and …

These guys just asked me to sign up.

“We deploy the world’s most developed expert network: the Councils of Advisors.”

Cool model, eh? And cool name. Who doesn’t want to be part of the swank Council of Advisors?

How could …

Conversation yesterday:

Me: There’s loads of guys doing work that looks just like mine.

CEO: Well, there’s guys that talk smack and guys that get stuff done. Be the second.

Me: …

CEO: So, how much do I make this …

Rich…! on free:

“Think about it, cheap is probably one of the worst marketing strategies around, surely then it stands to reason that free, which is pretty much the deep-end of cheap, ain’t going to be much better, especially

Seth Godin on two kinds of writing:

“If you’re writing for strangers, make it shorter.

Use images and tone and design and interface to make your point. Teach people gradually.

If you’re writing for colleagues, make it more robust.

I had a great conversation with Albert. Instantly piqued, I pummelled him with loads of questions:

How much advertising? None. Just word of mouth.

How long in business? 26 years.

How long just buying one piece of each creation?

I just bought a pair of $750 eye glasses.

They’re made by a group of 25 year-old German “creators” (which is important … read on) and there is only one other pair in the entire city of Ottawa — Albert, …

Loved this mix between science and web-links.

Mike Grehan’s dad in Filthy Linking Rich:

“… in my experience I’ve discovered that looking for the million dollar deal is very difficult. Getting a million dollars from one person is hard.

Found this on Asterisk.

Keith thinks it’s a great read for consultants — I think it’s a great read for entrepreneurs.

With exploding personal networks, niche-marketing, and tribal companies entrepreneurs need to starting acting like the consultants described in …

I’ve been given several great career options recently. Two were particularly fetching:

1. Stay in government but raise the game to another level — Start helping the highest level bureaucrats identify, learn about, and build strategies on long-range issues facing …

I talked to Doug Hall last week — I’ve been trying to make a few important career choices and wanted his advice. He asked two questions: “where will you grow more” and “what adds more diversity”.

Growth and diversity, these …

43 Folders has an excerpt of an interview with Brian Eno.

“Brian Eno … on the creation of “The Microsoft Sound” (the gentle little tune that plays when you boot your Windows PC):

‘The idea came up at the

Fast Company: Masters of Design…

Invokative perspective on innovation.…

Related to the last post:

If SMART is action steps that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound, and SMART doesn’t work with wicked problems, maybe we should look for ones that are FLUID.

F is for F…

I don’t deal in issues as weighty as racism or as complex as a Nasa space shuttle — but I do work on thorny and complicated problems. But I still see, as Patti just experienced, a deep desire to choose …

If you are an entrepreneur, you need to pay attention to this post.

There is open source business like the business experiment and then there is open door business like Google, Red Hat, and Flickr — come in, walk …

Not too long ago I wrote a series of posts on pitching. It was mostly for my own sake that I put those pieces together — I wanted to better understand what pitching actually meant and where it was …

Yesterday, Hugh posted on trust and blogging. He said that he’s increasingly reluctant to do business with non-bloggers — that cog in the trust wheel needs to be there.

—

Seth Godin recently wrote that “the only security you have …

via loic le meur blog

That’s what’s on the mind of Jeff Bezos:

Execution.

Success is almost completely defined by execution. Too many ideas and too few actions. The trick is execution of the right things.…

Science and economics meet: neuroeconomics.…