(really) entrepreneureal

This email was sitting in my inbox this morning:

Now, I’m not one of the rabid users who has a dedicated Facebook tab in their browser window, but I do check the site at least once, maybe twice a day (sometimes many more).  So why does Facebook think it’s at all OK to send me an email reminding me that I haven’t checked in for all of, what, 4 hours?!  And this to remind me that I have a poke waiting for me?

Please. Facebook, get a grip.

A quick shout out to the folks at MyMiniCards, who made the awesome minicards I carry everywhere with me.

Check em out: www.myminicards.com

My morning routine goes something like this:

Open Firefox (if it’s not already open), and peruse my 15-some saved tabs which include: Digg, Twitter, BBC, Triplepundit, Treehugger, Facebook, Endgadget,  Mashable, and Huffington Post.

Then, or often before, it’s on to gmail, followed by my favorite bloggers: Seth Godin, Anil Dash, Cooper Design, Pistachio, PostSurf, and a range of others.

Add in writing a post for this blog, Triplepundit and GreenOptions, and the morning is pretty full – and this is before “work”.

Given that it’s clear we are rapidly losing our ability to focus for long periods of time (thanks internet!), how is the “social media information overload” set to define the coming years, and fundamentally alter the way that future generations interact, digest and think about information?

My sense is that the prognosis ain’t good. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s quality, not quantity.

The same goes for time.  Seth points out that Malcolm Gladwell’s claim in Outliers that it takes, on average, 10,000 hours of work to make it big is a little simplistic (because the 10,000 hours is relative to what everyone else is doing).

I add that it’s not only what you do with your time and how much time you dedicate that’s important, but when you put in the hours, too. It’s no accident that the garage-side-project-cum-hot-success story is so common: people who put in the time after hours are showing a level of commitment and passion that is hard to beat, and it’s this passion that helps them get through the Dip.

When do you put in your 10,000?

Mark Zuckerberg has done it: Facebook is a household name, and is slowly kicking ass and taking names in the social networking arena (or not so slowly, in fact).  Mommas, poppas, grannies and even babies are signing up, and you know it’s a good thing when people can get fired because of their Fb profile shenanigans.

So why does Facebook consistently flout every social networking rule in the book?  From publishing feeds without asking permission (or allowing for comprehensive user control), to selling Fb user habits to help with ad targeting, it seems like the team at Fb is slowly losing touch with reality.  Sure, Fb is a free service, but the social compact that we all enter into when joining Facebook, whether written down or not, can’t just be thrown out the window.

Take Fb’s latest transgression: changing the page layout to make feed/status updates more visible.  Surely a slimly disguised dig at Twitter (and a sadly belated recognition that Fb didn’t realize that status updates were one of its biggest assets), the fact that the company up and changed the entire layout of the platform without asking its users for permission, or provide opt in/opt out privileges, is a huge social networking no-no. If people hated Facebook for first changing its design a few months back even when they were allowed to opt out, did Fb really think the latest layout change would go over well?

Zuckerberg definitely created a new genre of social networking with Facebook, but if he keeps ignoring the unwritten rules of social networking 101, his baby could quickly find itself in trouble.

Recognize this, staple of lawyers and note takers everywhere?

How about if we mix it up a little and go with no lines?  ::: gasp :::

Use a different pen?

Or add even more to our arsenal?

And why do we insist on taking notes like this:

When this works just as well (even better, I say):

(especially when space isn’t your enemy)

Why do we insist on coloring inside the lines?