February 2012
4 posts
“The quiet transformation of Alaska Airlines into something of a model is one of...”
– The Weekend Interview with Bill Ayer: An Airline That Makes Money. Really. - WSJ.com
Confirming What We Already Know About the Facebook... →
Paul Carr:
Facebook is an amazing company — arguably the most amazing company of our generation — and what Zuckerberg and his team has built is phenomenal… but it has been that way for a while. All today’s filing does is confirms what we already know.
Couldn’t agree more.
Also, I loved this:
… [W]ith the company having just filed and the rest of the tech blogosphere...
Alaska Airlines and Starbucks Team Up to Serve... →
Starbucks is now served on Alaska Airlines.
January 2012
11 posts
Alaska Air Group Reports Record Adjusted Full-Year... →
Alaska Airlines chairman and chief executive officer, Bill Ayer:
We are pleased to report record adjusted earnings for the second year in a row,” said Bill Ayer, chairman and chief executive officer. “The improvement was due to schedule optimization and network expansion, high load factors, lower non-fuel unit costs, and industry-leading customer service and operational performance.
...
When Wikipedia Takes a Stance →
smarterbits:
Canadian poet and novelist John Degen, on Wikipedia’s stance on SOPA:
Tomorrow, when Wikipedia turns the lights back on, and folks look up SOPA and PIPA to find out what happened, does anyone believe there will be a balanced, unbiased Wikipedia entry on the subject? How unbelievably sad.
I had failed, through all the blackout buzz today, to even consider the implications of...
Steve Jobs: What's Wrong With Education Cannot Be...
Interesting piece by Wired magazine. Jim Dalrymple calls out a quote from Steve Jobs about education:
I used to think that technology could help education. I’ve probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I’ve had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What’s wrong with...
Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will... →
Andrew Sullivan on Obama’s promises:
Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician.
And:
What liberals have never understood...
Cruise Ship Runs Aground in Italy →
Survivors from a luxury cruise ship that ran aground and tipped over, leaving at least three dead and 69 people still unaccounted for, described Saturday a chaotic evacuation.
The Wirecutter →
Great new site from Brian Lam of Gizmodo fame that highlights the best gadgets.
Brian has the following to say about the site:
Even though I will be blogging occasionally, The Wirecutter is not another tech blog. The Wirecutter is mostly a list of amazing gadgets.
He also had the following to say, and it made me smile:
Headlines like this: “Exclusive: Motorola Spyder (Droid RAZR for...
1 tag
Catching Up to Apple →
Yesterday was a big day for the mobile phone industry, and no I’m not talking about the unveiling of the Nokia Lumia 900, (even though I’m personally excited about that device).
Five year’s ago yesterday, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone to the world. It was unlike anything we had every seen, almost like it was from the future. Then Steve said this:
Now, software on...
“When I write I make a conscious effort to generate a sense of enjoyment–to...”
– William Zinsser: A Joyful Noise
“Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1)...”
– C. S. Lewis, in a letter to Sarah, his godchild, on 3 April 1949 via Stan Carey (via bobulate)
November 2011
5 posts
"What I Learned Building the Apple Store" →
Ron Johnson, former VP for retail at Apple:
There isn’t one solution. Each retailer will need to find its own unique formula. But I can say with confidence that the retailers that win the future are the ones that start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers.
That statement applies to more than just retail.
"Your competitive advantage" →
Seth Godin:
When you increase your discernment, maximize your awareness of the available options and then go ahead and ship work that scares others… that’s when you succeed.
More time on the problem isn’t the way. More guts is. When you expose yourself to the opportunities that scare you, you create something scarce, something others won’t do.
Overpowering Perspectives
I love Mandy Brown.
How many of us have read Nicholas Carr’s latest work about the idea of ‘Google making us stupid’ and believed him? Yep, I’m in that camp. In fact, I found his argument so compelling that it kind of terrified me.
Enter Many Brown’s reading note: “How to read in an age of abundance”:
Katherine Hayles points out the oft-overlooked...
Focus on What Matters Most; Family, Friends &...
Today I was reminded that life is precious, and all the little things… well, that’s what they are - little things. They can be swept aside for the big things; things like friends, family, and great colleagues. This time of year, it’s easy to lose focus on what matters, so let’s all try harder not to forget.
Bezos: We're Stubborn on Vision, Flexible on... →
My favorite quote from the entire interview:
Our first shareholder letter, in 1997, was entitled, “It’s all about the long term.” If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing...
May 2011
1 post
“99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media...”
– Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns”
April 2011
6 posts
Alaska Air Group Reports Record First Quarter... →
Alaska Airlines posts record first-quarter profit; net income under GAAP: $74.2 million.
Horace Dediu on the Explosive Growth of OSX-based... →
So the weight of evidence is beginning to be conclusive: the iPad is the new PC. It should be clear by now that the iPad moves computing into new contexts so it does not yet substitute the PC market but extends it and increases consumption.
Ben Brooks' Smart Approach for Follow-up on... →
Ben Brooks:
When I follow-up with people that I have assigned a task via email, I simply forward them the email I sent them and ask for a status update. I haven’t had any complaints about it and I seem to be getting much faster action on items that I send. People don’t want to be reminded of stuff they didn’t do, so they seem to get my stuff done first. This is a nice little bonus for me.
I...
iPhone Notes App Comparison →
If you’re looking for the perfect note taking app for your iPhone or iPad, this is a great place to start.
“People—myself included—frequently part with their money on the web, but only...”
– Mandy Brown: On the news
March 2011
4 posts
Time at the Dinner Table is Precious →
Someone once said to me, and I paraphrase, that “everything can be solved over dinner.” Perhaps it can. Perhaps we can tell something (or everything) about a future scenario in a few seconds. Perhaps everything can be solved over the dinnertable, and if we know the stories we want to tell, I would only add, “solved, prototyped, and predicted.”
I think one of the reasons my family is so close is...
The Influencer Vortex →
I completely agree with Alexia:
[…] we’re now viewing each other as “influencers” and have somehow stopped looking at each other as “people” — I didn’t study so hard to get out of high school just to be faced with a whole ‘nother high school as an adult.
Don’t get sucked into the “influencer” vortex. Yes, influencers are important, but the ones that are worth your time...
"Time Spent Is Time Gained"
→
Spending extra time on invisible deliverables is incredibly valuable. Process is the real battle on many projects; the output is just the documented results of that battle. Work on your invisible deliverables, and marvel at how much smoother your projects become.
February 2011
7 posts
“Ego is weakness asking for attention.”
– - @rands
Gladwell Challenges Our Fixation on "New" Social... →
But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along. Barely anyone in East Germany in the nineteen-eighties had a...
John Gruber's Success Metric for Speaking →
For me as a speaker, my favorite thing to hear afterwards is something along the lines of “I disagree with you about (some major point of the talk), but, I must admit, you made a good case for that, and have given me something to think about.” I don’t want to get up on stage and tell the audience only what they already know, or what they already believe. I think public presentations are ideally...
"Momentous events in Egypt have reverberated... →
Emphasis mine:
The momentous events in Egypt, the most populous Arab country and once the axis on which the Arab world revolved, have reverberated across the region. King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his Cabinet after protests there Tuesday, and organizers in Yemen and Syria, with their own authoritarian rulers, have called for protests.
Musical subway map →
Conductor: www.mta.me from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.
Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.
Speculation on the next MacBook Pro →
Marco Arment:
Given how awesome the new MacBook Air is, I’m interested to see what Apple does with the other laptops in the lineup.
The Benefits of Being a Morning Person
Shawn Blanc on “Rising Early”:
In the morning my mind is more clear; there is not yet the accumulation of “mental clutter” from the activities and worries of the day; the whole day seems like a blank canvas. And because of the endless possibilities the morning brings with it, I feel liberated and comfortable to do some of my best work of the day. Also it’s the time of day when coffee...
January 2011
6 posts
Make Love
A new favorite song of mine.
MG Siegler on the Mac App Store
Using the Mac App Store for the past few hours, my overall thought is: how did Apple not do this sooner? You click to download an app and it’s done. No tricky installation needed. And you hop on to a different machine and can re-download any app you’ve already bought. Updates are all centralized. And I’ve probably spent more today on apps than I have in the past year total.
Now just imagine...
American Airlines on Sabre's Actions
Emphasis mine.
Sabre’s actions are discriminatory and patently inconsistent with both its contractual obligations and its professed goal of ensuring full transparency for the benefit of consumers and travel agents. In contrast, the actions only serve to protect Sabre’s market position and attempt to force airlines and travel agencies to rely exclusively on its legacy systems that only...
“Doing the right thing matters, more than you realize in the moment when...”
– Gina Trapani on 2010 Lessons Learned
December 2010
4 posts
“What can airlines do better?” asked Michael Boyd, president of aviation...”
– Passenger Outrage Rises as Winter Storm Snarls U.S. Travel - Bloomberg
On expectations & the future:
[W]e expect the future to unfold as a magnified or extrapolated copy of the present. We expect that the next big thing will be a bigger version of the last big thing. What we don’t expect, yet what is most likely, is that the next big thing won’t look important to us at all—until it’s so important that we can’t ignore it.
via Liz Danzico’s Bobulate
“Ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” not only honors the thousands of lesbians and gay...”
– NYTimes.com: Last Ban Standing, an op-ed by George Chauncey
Key findings of Pentagon report on "Don't Ask,... →
Seventy percent of troops surveyed believed that repealing the law would have mixed, positive or no effect.
November 2010
8 posts
NYTimes on publishing the cables:
As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.
I’m on the fence about this one.