Retention is a Measure of Motivation

Ron Baker’s ‘Your Employees are Volunteers’ is a much needed post. It includes gems like: “Today, knowledge workers themselves own the firm’s means of production in their heads.” “In fact, your people are actually volunteers, since whether or not they return to work on any given day is completely based on their own volition.” Thanks …

Postel’s Law Asks, What Are You Ignoring Today?

There are quite a few memes circling this week I’m actively ignoring. Things where this sentence is exactly the amount of energy I’m giving them. If you also follow Doc Searls, these are snowballs I don’t think deserve pushing. This is where the attention metadata stuff gets mushy. I’m talking about the triangles in the …

Zillow.com First Impressions

Zillow.com launched today, and since our place is still on the market, I thought I’d check what Zillow’s estimate for 2701 31st Ave NE was. Huh, Zillow puts the marker above the 189,900 we started the listing at. Cool. Overall, the site is zippy and filled w/ ajax-y goodness (and I can therefore forgive the …

My Four Favorite Raintribe Songs

Michael Koppelman recently finished uploading Raintribe‘s chantmoansingwhisperscream album. I’ve really enjoyed the tracks and thought I’d share my favorites with you: Love Like Death (the more I listen to this one, the more I like it) Money Free Man Judgement Day Give ’em a listen, and if you like them, drop him a couple bucks …

RocketBoom Ads Not Worth $15,000

I wasn’t surprised to hear RocketBoom is pursuing a sponsor (via eBay even), nor was I surprised they want to keep full creative control (they should). I was surprised that the high bid (as of this writing) of $15,099.99 hadn’t passed their hidden reserve. Now, I know you need 10x that for a decent music …

Three Thoughts on Demand Supplying Itself

“So what do you do when the deer have guns, You get into the ammunition business.” – Gordon Borrell “Attention tuning will reduce RSS overload but not noise to signal.” – Steve Gillmor “[Real Estate] Sellers and buyers can figure out pricing via Zillow; they can bid via Redfin; they can list via PropertyShark or …

Shop Vac in the Suburbs Music Video

Almost 50 years ago, Redbook magazine and On Film made In the Suburbs, a promotional video for suburban life. A few weeks back, Jonathan Coulton released “Shop Vac” a catchy little theme song for suburban life. I wondered what they’d look like together. Behold the power of Creative Commons and archive.org: Shop Vac in the …

How I Met Your Mother Same But Better Than Coupling

If you follow this blog, you’ll know how much Jen and I enjoyed the BBC’s Coupling. We never caught the US version, but heard it was awful. Unlike the US Office – it didn’t last long enough to grow into it’s own. Lately we’ve been really enjoying How I Met Your Mother. Yes, Neil Patrick …