Daring Fireball: Philip Elmer-Dewitt on Apple’s Advertising Budget.

Daring Fireball: Buzz Andersen on the Purportedly Upcoming ‘Twitter Peek’ Dedicated Twitter Device.

Dan Cederholm (SimpleBits) Goes WP – Wow. Another big player on Wordpress. Love it!

20 Social Media Comics (via Jeff)

Social Media is the Means to Achieve Workplace Collaboration – (via Ethan)

Gruber on Microsoft, McFarlane and Plagiarism – Be sure to click through to the video comparison of The Simpsons/Family Guy. I had no idea it was that blatant.

THE Vin Diagram – Bravo.

7 Creative Ways to Introduce Social Media to Your Team – Good tips, and very good links to other resources and books to use in your battle to get Social Media accepted in our workplace, something I’m involved in right now (via Jeff)

The Bacon Bread Patty Melt – Incredible (via Aaron)

Wordpress Users – Use a Favicon – Good advice (via Alex)

The Real Cost of Windows 7 – (via Eric)

ColorJive – awesome.

Levelator – If you podcast, or develop elearning, a MUST!

Right now, you can get FOUR of their themes for the price of ONE. Sweet!

They have spectacular designers on their roster, and they provide great and timely support. I highly recommend them.

Get in before October and two things happen.

1. Use my affiliate link and I’ll get a kickback, 100% of which goes to charity for the rest of October. (and 50% after).
2. WooThemes is donating a portion of October proceeds to charity, too.

It’s win-win-win. You get great themes, I give to charity, and WooThemes gives to charity. Awesome.

** All of my October affiliate revenue is going to charity (because I love boobs), so feel free to try out some of the other service and resource providers in my sidebar!

1. Copy this:
   

   defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

2. Open Terminal (I love little hacks via Terminal)
3. Paste (Command-V) into Terminal and hit Enter
4. Close and Re-Open iTunes

(via TUAW)

If you use SizzlingKeys, it now displays half-ratings, and hopefully will add the half-rating function soon.

Sit back and enjoy the lyrics and the beat.

Then, bookmark it and play it whenever you’re having a shitty day.

Check out more from Franti here. Talent.

Anyhow, I’ll get to the point. Don’t be a chump. Don’t wait for a bailout. Pay back your debt, and do it in this order:

1. Friends: because you don’t want to be “that” guy.
2. Family: because you may need them to loan it back in the future.
3. Credit Cards: because they are brutal.
4. Automobile: because car payments suck.
5. Other (mortgage, student loans, etc.): because they are, typically, fair and manageable investments.

“How do I do this?” You might ask. Easy:

• Buy a used car. (And join a credit union so you’ll get a better rate).
• Go out to eat (or, especially, drink) one or two fewer times per week.
• Quit with the Starbucks (or variation). Brew at home, and buy a nice to-go cup. Like the specialty drinks? Have you seen the flavors the creamer companies have come out with recently. Buy some.
• Drop the gym membership. Be honest, you don’t really use it, anyway (if you’re in the 5% who actually do, kudos to you). Do some pushups and crunches, jump rope, ride a bike. Do yoga at home.
• Get a cell plan that fits your usage. One should never EVER pay overage fees or excessive texting fees.

Keep it simple. There are plenty of ways to save a few bucks here and there so you can take care of that pesky debt. Get creative. Most importantly, do it. However you have to. Do it.

25 reasons why your company is boring

Set My Browser Size – excellent resource for usability testing, screencasts, tutorials, etc.

Oldest human ancestor discovered – intriguing

Give a little (via Brian)

Social media venn diagram (via Moehlert)

The Social Media Guru (NSFW) – Hilarious, and so true! (via Chris)

A big-assed post about Fireworks – a love hate relationship I have as well (via DF)

People of Walmart – for those of you living under a rock that haven’t seen this yet.

Many developers (Brian, Veerle, etc.) go Pink for October. I’m doing the same, and if you’re in the market for a theme, take a look at WooThemes. One, they are awesome themes. Two, they are great people and offer incredible support.

I already donate 50% of all revenue generated on this site to charity. In addition, for October, if you use my WooThemes affiliate link, not only will WooThemes make their donation, but I will donate 100% of my referral revenue to Susan G. Komen For the Cure.

Don’t need a Wordpress theme? Check out TweetForBoobs.

Typically I import music, and put iTunes on random. I have several Smart Playlists that give me a random selection of unrated songs by genre. This allows me to rate songs for better iPod/iPhone distribution.

In my car, I have an MP3 CD player with an iPod adapter. When I’m not listening to the iPod (playlists or “Shuffle Songs” mode), I have one of a few mega MP3 CD collections in the system.

I don’t know when the last time was when I just sat down and listened to an album, all by itself, in the order it was recorded.

Today I’ve done just that, listening to The Killers’ “Day & Age.” I don’t know why I didn’t have shuffle on, but I rather enjoyed it, and plan to do it often in the future.

I’ll pick a few albums per week and drop them into a playlist to listen straight through.

In these days of $.99 for a single song, or downloading an entire discography, we should give a little love to the album, by itself and in its entirety.

Cat shower – not sure why cat videos are so addictive and funny, but they are.

The great irony about Web 2.0 – never thought about it this way, but I have experienced it this way.

Did you know? 4.0

Twitter: A Trust Ladder – Good insight from Aaron Silvers.

Curing Your Restlesness – Another gem from AoM

The Next Generation Bends Over – Insight on the Mint/Intuit deal.

Hard to believe it’s already been a year since Hurricane Ike tore through Galveston and Houston. We were lucky not to have any damage to our home, but it was quite an experience.

Check out these amazing photos from Boston.com showing the same shots from last year and the present.

We’re in a new house now, and so far, all is quiet on the hurricane front this season. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Numbers 6 and 7 speak to me right now.

6. Use one simple tool. For me, I just choose one text editor to write (usually either WriteRoom or TextEdit). The simpler the tool, the better, because full featured tools end up being distracting and you want to fiddle with all the options. A pen and pad are also great. If you must use more than one tool, keep them small and simple.

7. When you’re overwhelmed, focus on less. If the project is too big or complicated or just hard, narrow it down. If you must write a book, don’t focus on the whole book, or even a whole chapter. Just write a section — something you can do in a few hours or less. If you’re starting a new business, don’t worry about getting the whole thing up and running — what’s the smallest amount you can offer at first, the smallest unit you can create? Focus on that.

Read the Article

Technology We Should Be Teaching in College – Good stuff. (via Aaron)

Hierarchy of Digital Distractions – Just about perfect.

Interview with Rob Janoff, Designer of the Apple Logo

Small Batch Business – Duce Enterprises, exactly.

Leopard 10.6.1 released – Gruber always has good one-liners.

Notational Velocity 2.0 Beta – The next step in my attempts to simplify (via DF)

However, part of the reason I haven’t posted is because my setup is in a bit of disarray at the moment. When we moved earlier this year, I was stoked about the 10×10 ft. office built into the oversized garage. It was perfect for me.

Unfortunately, I found out in July that it was not properly insulated, and the windows were horrible, so, even though there was a portable AC unit pumping air into the room, it was unbearable in the Texas heat, so I moved inside, with plans to upgrade before next summer.

After spending the summer with a tiny desk that’s not a good ergonomic fit for me, I’m very ready for the cooler temps so I can move back to the real office.

When I do so, I’m in the market for a new chair. The one I have now is an old OfficeMax managers chair I bought for about $75 10 years ago.

I’ve heard pros and cons of spending a lot of cash on a good ergonomic chair, like the Aeron (including this hilarious review on Dack). I wonder if anyone reading this has any advice, or recommendations based on what you use, or if you’ve gone through my experience in the recent past, and what your solution was. Tim Ferriss has a decent review here as well.

I’ll hopefully be back in the outside office in less than a month, with a new chair, and then I will finally start – and, hopefully, finish – the series.

I attended a session with a similar theme last year at the Adobe Learning Summit, which targeted the explosion of online video in training and the 80/20 rule.

“If that 80 percent number rings a bell, it’s because of the famous Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough—which is exactly what Kaiser did.”

The point being, users will put a higher value on lower quality material that is available right when they need it and want it, over higher quality material that takes longer to develop. It’s in line with the Just Enough, Just In Time model of training that I find highly effective in most instances.

Think about it, then talk about it. Here or on Twitter.

(via Karen)

Sadly, Monday is the day I leave Wells Fargo completely as my main banking institution. I have been with Wells Fargo (or some variation) since 1994. First I was with Cattleman’s State Bank (in Austin), which was bought by Norwest, which was bought by Wells Fargo.

I’ve never had any major issues with WF, and almost all of the time I have very nice experiences in their branch locations, which are in very convenient locations for me. They hire very good branch employees.

However, they charge for everything. Almost every bank I know of had free online bill pay for years before Wells Fargo finally gave in more recently. ATM fees? Of course.

I kept my accounts with them because we had our mortgage through them, and it was very nice to see a big picture of our overall financial status. Now, with services like Mint, this is not a differentiator. In addition, I’ve been very happy with USAA banking, despite no physical locations. They refund every ATM fee, they give a decent % interest on personal checking, and they have superb customer service. So, all my personal accounts are now going to USAA.

Now, for business. I recently had the grand idea that, gee, wouldn’t it be great if I had all my accounts under one roof, including business? I was sure that by adding business checking, savings and credit to my already existing personal, student loan, and mortgage accounts, I’d be given a pretty good deal. WRONG.

I opened up accounts for Duce Enterprises. Had to have a $500 minimum average daily balance to avoid a $6 service fee. Annoying, but not a huge deal. So I opened the account with $100. Two days later I deposited $400 to bring it to $500. Because I didn’t have $500 in there from the beginning, and didn’t compensate by depositing more later in the month, I was dinged for $6. Ridiculous.

Then, I was looking at my transactions, and there’s a very inviting link to “View Details.”

I clicked on it, thinking “what a great feature,” only to get this message:

Sorry, but I’ve grown very tired of Wells Fargo, and all their nickel and diming for every little thing. I’m done. They have enough customers that I’m sure these fees net them a considerable revenue, so I guess from a pure business/profit standpoint, I can’t blame them. But, as a customer, and a loyal long-term customer, I expect more, and I will get more, from someone else.

</rant >

From SS Blog: “Spanning Sync 3 is fully compatible with Snow Leopard and takes full advantage of its support for 64-bit processing. (And for those of you with an eye for the technical details, the Spanning Sync pref pane is now garbage-collected.)”

Full details here.

Save $5, then make $5 (or more than $5) using coupon code D8BYCM

The new morning routine. So true.

The Missing Windows Disc – nope, not that simple…

Driver Side Auto Management Site – Nice, clean interface and a great resource for car owners

Working through video-editing backlog – I so need to do this.

ALA – Redesigning your own site: “Designing for your worst client: yourself” – Good read

Learning Objectives and Salsa Dancing

How to pick a barber

Just hold the Command key (the one with the apple logo on most Apple keyboards).

Click here to view a screencast.

Then, click the icon, and drag it off the menu bar. It will do the cloud dissipation animation like when you remove something from the dock. You can also use the Command key if you want to move the icons around. You can do this for most menubar icons (specifically the ones that comes with OS X), while some are only available via the application preferences.