February 2012
16 posts
“The UK’s biggest export, say the experts from DP World, is fresh air. Empty...”
– Supersized superport: London Gateway
Subtraction.com: Getting Airlines off the Ground →
if the airline business did not exist today and someone proposed building it in the way that we know it to be, no one would stand for it.
Khoi Vin compares airlines to digital services and finds them wanting. But atoms are different to bits. Many of the service failures of airlines are indeed absurd, but some of them are to do with the complex and strange relationship that occurs when you...
“I’m loyal to my team, not the sponsor whose name adorns the players’ backs. I...”
– Luddites of sport: time for innovation - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
I don’t care about sport, but this seems important.
“Once you begin using Dropbox, you become more and more indifferent to the...”
– Bill Gurley, Why Dropbox is Major Disruption (via christmasgorilla)
I was just thinking about how Dropbox has changed how I work. I don’t even think about moving files from work to home or from iMac to iPad anymore. Everything just lives in Dropbox and is magically the same, everywhere.
1 tag
Gutenbourgeois →
In a great article on the small, insignificant really, topic of what the Web is for, Paul Ford coins a great portmanteau.
Gutenbourgeois are people who:
[…] believe in the cultural primacy of writers and editors and they feel good—even a bit superior—about working in publishing. They believe it is their job to drive culture forward. The web, they are a little proud to admit, confuses...
On Business Madness →
Alex Payne:
We mistake dumb luck for a machine that produces success. We rely on induction when we should rely on deduction, and then, having realized our mistake, we lean on “data-driven decisions” in lieu of common sense.
I think this is a trap for all organisations.
1 tag
“Perhaps these people really do buy their own PR hype – perhaps they truly,...”
– My colleague Dr Axel Bruns in The Conversation today: How not to use Twitter: lessons from Qantas and Westpac
Edward Tufte's new career as a sculptor →
The BBC has a lovely video interview with Edward Tufte on his new work as a sculptor.
I’d always imagined him to be a curmudgeon, in that way that designers can be, but he seems down-to-earth and and friendly. And just a bit nerdy. In a good way.
1 tag
“A civil servant warning a minister that a decision would be “courageous” is...”
– Euphemisms: Making Murder Respectable (via iamdanw)
Lamborghini Countach, Urraco and Silhouette flat... →
Brilliant Mel Nichols article from the heyday of CAR. Be sure to read all the way to the end.
Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search →
This is not “why kids can’t search” so much as “why kids don’t have the literacy to assess the quality of what large corporate search engines serve them when they type in keywords”.
The answer, of course, is that they are kids.
Now, “why can’t 4th-year university students search”… That’s a different question.
January 2012
25 posts
Tales of a Sea Chef →
bloggedbybjorn:
My brother, a chef trained in French kitchen, has followed in our fathers footsteps by signing with the merchant marine. Tales of a Sea Chef is his account of life on the ocean, while practising his art.