Ryan A Graves.com

Seth Godin, author of many great business books, most recently The Dip, wrote a ‘how-to’ that I found interesting and useful on his blog. His premise is that a business book is not like a cook book. It’s not just a recipe, its a recipe for 2 or 3 pages but the rest of the book is the convincing or motivating that needs to occur in order for the reader to act on the recipe. If you are looking at a business book as a how-to, you’re wasting your money. Here is Seth’s recommendations on…

How to read a business book:

1. Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change.

2. If you’re going to invest a valuable asset (like time), go ahead and make it productive. Use a post-it or two, or some index cards or a highlighter. Not to write down stuff so you can forget it later, but to create marching orders. It’s simple: if three weeks go by and you haven’t taken action on what you’ve written down, you wasted your time.

3. It’s not about you, it’s about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it… pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action–that’s the main reason it’s a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more.

Aren’t you getting tired of hearing people talk about the Work – Life balance? I am, and it’s mostly because I don’t understand the concept. It’s not that I work 80 hours a week, or than I don’t have a social life, because I do, I have a great one. The confusion is derived from my confusion around what we are balancing. Things need balancing when they are opposites right? Black and white have grey; good and evil have, well, humans. But why do work and life need balancing? If your work and you’re life are such polar opposites you are definitely in the wrong line of work. If you hate your job so much that you don’t consider it part of your life then we have issues.

People wonder why they’re not performing well at work, Peter Berner, author of Career Moments would tell you, “You’re in the wrong job!” Somebody can do a job without actually doing anything, but nobody can do work without doing anything. If you find a career or work that you enjoy it can become your life and that is OK! Believe it or not you don’t actually have to hate your job.

So, forget trying to balance your work and your life. Let your work become a part of your life and something you enjoy. Enjoy your life. I guarantee that when you find work that becomes your life and that is enjoyable the rewards will be exponential. The largest of those rewards may even be financial rewards which can also improve other aspects of your life. All of a sudden when you begin to enjoy your work the need to balance is gone.

post from Ryan’s Blog.

I’ve recently download the instant message aggregator Pidgin v2.4.1.  Here are a few findings:

I like…
With an impressive power of customization, Pidgin comes with all the good stuff provided by the former Gaim. The text-only version that they call Finch (birds…get it), the app allows you to chat with your buddies from a command line same as in the graphical environment (not a huge fan of this). The default config is updated to go to system tray, I guess in older versions you had to do this manually. Nice improvement.
Not so much…
What I don’t is that there aren’t really any themes, the UI is very simple (this might be better, haven’t made up my mind). Where this is really going to need some work is the face that webcams are coming on all machines. Dell has them coming on the new E-class and Macs have had them since my gramma was 12. Get with the program, updated needed.
The rest…

Pidgin is an instant messaging client compatible with a variety of platforms, supporting a wide range of protocols and offering the possibility to log in to multiple accounts simultaneously. It comes with many popular features, such as file transfer and typing notifications but it also brings up unique ones, and a pretty large plug-ins collection. Overall awesome product and probably the best of its class. Blue ribbon.

Got it…

I know this is not exactly a cutting edge post or download on my part. Pidgin has been out there for a while however, I haven’t found a need until recently I’ve been fine with Gchat. Now this is better.

Forbes.com release its second annual top 25 Web celebs recently and the list is interesting. Although I would consider myself pretty knowledgeable as far as what is going on on the web with start-ups and other Web 2.0 topics there are some bloggers and other web celebs in this list that I wasn’t familiar with. There are the obvious, Michael Arrington, Matt Drudge, and sadly, Perez Hilton, but others are not as obvious.

Here’s the list. Read them over make your judgements and let us know what you think.

The Web Celeb 25

1. Perez Hilton
2. Michael Arrington
3. Mark Frauenfelder
4. Seth Godin
5. Cory Doctorow

check out the rest here…

lanjut →

Today the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) released that they would be creating an “internet index” that will follow many of the large internet companies (i.e. Google, Yahoo) and other publicly traded internet companies.  As Duncan Riley on TechCrunch speculated, it is likely that any good or bad news around Google would have a VERY large effect on the index.  I strongly agree with Riley that the rise of this index shows the growing importance of the internet and the companies that it spawns in the US and global economy.

My question is this…Will the existence of this index alleviate or encourage another bursting of a tech bubble? Now that there is one number that inevitably everyone (myself included) will comment on and scrutinize as the “grade” given to our industry, will it serve as a pump to the next tech bubble? Or, will it help us to track the industry more closely and help prevent another bubble?

My hunch is the former. I think that having this new index that people can follow and get inevitably excited about, people will blow it up even faster causing another “pop”. The more stock people put in this number as it grows the more money will poor into Silicon Valley and nationwide internet start-ups.  Eventually, as it always does, the newly measured internet economy will correct itself.

What do you think?

This is the new AmazonKindle. Let me start with, I want one. It is a wireless reading device with a hi-resolution screen. It collects reading material (newspapers, magazines, books, blogs, etc.) and is designed to replace the need of carrying a book. It is about the size of a common soft-backed book.

Amazon obviously could have spent a little more money on the design of their new product the Kindle, but as far as functionality goes it looks phenomenal! I think that its a great idea that will definitely catch on. As an avid reader myself I would definitely use this product. Although there are a few things that I would be skeptical of:

• durability
• accessibility (internet connection)
• cost of content (book, magazine, newspaper, blog)

If they can keep consumers happy with those aspects of the product they will have a hit on their hands and make a lot of money.

watch video of the Kindle here.

The US Dollar has decreased by roughly 12% in the last year.  This directly affects the

The

Of all the folks out in Silicon Valley rolling in the cash the ‘Googlers’ are now among the wealthiest.  Michael Arrington wrote on TechCrunch recently about how there are 1,000 Google employees who’s stock grants and options are worth, now with the recent increase in price, over $5 million.

See said increase:

There are other Google employees who haven’t made millions but think about this…those who joined Google just one year ago, when I joined the workforce, are doing just fine also.  Those hired one year ago, on avg. received 685 optioned shares and are now worth on avg. $276,000 or $662 per share. Also they received 230 shares outright.  Decent huh?

 Would you accept a job that pays $276k + $50k = $316k a year right out of college? I might.

This is the kind of class that I wish I’d taken in college. I probably wouldn’t have been able to hang as a Computer Science major but I do think the real world nature of this class is something that I would have loved. This course covers everything from the coding of these applications (technical), product development, and market launch (business).  Professor Fogg at Stanford University emphasizes the importance of the big picture of Facebook apps. He regularly hold lectures about “the psychology of Facebook”, and how to monetize these tools.   

 Om Malik wrote a post about the recent applications release by the class on his blog GigaOm.  The most used/downloaded application is called KissMe. This application gives one the ability to put big scarlet lips on top of someones profile.  The app has 36,916 active daily users, not bad for a undergraduate college course huh?