Salamat [Thank You!]

If you're a Filipino, staying in the country, consider yourself lucky to be living at this time of the year. You lived through the devastation caused by Typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana, you're not among those who traveled to Maguindanao who were greeted with excessive fireworks, and had endured another year of seemingly endless reign of unbelievable political machinations from all sides.

Can't help it if you feel much better had you been among the victims but [it's not just a matter of perspective] in no other time had we been showered with equal blessing on the world stage. Yes, our small and tiny country.

Not once but twice. What makes it even special is that they were not borne out of privileged Pinoy existence. Humble origins, much like the majority of kababayans.

Efren and Manny.

You can never say enough about them and what they accomplished. I'm sure I'll be regaling kids with tales that happened in 2009.

And even better, it won't be just us in the usual tambayans, but in every bit, those living in all parts of the world, who had read about them or seen them, too.

Related:
Boxing gives thanks to [who else but ... ]
Extraordinary

Everybody's Half-Filipino (plus cloud rescue)

Mural commisioned by Nike Phil painted on canvass the size of a boxing ring.

As I was leaning on the cocktail table, barely even uttering a word, while my wife was sitting beside me, and as my eyes surveyed all corners of this big place with one large screen and four 40+ inch LCDs, plus classy food being served around, I began to ponder the unthinkable.

What if he loses?

I'd probably find excuses and the rationale for that but it would all just be a facade to mask what would hover like a dark cloud over the coming Christmas. Even worse is, watching the fight, I can feel my whole body stiffen and couldn't even touch any food or drink that on any other occasion would be too good to pass up. I thought I'd suffer a heart attack.

But time and again, just like on this day, Manny Pacquiao would prove doubters wrong and even more, showed another aspect of how great a boxer he is.

And it's significance?

That we are fortunate that he did so during this lifetime, that we were able to be witnesses!

And probably, most important of all, is that he has proven that, having risen from obscurity and squalor, can conquer odds and make it. A story that will always ring true in the hearts of men anywhere, for all time.

As Filipinos, we can't help deny that he is not just ours anymore. Being the first to hold seven titles in different weight divisions and doing so without pompousness but instead with grace and humility, it's inevitable that we'd have to share him from this day onwards with the rest of the world.

Related:
The New York Times, CNN, WSJ, TIME and virtually every major sports and media press had him covered but these two made me, err, sob.

Enjoy Pacquiao While You Can (Ring Online)
Manny Pacquiao: A Moon Landing

******* [7 stars]

Ahh, if it were just saved in the hard drive of my desktop PC, I'd say it was goners for sure.

I thank Yahoo! Mail and of course, the cloud.

Now, I've again entrusted this document albeit to the cloud again, unauthorized but not after exhausting all means of trying to contact Mr. Tom Thompson, whom I thought early on grasped or had an inkling of how special Pacquiao was, writing for defunct site, Tiger Boxing - which I loved back then, and make it far more accessible.

A travesty if just forgotten and left to the recesses of memory.

Reyes a Glass to Manny Pacquiao

Advice

Can't help but be drawn to it and they're pretty much available over the web. Same with books.

Repetition. Redundancy.

It could work. The more I read, the greater the chances I just might be able to do it.

Learning. Osmosis.

Kaizen. Improvement. Who wouldn't want this.

Simple or minimalist. You can't get wrong but better if you know the difference.

World's Best Presentations. Hail the new visual storytellers! Can't say enough how inspiring these works can be.

Get found or if you just want to find your place anywhere you'd want and work on that unique contribution. Doesn't have to be web only.

Show-off or genuine need? Who doesn't crave gadgets but here's nice flowchart before you take the plunge.

Google Data Liberation. Can't help but be amazed on them Google tools. The more they say you can go in and out as you please, the more we come back and become willing tenants. Your data is yours, Google just offers free parking lot - as they control what happens in the fringes. Just thought of that. Sounds cynical but really, I love Google.

Blog Action Day: Unknowingly in Manila, the War Against the Effects of Climate Change Began a Century Ago

In 1892, with mounting pressures of a two year deadline and , urban planner Daniel Burnham successfully led the World's Fair in Chicago to completion - the biggest and most ambitious in the world at that time. Sadly, his plans that would have saved the people from a growing threat of natural calamity in Manila, a century later, could have been the real feather on his already remarkable resume.

In 1904 the United States government sent Daniel Burnham, a prominent Chicago architect and city planner, to the Philippine Islands to modernize the capital city and a second smaller city to be used as the summer capital. Plans were drawn for Manila and Baguio and building began. And though shifting political and economic interests in the U.S. eventually disrupted the projects, ...

Except for a shore road, which became Dewey boulevard, now known as Roxas boulevard, the plan for Manila was not fulfilled.

105 Years Later
Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) dropped 455 mm (17.9 in) of rain on Metro Manila in a span of 24 hours on Saturday - the most in 42 years. A month's worth of rainfall in a single day washed away homes and flooded large areas, stranding thousands on rooftops in the city and elsewhere.

Man-made
In 1977, a World Bank-funded study identified Marikina Valley, the western shores of Laguna de Bay, and the Manila Bay coastal area as among development areas that should prepare for flooding, earthquakes and possible changes in topography.

In Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City, juxtaposed against the World's Fair in Chicago, where electricity literally flowed for the first time and a huge wheel by a guy named George Ferris wowed the crowd, something sinister, not unlike the works of The Ripper, was also happening that led to the gruesome deaths of possibly 200 people.

In Manila, more than a century later, climate change has began to define what a serial killer really looks like.

Coincidence?
On exhibit at Chicago until December 31, 2009 is 'Daniel Burnham's Enduring Vison for the Philippines'

References and related materials:
Daniel Burnham - Wikipedia
World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair)
United Nations donates 44M for Ondoy Victims
Blueprint for a City's Soul
Quezon and the Aborted Burnham Plans
Blog Action Day 2009

Catalyst 09: Malcolm Gladwell | Brad Ruggles

via bradruggles.com

Malcolm Gladwell spoke about the perils of overconfidence among leaders at Catalyst 2009. [http://www.bradruggles.com/2009/10/08/catalyst-09-malcolm-gladwell/]

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Kunio Kato

Amazing artist.  Watch this video - Tsumiki no ie and change the way you look at 'flooding' again.  Oh, and he received an Oscar for it - Best Animated Short.  First for an Asian.

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Pop!Tech - Conferences

via poptech.org

PopTech coming this October! Innovation, design, trends. Social Impact.

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Simply www.Ma.tt

How's this for site design?

Posted via email from friarminor's posterous

Matt Mullenweg — aka Photo Matt — on WordPress, Web, Jazz, Life, and Photography

http://ma.tt/#

Whoa. Completely blown away by the site's design.

Posted via email from friarminor's posterous

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore | Mail Online

via dailymail.co.uk

Sort of like 'trailer park' for ships!

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Non Proprius: Cloud Sustenance Doesn't Sound Right

Feeling not dissimilar as when this photo was taken.

I'm used to not treating weekends as rest days and last Saturday was no different. Begrudgingly, I had to devote an entire morning clearing up flooded backyard premises because the drainage was too small to let the rainwater pass. After using bare hands to claw muck and unidentifiable debris through a sewage with a small opening and spending more than an hour drenched outside the house, I thought to myself, how lousy this day is as I stood alone on the street.

Spending a few more hours innovating on a makeshift down spout, I finally was able to solve and prevent flooding within the premise. It was already 2 hours past noon, that I felt my body longing for some rest. [I'm convinced I deserved one.] But the succeeding hours and events proved me wrong.

After two days, thankful as we are that our bodies could enjoy some sleep, our minds and hearts, unfortunately could not.

It's not just because the flooding left a trail of devastation; entire life-savings of friends, families and strangers poured on homes, belongings and furniture, all unrecognizable wreck,

Nor for the worries and uncertainty staring over an entire week or month of labor intensive rehabilitation while for cities and industries, a year at least,

And not even the pain of ordinary Filipino folks, made even more difficult, as the economy is bound to take a severe hit and so will be the rarity of earning that daily wage, nope.

We, Filipinos are used to dealing with these things, have accepted calamities and/or government ineptitude and often, indifference as part of our lots in life. We've learned to live with these.

But not the loss of one life or worse, lives, particularly the sight of lifeless, innocent children and the families they've left behind. Not that we can't accept death, it's just that with every passing, you can feel spirits of people around, especially the ones they've spent their time with, made less and rendered un-whole.

To try to make sense of this, we often say a deep prayer and look to the sky. The way this has happened, it would be better if we just close our eyes and imagine that the next time we open them, the sun would be there to greet us, a bit longer, instead.

-----
Most of today, I felt sad yet quite optimistic. But having seen this, can't help but feel gutted and angry.

On TV, a man told the crew that he lost a son and another child. The fact that their house is located on the side of a mountain is simply a tragedy in waiting with the coming of typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana [and now had been buried in mud].

As he sat there, pondering on what has happened, there was, on his mind, something that he cannot reconcile.

He recalled that the just the day before, he and his children were full of excitement putting up string lights around the house - their own simple way to welcome the coming Christmas.

Sadly, for him, this one, and probably the next, won't be merry.

Starting to Connect the Life Dots

I really don't know where to start but Dan Pink was right on the money, intrinsic motivation and self-direction are the things that really move us.

I can't emphasize it more but you will just need to watch this. Now, I'm thinking how brilliant Montessori really is, with future generation, with children. Otherwise, we still can implement a lot of things everywhere, in our homes and even in the workplace where you can find a lot of lost adults.

Too busy to watch. OK, go to Garr Reynolds.

Multi-taskers: Suckers for irrelevancy, according to research. Fail.

Education's finally seeing the light.

• Letting readers pick their own books - (Autonomy)
  
• Visual literacy, instead of just books. (Creative and Conceptual abilities!)
• Future of Teaching

Innovation Obsession

All this reading about innovation, tinkering and self-improvement does indeed make for a healthy obsession. Creativity.

I hate driving. If I were to choose between being a public commuter and having to drive around by myself in Manila, I'd definitely be happier going with the former. Of course, Metro Manila traffic is one factor in the equation but truthfully, I love walking and the combined sense of adventure as well as solitude, public commute affords me. Getting the accompanying physical exercise from it- like the 3-story climb up the MRT or navigating between people traffic, is icing on the cake.

Recently, however, both my feet haven't been feeling all too comfortable with this, especially my heels. But unless I'd be wearing Crocs or running shoes to go with my daily shirt and jeans outfit, it would be better to just stay home or drive car to work. None of which seems appealing.

So, after some investigating, I found that there's one solution to this, the use of insoles [actually there's two - but losing weight can't be instantaneous].

Problem solved except that heel insoles, aside from being pricey here can be quite bulky for a shoe that isn't one size bigger. But then, there might be a way around this - one I'd have to make by my own.

There is no end in this story yet as I'm still trying to find one to customize to my needs. I'm cutting and joining insoles, measuring the arch contours and testing my walking patterns looking for that perfectly comfortable fit [or feet].

Somewhat related:
Power empowerment and control issues Unshackling employees.
Negative space illuminates.
Design driven innovation and Design Thinking, of course.
Shoe-less is more?

Stand Back for the Exploded View! — AIGA | the professional association for design

via aiga.org

Dissection in 3D!

Posted via web from friarminor's posterous

Seekers

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges' instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don't even care about. Nina Shen Rastogi confessed in Double X, "My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we're out to dinner." We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days "refreshing my search like a drugged monkey."

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We actually resemble nothing so much as those legendary lab rats that endlessly pressed a lever to give themselves a little electrical jolt to the brain. While we tap, tap away at our search engines, it appears we are stimulating the same system in our brains that scientists accidentally discovered more than 50 years ago when probing rat skulls.

In 1954, psychologist James Olds and his team were working in a laboratory at McGill University, studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction. One day they unknowingly inserted the probe in the wrong place, and when Olds tested the rat, it kept returning over and over to the corner where it received the shock. He eventually discovered that if the probe was put in the brain's lateral hypothalamus and the rats were allowed to press a lever and stimulate their own electrodes, they would press until they collapsed.

http://pixel.quantserve.com/r;a=p-f4eODmZdX9aCw;labels=_click.adserver.doubleclick*http://www.accuquotelife.com/index.cfm?refdir=" target="_news" />

Olds, and everyone else, assumed he'd found the brain's pleasure center (some scientists still think so). Later experiments done on humans confirmed that people will neglect almost everything—their personal hygiene, their family commitments—in order to keep getting that buzz.

But to Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, this supposed pleasure center didn't look very much like it was producing pleasure. Those self-stimulating rats, and later those humans, did not exhibit the euphoric satisfaction of creatures eating Double Stuf Oreos or repeatedly having orgasms. The animals, he writes in Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, were "excessively excited, even crazed." The rats were in a constant state of sniffing and foraging. Some of the human subjects described feeling sexually aroused but didn't experience climax. Mammals stimulating the lateral hypothalamus seem to be caught in a loop, Panksepp writes, "where each stimulation evoked a reinvigorated search strategy" (and Panksepp wasn't referring to Bing).

It is an emotional state Panksepp tried many names for: curiosity, interest, foraging, anticipation, craving, expectancy. He finally settled on seeking. Panksepp has spent decades mapping the emotional systems of the brain he believes are shared by all mammals, and he says, "Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems." It is the mammalian motivational engine that each day gets us out of the bed, or den, or hole to venture forth into the world. It's why, as animal scientist Temple Grandin writes in Animals Make Us Human, experiments show that animals in captivity would prefer to have to search for their food than to have it delivered to them.

For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.

The juice that fuels the seeking system is the neurotransmitter dopamine. The dopamine circuits "promote states of eagerness and directed purpose," Panksepp writes. It's a state humans love to be in. So good does it feel that we seek out activities, or substances, that keep this system aroused—cocaine and amphetamines, drugs of stimulation, are particularly effective at stirring it.

Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling? Thank dopamine. Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem. For them even small stretches of time seem to drag. An article by Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic last year, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting "enter" to get our next fix.

University of Michigan professor of psychology Kent Berridge has spent more than two decades figuring out how the brain experiences pleasure. Like Panksepp, he, too, has come to the conclusion that what James Olds' rats were stimulating was not their reward center. In a series of experiments, he and other researchers have been able to tease apart that the mammalian brain has separate systems for what Berridge calls wanting and liking.

Wanting is Berridge's equivalent for Panksepp's seeking system. It is the liking system that Berridge believes is the brain's reward center. When we experience pleasure, it is our own opioid system, rather than our dopamine system, that is being stimulated. This is why the opiate drugs induce a kind of blissful stupor so different from the animating effect of cocaine and amphetamines. Wanting and liking are complementary. The former catalyzes us to action; the latter brings us to a satisfied pause. Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that the system does not run in an endless loop. When we get the object of our desire (be it a Twinkie or a sexual partner), we engage in consummatory acts that Panksepp says reduce arousal in the brain and temporarily, at least, inhibit our urge to seek.

But our brains are designed to more easily be stimulated than satisfied. "The brain seems to be more stingy with mechanisms for pleasure than for desire," Berridge has said. This makes evolutionary sense. Creatures that lack motivation, that find it easy to slip into oblivious rapture, are likely to lead short (if happy) lives. So nature imbued us with an unquenchable drive to discover, to explore. Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson has been putting people in MRI scanners and looking inside their brains as they play an investing game. He has consistently found that the pictures inside our skulls show that the possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one.

Just how powerful (and separate) wanting is from liking is illustrated in animal experiments. Berridge writes that studies have shown that rats whose dopamine neurons have been destroyed retain the ability to walk, chew, and swallow but will starve to death even if food is right under their noses because they have lost the will to go get it. Conversely, Berridge discovered that rats with a mutation that floods their brains with dopamine learned more quickly than normal rats how to negotiate a runway to reach the food. But once they got it, they didn't find the food more pleasurable than the nonenhanced rats. (No, the rats didn't provide a Zagat rating; scientists measure rats' facial reactions to food.)

That study has implications for drug addiction and other compulsive behaviors. Berridge has proposed that in some addictions the brain becomes sensitized to the wanting cycle of a particular reward. So addicts become obsessively driven to seek the reward, even as the reward itself becomes progressively less rewarding once obtained. "The dopamine system does not have satiety built into it," Berridge explains. "And under certain conditions it can lead us to irrational wants, excessive wants we'd be better off without." So we find ourselves letting one Google search lead to another, while often feeling the information is not vital and knowing we should stop. "As long as you sit there, the consumption renews the appetite," he explains.

Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting. Novelty is one. Panksepp says the dopamine system is activated by finding something unexpected or by the anticipation of something new. If the rewards come unpredictably—as e-mail, texts, updates do—we get even more carried away. No wonder we call it a "CrackBerry."

The system is also activated by particular types of cues that a reward is coming. In order to have the maximum effect, the cues should be small, discrete, specific—like the bell Pavlov rang for his dogs. Panksepp says a way to drive animals into a frenzy is to give them only tiny bits of food: This simultaneously stimulating and unsatisfying tease sends the seeking system into hyperactivity. Berridge says the "ding" announcing a new e-mail or the vibration that signals the arrival of a text message serves as a reward cue for us. And when we respond, we get a little piece of news (Twitter, anyone?), making us want more. These information nuggets may be as uniquely potent for humans as a Froot Loop to a rat. When you give a rat a minuscule dose of sugar, it engenders "a panting appetite," Berridge says—a powerful and not necessarily pleasant state.

If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly. This perhaps should make us cautious. In Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin writes of driving two indoor cats crazy by flicking a laser pointer around the room. They wouldn't stop stalking and pouncing on this ungraspable dot of light—their dopamine system pumping. She writes that no wild cat would indulge in such useless behavior: "A cat wants to catch the mouse, not chase it in circles forever." She says "mindless chasing" makes an animal less likely to meet its real needs "because it short-circuits intelligent stalking behavior." As we chase after flickering bits of information, it's a salutary warning.

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Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous.

Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or comments to ")emilyyoffe@hotmail.com');.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

COMMENTS

This article is wonderful. I'm a medical librarian at a large university and interact with faculty, students and staff daily. The research you cite in your article completely captures how our patrons react to searching. I've seen people rack their brains on a fruitless search, but continue to input the same faulty keywords or use the same ineffective pattern of steps to find information. They never get to that dopamine-induced "ahh, I've found it" moment. You've given me a lot to think about in terms of redefining how I teach (or guide) people to the information they need. I like to say when it comes to teaching effective searching skills I'm teaching people how to fish rather than giving them a fish. If you have better skills to construct an effective search strategy combined with the skills to discriminate what good information is, the whole process becomes more rewarding. Your article has elevated my dopamine levels, and I'm enjoying the moment!

-- EllieGB
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A Welcome New Health-Care CoalitionSPONSORED CONTENT

via slate.com

See, valid reason!

It's not so different with the adage 'it's the journey, not the destination!'

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Social Media is no Fad!

via huffingtonpost.com

Thought-provoking as well as entertaining video on the growth and spread of social media from Erik Qualman (@equalman). You may continue to scratch your head about using the term but you can't ignore the fact that it really is huge.

Seems apt to make this as the initial Posterous post, you think so?

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Heart Can Clap

If there's one peculiar trait that I do not have a problem showing is that I am awe-stuck by good news and revelatory insights.

As an avid sports fan, I would literally be screaming myself hoarse when then a boxers punch connects or when an acrobatic miracle heave of a shot goes through the hoop. I jump, I pace the floor and wouldn't sit down while constantly hitting my forehead with both closed fists as if by doing so would commit a lesson into the inner recesses of a memory-filled mind.

And today is no different.

1. Team Pilipinas big win! Nothing significant except when you're so used to heartbreaks. I believe.

2. Aquino's Ripple Effect. An open world indebted to Cory (Boston Globe).

3. Found: Proof that newspapers can be saved! Via really elegant site of Matthew E. May (In Pursuit of Elegance)

Social to Movement: Before Tools Think About the Power of Integrity attached to an Ideal.

Social networks can learn a great deal about the harnessing the power of people and crowds from the recent passing of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino. Sadly, while there are millions connecting online and sharing information and statuses, there is still a palpable lack of creating concrete action towards achieving societal changes beyond the usual pro-active consumerism, of moving people to act in unison towards improving lives for a given population.

There are plenty of discussions about the merits of crowd sourcing and innovation in mass participation yet at most, it remains some sort of pep cliche from leaders and office managers. Deep inside, there remains a mistrust and that the dictum, too many cooks spoil the broth still holds a firm grasp in organizational systems. For most companies, team belief is more about gaining more people to agree with one's idea, democratic only once the choices are set. Until another brilliant idea comes by way of the 'anointed one or few'.

However, not all is lost and one could just cite examples of leading companies where true grass roots participation is getting the work done like Mozilla and the recent Barack 2.0 triumph.

On quick thought, we can immediately point to effective leadership and organizational processes at work when speaking about successful crowd-sourced operations. We do agree that it takes specific people skills to inspire and lead teams in successful project implementations whether products and services coupled with right timing and a sprinkle of luck when it comes to having the right people - at the governing level at least.

Yet, how can we explain a spontaneous collective gathering, where systems organization is but limited towards channels to spread information at the least like the Iran protest movement or our very own people power that has become, more than the political tool, a gauge of people's sentiment and a cry for changes. It is true that cynics can always point out the low percentage of successful closures but then it is hardly a reason not to value it's significance. Mr King and Gandhi are testaments that short-term gains isn't a true measure of success.

Lack of current tools like mobile phones, internet and Twitter notwithstanding, it is quite a feat that these movements gained enough steam to challenge prevailing and well-entrenched power seats. Come to think of it, not all movements are against power per se but at its core, against apathy and having the grit to pursue ideals.

And if there's something working for todays social networks to prosper, besides ease of spread, no doubt it has to be transparency. Like having a microscope to evaluate integrity, the web provides the means for people to find out for themselves, to uncover motives in order to obtain that elusive trust which bonds relationships.

A word of caution, though for those in a hurry to profit. There's only one way of judging quality and that's time.

Anything else, and it must be superficial.

CTO: Chief Twitter Officer

In blackest day, in darkest night ...

I take Twitter seriously. In fact, the first thing I do when I open my Mac is to read twitter messages and updates then search for news, articles and posts to tweet. It all sound simple but it can be quite challenging, too especially if you have some other work to do. Or a bunch of unread email - which is akin to putting out fires.

And the next difficult part after that: Blogging. Whew.

There's Help! An 18-minute Plan to Managing Your Day. I've resolved to try this. Bear with me.

Twitter Value. Read on how Social Media brings business ops to small biz owners. Of course, there's skeptics!

The NYTimes interviews David Novak of Yum Brands. Insightful read for managers. I'd be happy and definitely approve if my kid would want to work for him.

Speaking of which, you still have time to vote for the Best Leadership Blog of 2009. Difficult choice but going through and reading all of the nominees makes YOU the winner.

John Barry: WD-40 Popularizer Dies Very useful thing. I bet you have at least one can in your house. I do. An empty one.

Wicked Cool i-Google Comics Themes!

Lit the Fire

Thank you, Mr. McCourt!

While others see nothing, writers see too much ... And vice versa.
What we consider simple and ordinary, writers craft the most interesting of stories
and when we feel something is eventful, they chop it down into bits
Uncanny creatures for which we are all at the least, amused and at best, enlightened.

No such thing as an ordinary life to a storyteller ...

Blurbs: Blogs Not Dead, Just Turned into Zombies

Unthinkable! No not MJ! What's scarier is when Blogspot dies and all content gets lost.

It's not that Steve Rubel is completely right when he says that blogging is dead, given that Posterous is awesome. A more chilling statement for me would be that Blogspot.com may be the one dying along with JS-Kit and other commenting tools past 140 characters. Wordpress may endure even further given that it is more into CMS and can morph itself according to the needs of a website.

It's not as if blogging has changed radically because it still is not as easy as it looks. Sure, the tools are there for the taking but writing, which is at the heart of it, will never be a simple task. It takes commitment and better yet, inspiration. Given that Posterous allows publishing even easier, it will not come as a surprise that blog posts and comments or points of view will combine and leave us with tidbits or blurbs.

On another note, Twitter isn't blameless either. Besides the shorter character limit, Twitter allows you to push content instantly the moment you tweet something which cannot be said of blogs. But like blogging, don't let it fool you that Twitter is just like dipping into hats and magically, rabbits will appear. On the contrary, it's just as difficult to look for relevant content to tweet as you have to scour the sites like crazy - something to feed the info-hungry followers.

And when I said looking for content (on an average of 7 per day per twitter account), I also meant 'reading'. You'd be in luck if you can find 7 out of 7 immediately.

Related:
Building 43 solving the blog conundrum by the blog brigade led by Mr. Scoble. Commendable.

Word Power - Techie-style

Accepting the James Joyce Award? True!

Sharing with you an article on tech buzzwords, enough to make you pull a fast one and fool lay people who doesn't know the difference between a tweet and a twat.

Which begs the question, "Why is Twitter not included?" Must be that alone deserves an article of it's own.

Speaking of buzzwords, this isn't exclusively tech but it might as well be because it's free. Catch up on the debate!

Firefox Upgrade Is Shiny (Like Chrome)

What's not to like about the new firefox 3.5 update? Regardless, you're still going to do it because not only is it faster with new features to boot and before you complain incessantly, it's not like you'll be paying for it. Just feels weird to see it more Chrome-y. Oh and that's a complement.

More from Ars Technica here.

InterWeb: Learning and Teaching at the Core

Felt as if we all lost a chunk. RIP, MJ.

Ironically, it has taken technology as a tool to provide and remind us once again that more than ever how personal core values remain as important as ever whether at real world or virtual space. The quest to find meaning is as strong as ever and nowhere in history has this been as collective and interconnected now more than any other time. It is as if more than intellect, true success stories are but another facet of connecting with passions and pursuing them despite the costs but careful not to upset social balance towards inequality (or lack of concern towards plight of others).

"Leadership is about Teaching" - John Wooden

Positivity in Practical Steps. Encouragement is more than words, of course.

MLab: Accelerating the Evolution of Management

Relationships First, Innovation Second. Being human.

Bunch of Launches

It sure is turning out to be one of the busiest periods of 2009.

Wolfram Alpha
Google Wave and Google Squared (Guide and TC Take)
Bing

What else?
Intel Processor
Adobe's New Tools

I'm all simple. Will wait to test Moblin.

UnRelated
Half of all your friends replaced every 7 years (Study) Could be true except I ditched them all at once and not waited 7 years. Or was it the other way 'round.

Resist the Urge To Not Play

I'm becoming an info hog. But only because I can barely get out of the heap....

Why Play is Vital, no matter your age!



And Why Play Games? Why not?

On the lookout for a netbook (likely identical except for the brand) that is a smart spend like me? Check out PixelQi. Nudging the Kindle targets and not to mention, more e-reading. Yes!

Sun (till Oracle blots it out) shines light on Clouds at JavaOne. No killer app yet, no problem.

Microsoft's massive unloading. Recession and likely because of, uhmm, open source

Be Viral: Hit Social Media!

MediaPost has shown how easy it is to create viral content. How, by debunking social media, that's how! Obviously, they're going up against the web. How come I can see them smiling though?

Track the outburst here.

25 Social Media Marketing Tips. They all can't be hogwash, right?

Another 10 more Social Media Marketing Tips. Had enough?

Effective Marketing? How about spending time learning about Digital Body Language from Steve Woods!