Some Interesting Blogs (And Other Stuff) July 4, 2008
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Blog roundup.add a comment
Here are some items that I found interesting over the last couple of weeks:
- Daryl Cagle’s Pro Cartoonists Index: Cartoons in memory of Tim Russert amasses a great collection of cartoons that are dedicated to Tim Russert’s life; a great way to remember him. As I’ve mentioned, I was a huge fan of Tim.
- BusinessWeek’s ManagementIQ: An About-Face at Netflix discusses NetFlix’s decision, and the immediate reversal of the decision, to eliminate profiles.
- Google: Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience provides an insight into how Google looks at user experience. Here’s how the site introduces the 10 items: “Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is “Googley” – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.”
- TimesOnline: Barclays banks on funky design to lure customers is a very interesting article about how Barclays is redesigning its branches.
- Metacool: Benjamin Zander on Leadership offers a video of an awesome presentation by Zander who integrates music into a discussion about leadership.
- Innovation Playground: Are You Trained To Tell Good Stories? Do You Understand The Power Of Narrative in Business? provides insight into a very important, yet under-appreciated skill in business: Storytelling.
- Comedy Central: George Carlin Video Tribute is a set of videos that are a nice way to remember George Carlin.
- Reuters MediaFile: Gates/Ballmer – Saying goodbye is hard to do is an interesting Q&A with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; a tribute to Gates’ retirement from active involvement with Microsoft.
- New York Times: Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth looks at a new packaging for milk that is eco friendly and cheaper, but it is hard to hold and often spills. I don’t think usability can be overlooked; even in the name of “green.”
The bottom line: Enjoy the reading!
Some Interesting Blogs (And Articles) June 2, 2008
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Blog roundup, Customer experience.add a comment
Here are some things that I’ve enjoyed reading over the last week or so:
- The World In 2008: The good jargon guide (this isn’t a blog, but it’s a fun read) is a short tongue-in-cheek article discussing cliche business terminology like “coca-colonisation,” “localisation,” and “glocalisation.”
- Community Group Therapy: Community Strategy: Are you company-centric or customer-centric? is a post from Sean O’Driscoll at Microsoft that discusses how to examine corporate culture by looking at what companies celebrate – it sounds like something that I would write.
- Customer eXperience Crossroads: Remember the fun of playing in the sandbox: Innovation in business provides some interesting insights about how to develop innovative ideas by following non-linear approaches.
- Get Elastic: 404 Not Found Pages: The Good, The Bad & The Funny provides examples and tips (some are really fun) on how to render the “404″ error messages that you get on the Web when a page can’t be found.
- Business Pundit: Ironman: Lessons to shatter the status quo translates the Ironman movie into 4 lessons for business. I’m mostly recommending this one because I really enjoyed the movie (Robert Downey Jr. is great) and a blog that can connect it to business is worth reading.
- The Bank Channel: Email and search still neglected gives some good advice on how to best utilize email and search.
- CxP Professionals In Japan: LOST! (in Tokyo) Part 3 is a post by my colleague Jonathan Browne which shows how user centric design (or the lack thereof) impacts public transportation experiences.
- Putting People First: AP using ethnography to rethink news in the digital age gives insights into how ethnography can be used to redesign experiences; in this case news stories for young consumers.
The bottom line: Enjoy the reading!
Some Interesting Blog Posts May 26, 2008
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Blog roundup, Customer experience.add a comment
I’ve decided to periodically highlight blog posts that I find interesting. Here are 10 from the past week:
- Flooring The Consumer: Brand & Customer Experience Blogs That Make Customers Sing highlights different brand and customer experience blogs that you should read every day between June 1st and July 4th. It’s a great listing of blogs for you to read. My blog is listed for June 15th; I’ll plan to have a good post that day.
- Customers Are Always: Deepak Chopra on Business, Success, and Happiness centers around a video with Deepak Chopra talking about leadership. He starts by saying that employee loyalty leads to customer loyalty which leads to investor loyalty. I totally agree.
- Logic + Emotion: The One Video All Marketers Should Watch showcases a video of a presentation by Adaptive Path that’s worth watching. It synthesizes thoughts contained in the book “Subject To Change.”
- Seth Godin’s Blog: Competition discusses why Seth doesn’t think that blogs compete with each other, so he’s happy to mention other blogs. Seems like a good message to highlight in this blog roundup. Seth, feel free to highlight my blog.
- Forrester’s Interactive Marketing Blog: Brands Punk’d By Social Media provides more than 20 examples of companies that were blindsided by the Internet. The list starts with Apple in 2001 and ends with Louis Vuitton in 2008.
- HubSpot Marketing Blog: Top 10 Ways NOT to Spend $12 Million on Marketing is a tongue in cheek look at how HubSpot could use the funding that it recently raised.
- Zenhabits: 25 Ways to Help a Fellow Human Being Today takes its inspiration from the Dalai Lama and provides what it calls ”an extremely incomplete list” of how you can start helping other people. We should all do a few items on the list.
- Freakonomics: Introducing: The Happiness Index discusses a new daily poll of Americans about their health and happiness. I can see using this data to decide which neighborhood to move into. Forget about the school system, how happy are the neighbors?
- GoogleBlog: Introduction to Google Search Quality discuses how Google ranks search results. It’s a fascinating post by Udi Manber who is the VP Engineering, Search Quality at Google.
- Brand New Day: An Expert’s Analysis of Dove’s Campaign for “Real” Beauty examines one of the photos that was used in Dove’s campaign. This BusinessWeek blog post contains a fascinating analysis of natural body imperfections that have disappeared from the photo.
The bottom line: Enjoy the reading!
