Friday Reading #9
“Another Myth Bites The Dust: How Apple Listens To Its Customers” - Steve Denning, Forbes
“In traditional management, where customers are secondary, the expense of following up with customers would seem like the first kind of expense to cut in a crunch. With these numbers in hand, Apple’s managers realize that this is one of the last things that should be cut.” I’ve got a lot of Apple products, but I’m not an altar-worshipping fanboy. But read this and ask yourself why the organisation you work for doesn’t care this much about following up with unhappy customers.
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“What's wrong with almost every old media-inspired new media startup” - Christopher Mims, Technology Review
“The web is a surprisingly mature medium, and old-media pundits turned new media hucksters who think they're going to tell anyone else how to launch a sustainable business there are emperors sans clothes. New media companies that will succeed are founded by two kinds of people: technologists, and media people who think like technologists.”
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3D London Underground station maps
This is a collection of 3D maps of London Underground/DLR stations. Enough said.
Get mapped up
“Eight Real Tales of Learning Computer Science as a High School Girl” - Adrianne Jeffries, BetaBeat
“I'm so tired of these sorts of articles. Can anybody find an original issue to write about these days?” In a heartbeat commenter Brandon Capecci sums up exactly why these articles carry on being written. If anyone knows where he lives I’d be happy to come round and whump him with a cluestick.
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“Getting Fired Because of Facebook Has Never Been Likelier” - Mike Schuster, Minyanville
“Using Facebook's own API, UK developer Callum Haywood searches for status updates containing references to being drunk, hungover, or stoned, as well as vitriolic hatred toward one's boss or the insane public distribution of one's phone number. Those posts are compiled and filed into handy columns like ‘Who wants to get fired?’ and ‘Who’s taking drugs?’”. I wish he’d do one for “Who wants the tech world to know they are a sexist numpty?”. Yes, Brandon Capecci, I’m looking at you again...
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“I’m bored of this UX event” - Tim Caynes, Userist
“If you really are having a bad experience at your event, conference, meetup, bootcamp, jam, summit, unevent, unconference, unmeetup, unbootcamp, unjam, unsummit, (unjam is a word? Who knew?), then I’m sorry about that. Not all events are as advertised. Not all events run smoothly. Not all events meet expectations. But it might be just you. Well, maybe you and a couple of others. Alright, maybe it’s really bad. But if you’re quietly snarking at the back, that’s fine, I can deal with that. I mean, it’s annoying and once I’ve noticed you doing that I can’t unnotice you doing that and you’ve already planted a seed of distraction that will grow like a triffid in my subconscious, like some venomous metaphor for something really distracting and vegetative. However, in a parallel universe-made-the-opposite-of-parallel, it’s now pretty much alright to do that snarking out loud. And when I say out loud, I obviously don’t actually mean out loud. I mean on the #backchannel”
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“Amusing Ourselves to Death” - Neil Postman quoted on Future Journalism Project Tumblr
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”
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“Yours in distress, Alan” - Alan Turing, Letters of Note
“Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think
Yours in distress,
Alan”
Read the full letter