beatnic - just wondering

A week offline (well just about anyway) and google reader is telling me I have over 3000 unread items…

So I have just hit the “Mark all as read” button.

For a brief moment, my google reader is empty. I can’t remember the last time it was empty.

I wonder what I’ve missed.

Using a combination of different techniques I’ve been managing to keep my email inbox empty for several months now. But that “space” soon became filled with unread items in my RSS subscriptions.

It’ll be interesting to see which bits start filling up first. My “news” (whatever that means these days) tag is the most obvious candidate.

Apparently I have 189 subscriptions. And that’s after a bit of tidying up. Of those, there are only a few that I really hope will have new items each time I check - and they’re virtually all written by people I’ve met.

I’m back online after a week of photosynthesis and I find Twitter is down for quite a while for maintenance.

I wonder if this means people are actually having to talk to each other.

In very short sentences.

These are the text message (SMS) templates that came with my phone:

1. I am late. I will be there at
2. I’m at home. Please call
3. I’m at work. Please call
4. I’m in a meeting, call me later at
5. I will be arriving at
6. Meeting is cancelled.
7. Please call
8. See you at
9. See you in
10. Sorry, I can’t help you on this.

I’ve never used them. I’m not sure I ever will.

“Sorry, I can’t help you on this.” Seriously!

I mean they all seem to be written in some strange language from a bygone era. For starters they all have complete words and correctly used punctuation.

It got me wondering what templates you’d end up with if you went round asking people what text messages they send the most.

I’ve noticed two expressions being used more and more these days, mostly in a work context.

First, the use of the word “So” to begin an answer to a question. This seems particularly rife amongst presenters on the conference circuit.

Often it seems to be used to acknowledge a question and the questioner as if to say “Okay, I understand the question… here’s my answer…”, a way of taking the baton and gliding gracefully on. A conjunction between two people.

The other is “going forward” to describe time after a point in time. It doesn’t seem to have reached official idiom status yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time, if you’ll pardon the pun. And what on earth did people say before it came along?

Have you noticed that on the radio very few, if any, presenters and guests say “goodbye” at the end of an interview or phone call?

More often than not they say “thank you” instead.

I was just wondering if this is conscious and deliberate.

I’m on the phone to a well-known supplier of outsourced services…

“Please listen carefully to the following options…”

There are 7 options, but they don’t tell you how many there are going to be.

I’m not quite sure if what I’m calling about matches any of them.

And there’s no “For all other enquiries please hold” at the end so you’re left drifting in to the abyss with Enya playing softly at you, not quite knowing what’ll happen next.

Anyway, I digress.

What caught my attention was that the sentence offering me the option to have the conversation in Welsh was in English.

On my Sunday run yesterday morning I suddenly caught myself turning everything I was doing in to Facebook status updates.

If you haven’t been on Facebook, status updates let you tell people in your group of friends or networks whatever you want in little SMS type messages which then appear on their Facebook pages next time they visit.

For example this morning I wrote “starting a new chapter” which was then translated to “Nic Price is starting a new chapter” on my friends’ Facebook pages.

It’s not just Facebook that has this feature. Twitter is one of a several other sites that let you do the same thing, but without inserting the word “is” in front of what you write. It’s a little like writing really really short blog posts.

So there I was… “finding this hill steeper than usual”… “wishing he’d been running more regularly recently”… when I suddenly caught myself at it. “Nic Price is thinking in status updates.”

Do you have a lift at work? Does it have a male or female voice? Who decided that?

Does a lift in Belfast have a different accent to a lift in Manchester, Falmouth or Glasgow?

Should the automated announcements on trains change accent depending on which part of the country you’re in?

When you move house and send your change of address cards out, you probably only put your new address on the cards and not your old one. And if people want to send you a “Happy New Home” card they’ll need to copy down your new address on to an envelope.

But when people change email address, more often than not, they send out the “Change of email address” email from their old email address. This is true for the last six such emails I have received.

So if you’re changing email address, transfer your contacts list and send your Change of address email from your new account. You never know how many virtual “Happy new home” cards you might be missing.

And please send them individually or use the BCC field. Just in case anyone accidentally hits the “Reply all” button.

edublogs: Six points for organisations entering the Live Web.

Interesting post by Ewan McIntosh. Via Nick Reynolds at work.

A friend recently told me they hadn’t used LinkedIn since discovering Facebook, which I found interesting.

I think they are very different animals, each with their own set of services - a few of which overlap.

Not all my “connections” on LinkedIn are “friends” on Facebook and vice versa. It makes a good Venn diagram though!

[And yes yes I did once said I'd remain "LinkedOut" :)]

As we are surrounded by more and more noise, we need to get better and better at listening.

Listening to Xfm on my phone on the bus on the way home from work on Thursday night and an ad came on that went something like this:

Imagine a world where we all watched one TV channel.

Imagine a world where we all read just one newspaper.

Imagine a world where we all used just one search engine.

Now I don’t know about you, but right now I’m thinking about one search engine, and it’s probably the same one you’re thinking of too.

So the ad continues…

Ask.com… the other search engine.

At this stage I’m momentarily thinking I’d heard “arse dot come” - seriously, that’s what it sounds like.

But I’m also still thinking about one search engine, and it’s not ask.com.

I’d be very interested to know how the agency involved persuaded a company to accept that they’re second best, that they’re other.

Great promo video for the British Humanist Association

Find out more about Humanism

Ban illegal timber. Greenpeace.

Courtesy of, and arty credit to, my mate Paul.

Does the word “PICTURES” sell more copies of the paper?

Whatever the circumstances (I haven’t read the story yet), this sounds like a terrible tragedy.

I often see Evening Standard hoardings with the word “PICTURES” after a dash after the headline.

In this case I felt its use was particularly insensitive.

The term “social” is derived from the Latin word “socius”, which as a noun means “an associate, ally, business partner or comrade” and in the adjectival form socialis refers to “a bond between people” (such as marriage) or to their collective or connected existence.

Source: Wikipedia

Recently I’ve had quite a few invitations to join LinkedIn.

So I joined and checked it out and there’s something about it makes me feel a little uneasy.

I think it has to do with my instant aversion to the idea of actively “networking” as a business activity - it just brings the cynic out in me.

The language used doesn’t help win me over either…

4.6 million experienced professionals already use LinkedIn

I mean, what or who on earth is an “experienced professional”?

Also, the very nature of something that you have to belong to and lives behind closed walls goes against my idea of connecting with people. Doesn’t the very essence of the world wide web allow us to connect with each other already?

Maybe I’m missing the point, but I don’t think it’s for me.

I’m quite happy being LinkedOut. You know where to find me :)

It’s an aura thing.

Internet users make up their minds about the quality of a website in the blink of an eye, a study shows.

Researchers [from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada] found that the brain makes decisions in just a twentieth of a second of viewing a webpage.

They were surprised as they believed it would take at least 10 times longer to form an opinion.

[...]

The researchers also believe that these quickly-formed first impressions last because of what is known to psychologists as the “halo effect”.

If people believe a website looks good, then this positive quality will spread to other areas, such as the website’s content.

Since people like to be right, they will continue to use the website that made a good first impression, as this will further confirm that their initial decision was a good one.

Full article on BBC News.

Here’s something that I wrote back in February and have been meaning to put in a post on here for ages…

There are quite a few good guides to managing email.

The latest one I’ve read is this one by Mark Hurst who runs a consultancy in New York.

You don’t have to read all 38 pages to get the point, but you do need to read the first few sections which takes about 15-20 minutes at a push.

I’ve managed to keep an empty inbox for a fortnight now and felt inspired to totally clear my desk too.

So I sent the link round to immediate colleagues, two of whom have now also totally cleared their inboxes (and desks!), so there must be something in it.

You may already have a method that works for you, but if you don’t then this might do it.

The basic principle is don’t use your inbox as a storage device

This is followed by a simple formula based upon 5 types of email:

1. Spam - delete it straight away
2. Personal - deal with it straight away, delete it (or file it if you really have to, but not in your inbox)
3. Newsletters - quick read then delete. You’ll get another one soon
4. For your information - read it and file it if you have to otherwise delete it
5. For your action - read it, if you can do it now do it, if you can’t mark it for action and set time aside to do it. File it under actions, then delete or file when complete

Once your left with 4s and 5s it’s fairly quick to work out which one an email is

Five email tics I’d love for you to lose

For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these? Format courtesy of my other site.

1. The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!” flag
2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
5. The including of my — plus 98 other strangers’ — personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

Friend: I love you, but you must evolve.

From Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders blog

To which I’d immediately add:

• FYI with no explanation why
• Really huge attachments where the content is just text
• Misuse of the CC line - do I need to read this or not?

And many many more…

With junk food giant visual design treatment.

Frightening food facts about what’s really on your plate. More info on the Food4Thought website.

More than one in three children do not know what chips are made of, a survey for the British Heart Foundation reveals.

A worrying 36% of 8-14 year-olds could not correctly identify the main ingredient as potato, despite chips being a firm favourite on most children’s plates.

Nearly one in ten of the 1,000 children questioned thought chips were mostly made of oil, while others suggested eggs, flour, and even apples.

From the accompanying press release.

Content isn’t content without context

maybe instead of always being the one who is “more rational than thou” when the other person is upset, maybe sometimes in some scenarios it would help to at first be a little less calm in response

From The worst way to calm someone down on Creating Passionate Users.

To promote their tv series The New Ten Commandments, shown in February 2005, Channel Four commissioned this sulpture by Sokari Douglas Camp.

It’s called “The 11th Commandment”.

It represents the most popular new commandment as chosen by the British public: “Treat others as you would like to be treated” (see also British Humanist Assocation on the Golden Rule).

Looking for ideas for the sculpture, Douglas Camp wrapped herself and her children in the comfort and security of shawls. In the sculpture these have been transformed in to “Graffiti shawls” using the words of the commandment to protect and comfort the figures.

It’s currently on Peckham Rye Common (on the corner of East Dulwich Road and Peckham Rye) and will be going on tour to other London boroughs (Bexley, Islington, Hackney and Enfield) soon.