The Link Between Quietness And Productivity

Being quiet means you think before you speak. Quiet people are usually thoughtful thinkers. They think things through before making a statement. Something you probably wish many of your workers would do before taking up your valuable time.

Batman: Dark Knightfall – a short stop-motion film made entirely with action figures.
Sound silly? Go check it out.

via Instagram

“…and this transformation is going to make some people uneasy. People from the PC world, like you and me. It’s going to make us uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways. It’s brilliant. And we like to talk about the post-PC era but when it really started to happen I think it’s uncomfortable for a lot of people because it’s change and a lot of vested interested are going to change and it’s going to be different.”

—Steve Jobs, D8 Conference

While we’re on the topic of theft from my last post, below are the words of T.S. Elliot on the measure of a poet:

One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

This can be just as easily applied to any act of creation–be it gadget, painting, poem, building, vehicle or song.
The quote above is also the one everyone mis-attributes to Picasso.

From the current Apple vs Samsung proceedings earlier today, here’s part of an email thread between managers at Samsung circa 2007, after the original iPhone launched (via Apple Insider):

All this time we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia, and concentrated our efforts on things like Folder, Bar, Slide, yet when our [product] is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth. It’s a crisis of design.

I believe it was T.S. Elliot who said, “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal and then there’s that shit Samsung pulls.”

Jim Dalrymple on Samsung’s ‘cash-for-clunkers’ program:

Samsung wants consumers to buy its Galaxy S III so badly that it’s willing to pay them for their old smartphones.

Priceless.

Literally.

The Curiosity rover touched down on Mars this morning. Today NASA released this image captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the spacecraft in descent over the surface of the red planet. That’s damned impressive. The Missile Test wing of Daily Exhaust laments the idea that robots will more than likely be humanity’s emissaries to the stars, but it’s hard to argue with results. Now let’s get some boots and flags up there.

Ars Technica: Is Surface Microsoft’s confession that Windows 8 isn’t really cut out for tablets?

But Windows 8 exposes the great danger of Microsoft’s vision: a software environment that forces you to go “PC” when all you want is the “Plus” bit. If the iPad has taught us anything at all, it’s that there’s a lot of people out there who are happy with pure tablets, and actively desire pure tablets. Windows 8 gets a lot right, but its PC side is still there, and it’s inescapable.

The beauty of the iPad is in all the way it isn’t a PC. No keyboard. No wires. No pesky file directory explorer. When Henry Ford build the Model T, he didn’t market is on how well it aligned with the horse and buggy. He marketed it on how different and better it was than its predecessor.
The more time goes on and the more I really look hard at Microsoft Surface and Windows 8, the more I see a company not ready to cannibalize one area of their business in order for another part to thrive.
And for innovation to happen, you need that cannibalization.

Elevator pitch: What’s the idea for your new series?
Comedians. In cars. Getting coffee.
Simple idea and three things I love. Count me in. (…although this show isn’t as simple as The Nothing Pitch)
Check out this one of Jerry Seinfeld riding with Ricky Gervais. I love when Jerry picks up Ricky in his 1967 Austin Healey 3000 and Gervais has no clue what type of car it is, let alone an English one.
via Laughing Squid

There’s a gold mine of Mad Men-era clip art in the Bart & Co. Flickr account.


via Khoi Vihn