Well, you may have survived Black Friday, but the holiday shopping frenzy is far from over. And if your house is like mine, your mailbox is filled with catalogs. And if you're at all like me, you both love 'em and hate 'em.
Catalog Choice... an extremely slick Web site that automates the process of asking merchants to remove us from their catalog mailing lists. It's entirely free, and although it remains to be seen how effective it is (it can take up to six weeks to be removed), I rather enjoyed finding catalogs and asking to be removed in the Catalog Choice system.
a software-as-a-service mashup exchange that enables its partners to build, buy and sell business mashups...
Mashups, which have previously been the sole domain of specialist Web developers, combine data from multiple sources to create an integrated Web application. Also referred to as "custom applications," business mashups are sometimes lauded as being capable of bringing gains in productivity and creativity without burdening the IT department.
(PS: Not a mashup tool per se, but a sophisticated approach to DIY ERP that Sig Rinde describes as "a Business Model Builder with instant delivery of Business Processes, Accounts and Reports": Thingamy)
business and ecology leaders, talented open source developers focused on positive envirnomental impact and eco-minded peers at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco...
to look together at what we might be able to do together.
Scenario planning for the sustainability revolution
We've scheduled one last webinar this year in Natural Logic's Carbon Neutral Learningâ„¢ webinar series.
In two weeks, futurist Jamais Cascio will discuss Green Tomorrows, and lead a stimulating exploration of how the sustainability revolution will transform our politics, our economics and our lives.
The process of building a sustainable future follows diverse paths, and the choices we embrace today will shape the future we encounter over the next 20 years. By adopting a scenario planning approach, Cascio will look at what kinds of results we might get, and what kinds of opportunities and surprises those results could have in store.
I'll be hosting, and I'm looking forward to the conversation with Jamais, as I always do. I hope you'll join us: Thursday, December 20, 1pm EST (10am PST, 1pm EST, 6pm GMT). It's $129 for the hour -- for all you can eat (ie, as many people as you can fit around a browser and speakerphone).
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the enemy of the human race," says Andrew Leonard. (Thanks, Jamais, for the link.)
A new television ad says that proposed climate change legislation would transform the American way of life. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Yeah, lot of people make that claim, but the Chamber's ad sets a new record for political idiocy. I guess they think that all the companies investing in profitably driving down their carbon emissions -- including many of their members! -- are as dumb as they think all the rest of us are.
In a new television advertisement, two freezing Americans are shown bundled up in winter clothes from head to toe, while inside their own home, and even under the covers of their own bed. The husband fries his breakfast eggs over a candle and is forced to jog, along with a horde of other fully dressed, briefcase-wielding salary slaves, in the middle of the street to work.
Blame it on the environmentalists, says the United States Chamber of Commerce, which paid for the ad. Passage of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade climate bill, says the Chamber, "will usher in a Dark Age for America."
Putting in place an effective cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions will be more complicated and likely will cost a pretty penny. Of course, the costs of not doing anything at all could easily be much greater. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, apparently, doesn't think too highly of hedging one's bets and preparing for the future. They'd rather resort to infantile scare tactics that insult the intelligence of the American public.
I'm reminded at times like these of Napoleon's wonderful admonition:
"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." Except in this case I'm not so sure.
(Office 2.0 are apps that you use to improve your work and which go beyond the standard Microsoft Excel/Word/Powerpoint apps that don’t let you easily collaborate with others). Does anyone else have a list that is better? How many apps/categories on this list do YOU use?
By the way, on Monday morning Microsoft will announce something pretty cool in this area, which is why I’m interested all of a sudden.
Ya gotta hate subtlety to go with a title like that, but that's the one the guy uses.
(It's a cogent and compelling summary of the possible stances available to people who aren't sure about climate change. Just the thing for the remaining skeptics on your holiday list!)
DON'T WATCH THIS VIDEO. I'm serious. This message isn't a hack (I'm the guy in the video), and it's not a ploy to get you to actually watch it (reverse psychology).
It's just that there's a hole in this argument big enough to drive a Hummer through because of an assumption I didn't realize I had (isn't that just the way with assumptions. . .), and the argument has been UPDATED to address that hole.
Green Tomorrows Happens Tomorrow
Last call for "Green Tomorrows."
I'm looking forward to the chance to engage an audience with the ongoing evolution of my "sustainability success" scenarios. This web seminar will mix teleconferencing and webconferencing, and will rely on lessons that Gil Friend and ">Natural Logic have learned by using this system for much of this last year, and that I have learned undertaking a series of remote scenario workshops. I'll be doing a direct presentation for the first half, and a Q&A session for the second half.
Once again, here's the pertinent info:
Date: Thursday, December 20, 2007
Time: 10:00am - 11:00am PST. 1pm EST, 12pm CST, 11am MST
Location: http://www.natlogic.com/webinars
Preregistration required.
Join futurist Jamais Cascio for a stimulating webinar -- you can attend from anywhere -- exploring how the sustainability revolution will transform our politics, our economics, and our lives.
The process of building a sustainable future follows diverse paths, and the choices we embrace today will shape the future we encounter over the next 20 years. By adopting a scenario planning approach, Cascio will look at what kinds of results we might get, and what kinds of opportunities and surprises those results could have in store.
Another Carbon Neutral Learningâ„¢ opportunity from Natural Logic. Series Host: Gil Friend, CEO
As you might suspect, this isn't a free show, although the price is reasonable (especially for people coming in as part of an organization -- the price is per line, not per listener, so callers are perfectly welcome to use a speakerphone and bring friends). Gil does these web seminars as part of Natural Logic's business, and I'm curious about how well the model links to my other projects. It's certainly a much greener way of doing a presentation -- no air travel required.
If you do get a chance to listen in, I'm really eager to get your feedback on both the presentation style and content. This is the working concept for a book -- is it something you'd want to read?
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I hope you'll join us. You'll find the registration link at http://www.natlogic.com/webinars. Bookmark that page (and join our mailing list) for news of our 2008 Carbon Neutral Learning schedule. (And let us know the subjects you'd like us to offer. We'll give a discount coupon for a free webinar to one survey respondant -- selected at random -- to use on any webinar next year.)
When used long-term, Crunch Mode slows development and creates more bugs when compared with 40-hour weeks.
More than a century of studies show that long-term useful worker output is maximized near a five-day, 40-hour workweek. Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime and continues to drop until, at approximately eight 60-hour weeks, the total work done is the same as what would have been done in eight 40-hour weeks.
In the short term, working over 21 hours continuously is equivalent to being legally drunk. Longer periods of continuous work drastically reduce cognitive function and increase the chance of catastrophic error. In both the short- and long-term, reducing sleep hours as little as one hour nightly can result in a severe decrease in cognitive ability, sometimes without workers perceiving the decrease.
It's hard to imagine "getting it all done" in 40 hours, but then again, it's hard to imagine "getting it all done" in 60 or 80 hours either. As David Allen reminds us in Getting Things Done, if you have a creative bone in your body, you'll never get it all done.
So I'm inclined to take the challenge and see what happens. You?