Maintaining a light grip
Apr 19, 2008 Sports
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I’m finding more and more life lessons in pool. I think it’s because it’s very much a mental game. But I digress.
In pool, you need a light grip on the cue stick. Yes, the grip is very personal, but in general, any instructor or book will advise a light grip. I’m not sure the exact reason, but I think it’s to ensure that the cue stick follows its natural path when you stroke. If you grip it too tightly, it’s more likely that the cue stick will jerk and move off its natural path.
Sometimes in life, trying to have too much control isn’t good. Sometimes the more you try to force something, the worse it’ll go. It might be better to just lightly guide it, and let it take its course.
One prime example of this is in business/pr today, especially with social media. You can’t force the conversations. You can’t stop all negative reviews. If you try to, it’ll just make things worse. The best thing you can do is work on your brand, be a part of the conversations, and let the rest happen. Same for your personal brand.
Sometimes the most natural option is the best one.
[?]Tags: brand, control, Conversation, natural, pool
Does Twitter Spam Really Matter?
Apr 18, 2008 Technology
There’s been a lot of commotion over Twitter spam lately, with Mashable’s Adam Ostrow writing that Twitter Spam has spiralled out of control. Adam goes on to suggest that “the time has arrived for Twitter to require a CAPTCHA with every new follow you want to make”.
Personally, I never really liked CAPTCHAs because of the negative impact on usability. But that’s a post for another day, I guess (Wired’s Paul Adams asked the question of whether Captcha’s moment is passing, and you can see the discussion there if you’re interested.)
The question I want to ask here is the question in the post title. Does Twitter spam really matter? Yes, it’s slightly annoying getting the random email notifications of being followed. But other than the email notifications, I personally don’t see the big deal about Twitter spam.
Twitter, by its nature, is inherently permission based, isn’t it? You choose who to follow. So how does Twitter spam fit in? Users can just choose not to follow the spammers, and that’s done, isn’t it? And based on Andre Nantel’s study, users are more or less intelligent enough to choose who to follow.
When the user controls what messages he receives, can spam really be that big an issue? Can it even be considered spam in the first place?
The second question, I don’t have a fixed answer to. But for the first question, I don’t see how spam can be such a big isssue.
What do you think? Is there something I’m missing from all of this??
[?]Tags: captcha, permission, social media, spam, twitter
My Take on Fragmented Conversations
Apr 17, 2008 blogging
Okay, so I’m finally back after a week or so. And there’s been a lot going on in the blogosphere over that week, not least the conversation about comments. Lots of people have written and discussed about this. Two such people were Valeria Maltoni - who asked whether comments should be portable - and Robert Scoble - who said that the era of blogger’s control is over.
For me, the issue isn’t about control. The issue is about the conversations themselves. I would love to know what people are saying, and to be a part of the conversations - to interact with and answer my readers. And also, when different parts of conversations are happening on different places, the readers might not be able to get the whole picture/value of the conversation. If a really good conversation is happening on FriendFeed, the readers on the blog itself could miss out. And vice versa.
That’s the biggest issue for me about the fragmentation of comments. And I’m looking forward to see whether anyone manages to come up with a solution. I think the Feed with Comments plugin that I’m using here (as announced in the previous post) helps solve the second problem slightly - the comments being in the RSS feed themselves makes them available no matter where the feed is ported to.
What do you think?
Tags: blog, Commenting, Conversation, web 2.0
More Conversational Tools
Apr 8, 2008 Announcements
You might have noticed I’ve made a couple of changes to the blog, and I’m hoping that they’ll help improve the conversations here.
Firstly, the sidebar has been changed to include my conversations from Twitter. This was inspired by Andrea Vascellari’s Twitter Comments. The idea is that a lot of conversations today are happening on Twitter, so why not bring that conversation here to the blog. I edited the pipe slightly, to include my own tweets, so that a more complete picture of the conversation is shown - my updates and the replies to those updates. If you want to use it, you can get the pipe here, and if you want to be updated on the conversations I’m part of, you can subscribe to the feed here.
Secondly, the comments on the various posts are now embedded as part of the RSS feed. I figured that since I don’t get that many comments, it won’t clog up your readers. And I think it’ll make it easier to keep track of the conversation (you won’t have to click through in order to read the comments). You can check out one of my older posts in a feed reader if you want to see how it looks.
So yeah, those are the two changes I’ve made. Let me know what you think of them.
Conversation Silhouettes picture by Brian Solis, via Flickr
[?]Tags: blogging tools, Conversation, twitter
Your Yardstick
Apr 8, 2008 Personal Development, Technology
David Pogue wrote last week about how “blogger-bashers are terrible predictors of a product’s success or failure“.
The lesson he learned?
It’s the same lesson I learned when I reviewed the Flip “camcorder” a couple weeks ago: if you change the shape and concept of something enough, it ceases to be that thing. It becomes a new thing, or a descendant of that earlier thing. But it’s no longer the original thing, and you can’t judge it on the same yardstick.
I think it’s a very good viewpoint, and I think it can be applied to people as well.
When you’re doing your own thing, you’re probably going to be shot down. You’re going to be ‘bashed’ by people who judge you by the status quo - the old standards. But you shouldn’t let it get to you. Because they could very well be wrong.
Once you’re forging your own path and trying to break the status quo, all the old, accepted standards go out the window. And only you can accurately judge whether you’re succeeding.
It’s your own journey, and the only yardstick that truly matters is your own.
By what yardstick are you judging yourself?
Photo from Charlyn W via Flickr
Tags: criticism, judge, status quo, yardstick
Focusing Your Efforts
Apr 6, 2008 Random
The New York Times recently ran an article about how will power is limited.
Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.
Scientific evidence of the value of focus, perhaps?
[?]Tags: focus, science, will power
Pick a Number
Apr 5, 2008 Analogies
2 15 18 9 6 4.
Pick a number.
Now, how many of you picked 18? How many picked 6?
And how many of you picked 7? Or 951? Or 3000?
Why not? I didn’t say you had to pick a number that I wrote down. Yet most people assume that.
People tend to make assumptions. More specifically, people tend to make assumptions based on what they’ve seen in the past, and what they know. A list of numbers preceded the request, so an assumption is made that you were supposed to pick a number from the list.
But sometimes, these assumptions can limit your choices. You may have more opportunities than you think you have, if you get past the initial assumption.
What assumptions do you make that limit your opportunities? And how do you get past them?
Disclosure: As much as I wish I did, I didn’t think of the “pick a number” example myself. Saw it on Numb3rs, and thought it was a great lesson, so I thought I’d share it here. And admittedly, it works better in person, and not as well on a blog post, but I hope it got the point across well enough.
Tags: choices, opportunities, options, pick a number
