Bob Pritchett

Wow... what a great post by Seth Godin.

Sure, you're working long, but "long" and "hard" are now two different things. In the old days, we could measure how much grain someone harvested or how many pieces of steel he made. Hard work meant more work. But the past doesn't lead to the future. The future is not about time at all. The future is about work that's really and truly hard, not time-consuming. It's about the kind of work that requires us to push ourselves, not just punch the clock. Hard work is where our job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.

As Logos gets bigger, my days get filled with lots of conversations. I don't sit and write code anymore; I talk to people. But are they productive conversations? Are they the hard ones?

Posted by Bob Pritchett at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I read Thomas Friedman’s column “The Whole World is Watching.”

“Three years ago, I was catching a plane at Boston's Logan airport and went to buy some magazines for the flight. As I approached the cash register, a woman coming from another direction got there just behind me – I thought. But when I put my money down to pay, the woman said in a very loud voice: ‘Excuse me, I was here first!’ And then she fixed me with a piercing stare that said: ‘I know who you are.’ I said I was very sorry, but I was clearly there first. ... If that happened today, I would have had a very different reaction. ... We're all public figures now.”

Watch out, the whole world’s watching / blogging / snapping-cam-phone-pics / googling-your-stupid-college-days. The whole world is a small town with a permanent electronic memory. Interesting, but not particularly relevant to me, right? I’m no celebrity, and Bellingham’s not a small town (pop. ~80,000).

That night I was stopped at a red light and heard someone shout my name. It was a high-school kid I didn’t recognize. (I'd spoken to his class, he told me.)

An hour later I was on my way home and stopped at another red light. The driver in the car next to me (who I didn’t recognize) said “Hi, Bob... did you enjoy the fireworks?”

Friedman is right. No more running red lights, kicking puppies, or buying Ben and Jerry’s after midnight for me....

Posted by Bob Pritchett at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

No item is too small when I'm reading the blog of a good friend. Everything they post is interesting.

But from everyone else, I don't want the details. Just the rare, fantastic, inspiring, thought-provoking, post. And then I might want some context. If I ask.

Christina Wodtke is on to something. (Thanks, Derek!).

I want editors back. Not the "I only have 32 pages available and we have a 6 month story-plan for upcoming issues" editors. Web magazine editors who edit and post the best stuff as it arrives, with links back to the author's blog home where I can find out how many cats they have and what they did on their birthday and that their car door got keyed last night.

Like the carnivals, only more organized, more centralized, and better edited.

Posted by Bob Pritchett at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t want my computer to forget anything, unless I tell it to.

But I want everything annotated by time: when it was created, modified, and used. And I want the annotation to be ambient; subtly shown all the time.

My web browser favorites should fade away if I haven’t visited them in a long time. I should be able to look at my contacts and see who I call or correspond with the most, and to “touch” or mark the ones I see in the flesh, the interactions the contact manager doesn’t know about.

My favorite thing about NoteScraps is that I don’t have to organize anything. Time organizes, and the old stuff just falls to the bottom of the pile.

Posted by Bob Pritchett at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just downloaded the new Adobe Digital Editions. It's cool to see the next generation of "rich internet applications" starting to emerge. I've always preferred client side applications interface to seeing everything through the a web browser, but I love apps that are easy to install, ready to go, and always connected.

This is the way to go.

But should it be white on black? I'm so conditioned to light app chrome, but now I'm seeing more white on black UI. Is it better or worse? And is the answer different for "reading applications" like this? Does it frame and emphasize the black on white content, or just make the controls harder to use?

Posted by Bob Pritchett at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”

-- Howard Aiken, quoted in Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, by Jessica Livingston.

Isn’t that the truth. Nobody liked the ideas that turned out best for us. Of course, nobody liked the ideas that flopped, either…

Posted by Bob Pritchett at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)