All the Web 2.0 you can eat

Baris Karadogan, Silicon Valley VC and blogger, has put together a list of "all the web 2.0 companies out there". Karadogan admits that it might not be complete, but we still think it's a good reference.

Dig in!

Found at SiliconBeat

San Francisco's city wide Wi-Fi

Hopefully you're not as obsessed with following the ins n outs of San Francisco's quest for city wide wi-fi coverage as I am. But just in case, here's where you can find the public version (as a PDF) of Earthlink and Google's response to the RFP.

Public, among other things, means that some data has been blacked out in the document. Still, it's interesting reading.

A Tour of MS's Mac Lab

David Weiss is part of the MacBU at Microsoft in Redmond. He's put together a tour of the facilities complete with pretty pictures of row after row of shiny, and not so shiny, Macs. Kinky.

QTSaver does it right

When I blog about a new site/app/service/etc I often hear back from the people behind whatever I'm covering. Sometimes they appreciate my input, and sometimes they...er... don't. Those in the latter category, I confess, make me wonder why they got in to a biz where _every_ user is an opinonated one. Think about it, have you ever come across a person who's online and doesn't have opinions on buggy software, their laptop, banking site, crappy search results, etc, etc?

Anyway, it makes me especially happy when people can handle a less than stellar "review" in a good way, and take feedback and suggestions onboard. This speaks bundles about who they are.

A couple of people who seem to have have taken my less than enthusiastic words to heart over the past month are the guys at QTSaver. Cheers to that. More here.

A dream come true

This is like a dream come true for me.

Douglas Coupland's latest book is "jPod", basically a follow-up to the brilliant Microserfs.

When Microserfs came out I was working at Spray, by far the most hyped and incredibly cool "web agency" in Europe at the time. Couplands book was in some ways a look at our own lifes, but also of those living and working in the (cue awe) tech industry in the US.

It will be interesting to see how my knowledge and expectation of the industry today, over 10 years later, will affect my enjoyment of this new book.

Identity works

As we are getting close to unveiling our new company identity, together with a slightly repositioned offering, we came across an interesting post over at the hicksdesign journal. It's about reactions to John's new profile. Interesting and a bit shocking.

Just as we will be keen to hear what people say (and some who have seen the work in progress have already shared their brain candy with us), we want to echo John when he says "So basically, stuff you. It’s staying. This is what I want."

And isn't that what communication is all about - choosing your voice, and being proud of it?

Sure, messages can and should be tweaked at apropriate times. But if you listen to every JimmyJoeBob out there and try to please them, your voice becomes a whimpering, it will no longer be you, it will no longer have meaning.

If there's one thing we always tell our customers it's to choose a message and a voice that works for you and your plans today and tomorrow (ie. for the next 8-12 months). Plan to far ahead and you make yourself irrelevant and unable to change when you need too.

John is an incredibly talented and smart designer. He made a change to his identity, it works for him today and it'll work for him tomorrow. Mission acomplished.

A small big break and tiny decisions

A good friend of mine asked me about the lack of posts on our blog today. I gave him the quick answer that, well, we've been pretty busy. We then went on to talk about the anatomy of "busy time", regular "work time" and that elusive "free time".

We realised that we were both in favor of the "working free time". This is, in short, where you allow yourself time off from work related matters that aren't crucial to your business at the time that you are thinking of actioning them.

Take the blog posts as an example. Over the past month, approx 12 topics have almost resulted in posts. But at some point between the "idea" and the clicking of the submit button, we've held back. Either by ourself, or by one of us saying "hey, just leave it, take a walk outside instead" or "call client X and see if they want to go with us to the conference next week".

It's really about the toughest drill sergeant (ourselves) allowing us some time off. That short 15 minute break is worth so much more when taken in the middle of the day than at the end of a 10 hour day. Rejuvenate your brain - or write a post?

My friend then mentioned feed fatigue - basically not keeping up with ones favorite blogs. He had reached a stage where he simply didn't care what the peeps over at 37sigs, SiliconBeat, Macfeber, A List Apart etc had to say. At least for a couple of days he didn't want the input, the inspiration, the whatever

"I don't care", he shouted.

Same thing - take that time off. Don't read anything work related, let the magz pile up, ignore the big red blobb on the NetNewsWire icon in the dock. Take... that... time... off...instead.

Remember, we're not talking about not doing your job. We're simply talking about allowing yourself some "working free time".

On a reasonably related topic, here are a few good words on making decisions, tiny decisions.