Blogging January

19 Posts,
2654 Words,
15 Images,
76 Technorati Tags,
1 Man

Turns out January 2006 has been a great month for blogging for me.

Note to self: Keep it up!

Tags: blogging, blog, January

Benchmarking Yourself

It is never a good idea to stick a target on your back and run around clucking like a chicken on heat. Strangely that seems to be exactly what Ford has done with their latest Ford Focus ad-campaign:

Ford Focus

The benchmark? The benchmark? I do not want to drive the benchmark. The benchmark is the minimum. You want to aim above the benchmark. Nobody ambitious ever just reaches the benchmark, they supercede it. That’s the nature of benchmarks – they are not only there to be attained, but to be beaten.

And seeing as our advertising industry is fast asleep at the moment, here’s a nice racy suggestion:

C4 Better

(Note to foreign readers: Mentioning a competitor product by name [competitive advertising] is illegal in South Africa)

Thanks for the inspiration for this post, Brad.

Tags: Ford, Citroen, C4, Focus, benchmark, advertising, marketing, car

Telkom-Death-HOWTO

While SNO continues to lie inanimate on the ground, we cannot continue to tolerate Telkom’s outrageous monopoly. And thus it is with great defiant pleasure I introduce you to “Wireless Networking in the Developing World” – a practical guide to planning and building low-cost telecommunications infrastructure.

Wireless Networking in the Developing World Book Cover

What’s more – this book is free (as in beer) with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

I browsed the index and a couple of pages – it looks hot – well worth the read – I’ll be getting into it this week.

Then again, maybe Telkom are the ones who need to read this book…

Tags: Telkom, telecommunications, SNO, monopoly, wireless, networking, wirelessnetworking, developingworld, thirdworld, toRead, ebook, free

Creative Spending

A mystery parcel was ready for collection at the Post Office this morning. I had no clue what it was…

Creative Commons Gear

It turns out it was my Creative Commons schwag – a small gift to say thanks for donating in the CC fundraising drive. Yay! Free stuff that actually made it all the way from the U.S., despite our Postal Service. It probably only made it safely because it was marked as non-profit gear.

The loot included a T-shirt (overseas T-Shirts are so much more comfortable than the crap they make here in S.A. – I think it has to do with the seams), sticker, badge, sign and a real friendly thank-you letter from the Development Director.

That made my day. Free goodies definitely breed content! 🙂

Tags: CreativeCommons, Tshirt, gift, schwag

Suggested Reading

Rather make that title “Mandatory Reading”.

Books

An oldie but goodie:
‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Steve Jobs says.

Here’s a newer spin on the same theme, How To Do What You Love, from Paul Graham.

Ideas for Startups (once again from Paul Graham).

And moving into the sci-fi arena,
i, robot. By Cory Doctorow.

Best quote from the above texts:
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Tags: ToRead, reading, PaulGraham, CoryDoctorow, SteveJobs, work, love