Circadian Shift

This is so true:

I'll be back in a few days. However, linkage accumulation on del.icio.us continues.

I'm having a severe bout of blog fatigue. And I'm a prime candidate for RSS Anonymous.

The link-starved amongst you can check out what I'm accumulating on del.icio.us.

Thanks to Monkeymagic for indirectly pointing me to these virtual pages from Leonardo daVinci's Codex Arundel (Shockwave plugin required to view). Very neat stuff.

You can also look at some pictures of lifesize models made from daVinci's designs.

Did some spelunking through the Circadian Shift archives, and came up with the following additional linkage:

• Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman -- an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
• page with a number of drawings by Leonardo daVinci [Addendum: sorry, forgot to make sure the original link actually worked before posting it; the link works now (goes to a mirror page)]
• the complete translated text of The Notebooks of Leonardo daVinci
• a BBC site on Leonardo

Admittedly, there's some overlap between categories here...

KM/CM

• Richard McManus on the concept of Information Flow (via Conversations with Dina)
• CMS News is "meta-news aggregator" on content management(via Information Management Weblog)
• Robert Scoble on Corporate Blogging (via Common Craft)
• a table that summarizes Employee Knowledge Behaviours (via Knowledge Jolt with Jack)

Enterprise Squishiness

• Retooling 360s for Better Performance -- "For better or worse, the 360-degree feedback tool is SOP in many organizations. Harvard Management Update evaluates the evaluation method—and sees room for improvement."
• Don't Bungle Bad News
• It's Asking the Question that Adds Value
• Reducing Friction in Knowledge Work -- "In conventional process design work, you look for bottlenecks; places where work backs up. Break the bottleneck and move on to the next one. I think of friction as the things that create bottlenecks or slow knowledge work down. It's a bit more subtle than just focusing on obvious bottlenecks."
• When Does a Project Start?

Personal Squishy Skills

• Mathemagenic points to excerpts from a book called Now Discover Your Strengths, to help you identify where your talents lie and how to apply them
• The Luck Factor -- "What accounts for success and failure? More often than you might think, it's just luck. But like most things, luck can be managed." (via BusinessPundit)
• UF Study: People Unduly Gloomy In Positive Situations, Upbeat In Negative Ones -- "Odds are people think the glass is half empty when it is overflowing and half full when it is about to run dry, according to a new University of Florida study on attitudes about risk." (ibid.)
• Stay Awake and Learn -- "How to get the most out of meetings" (via WorkingWounded)
• BusinessWeek looks at The Perils and Promise of Online Schmoozing

I just found my first grey hair.

(thank you, toothpastefordinner)

I think my head weighs an extra pound, thanks to all the snot that seems to have accumulated in my skull and won't leave. In that light, I phoned the office this morning and informed them that I wouldn't be gracing them with my presence today.

Anyway, what better time, then, to bring you this linkage on workplace life:

• Angry workers get clicking after lunch -- " Tell off an employee before noon, and there's a good chance that he or she will be back at their desk after lunch searching for a new boss on-line" (via del.icio.us)
• Happiness pays -- "PaeTec Communications is fiercely dedicated to two things: worker contentment and inexorable growth. The company's relentlessly focused CEO takes personal responsibility for both." (via BostonWorks - The Job Blog)
• Downsizing raises risk of death in workers -- "Corporate downsizing doubles the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and has serious health effects on employees who survive redundancy, suggests new research." (via waydownhere)
• Drum Sessions Protect Employees from Burnout -- "In the drumming sessions, participants performed a series of exercises, including beating the drum to the rhythm of their own name, copying the rhythm of others' names, representing their feelings via drumbeats, playing along to music, and discussing ongoing stresses with the group, if they so chose. " Not quite as much fun as envisioning your nemesis' face on the drumhead. (via DiVERSiONZ)

• Notebook -- a PIM tool
• clever cactus! -- another universal information client (in beta)
• Booby -- online management for bookmarks/favorites, contacts, todo's, notes and news feeds
• SiteBar -- a bookmark server for personal and team use; use one of the demo/public sites, or set an installation up on your own server
• Rollup -- "Rollups are a great way to track what is going on across a number of different sites by aggregating all the RSS feeds and displaying them on one page. It was inspired by some cool stuff Chris from networkScience did when he setup Blogging.to." (Yay, Chris!)
• xmlhub.com -- RSS News, Tools and Resources
• 2RSS.com -- "RSS feeds, RSS directory, RSS software, RSS scripts, RSS articles, RSS syndication, XML, RDF..."
• Moreover -- Full list of news categories available in a rss format newsfeed

• a Guardian Unlimited piece on Social networks
• A Short Introduction to Social Networks: A Non-Technical Elementary Primer
• Current Research in Social Network Theory
• Social Network Theory -- lots of linkage

• Economist.com | Business encyclopedia -- includes a dictionary, business profiles, and HOWTO guides
• Second Moment: Applied Analytics and Statistics for Academia and Industry
• Data Mining and Analytic Technologies (Kurt Thearling) -- whitepapers, tutorials, other resources
• Textbooks, Lecture Notes And Tutorials In Mathematics
• Introduction to Number Theory

• New Gadgets Revive Bluetooth
• NewFreeware.com is a software archive (via del.icio.us)
• Create Your Own Bootable Windows On CD-ROM/DVD (via Robin Good)
• a list of Live Linux CDs -- run Linux without installing it on your hard drive (via Mookie)
• Transform Forced Text to Numbers in Excel -- "One of my clients sends me Microsoft Excel files in which all the columns are in text format, even when they contain only numbers. I must then convert the text numbers to numeric fields for sorting and format purposes." Arrgh.
• Absolute and Relative Positioning -- more CSS wrangling
• Web Interface Design Tip: The Yellow Fade Technique
• Colourful table borders -- yet another CSS trick (via del.icio.us)
• The Imposter demos all sorts of neat CSS effects (ibid.)
• Tutorials: CSS and XSLT Stylesheets(ibid.)
• Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites (ibid.)
• Ten Tips for Managing a Successful Web Redesign -- an excerpt from the book Web Redesign: Workflow That Works
• What have they done to my site, Ma? (via mezzoblue)
• Sessions.edu: Color Calculator for RGB, CMYK, and HTML color values -- "an interactive color tool that helps designers identify color harmonies and schemes for any design project faster than with any color wheel or web color chart" (via del.icio.us)
• WhatTheFont -- upload a scanned image of some text and find out what font it's set in (ibid.)
• Learning Movable Type -- a blog with some handy tips for us MT wranglers (ibid.)

• Planning for Committed Action -- Don't forget to involve the team when planning a project
• Using Inch-Pebbles to Track Project State
• Project Management: Surviving the Sponsor Exit -- "Here's how to keep your project on track if your executive sponsor leaves." (via Reforming Project Management)
• Kill Canceled Projects -- a quick checklist on what to do if you have to pull the plug
• Presenting to Win: the Art of of Brainstorming -- "When preparing for a presentation, forget the left side of your brain and exhaust the right. This sample chapter shows you the steps necessary for a successful presentation, and it sings the praises of the skill of brainstorming in order to find focus."
• Thinking Managers -- a resource site featuring the writings of Edward de Bono and Robert Heller (via Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog)
• Better Decision Making
• How to Read the Signs -- "What you can do to lead your organization down the path of technological change."
• No Small Change -- "A well-thought-out strategy for change management is critical to the success of any new system. Here's how four organizations reaped big dividends by managing change."
• Project e-Tip: Expectations Breed Results -- "Our frame of reference shapes how we see the world and therefore what is possible for us and those people with whom we interact. This is known as the Pygmalion effect." (also available as a PDF)
• airplane rule -- "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." (via paranoidfish.org/links)
• Coffee-breaks sabotage employees' abilities -- Noooo, don't say it's true! (via Daily Rotation)
• Sarbanes-Oxley: Road to Compliance -- "IT departments view the act as an opportunity to show their impact on the company's bottom line by helping forge tighter links between business processes and technology. However, the compliance process is turning out to be more costly and time-consuming than originally expected, and in many cases, according to at least one study, companies are not turning to their IT departments to manage compliance." (via anil dash's daily links)
• Clans on the Run -- "As a new generation takes over, Asia's richest business families are being forced to change their cloistered, Confucian ways" (ibid.)
• Strong Finish: Writing Effective Conclusions -- "If you?re writing a white paper, issue brief, article, analysis, or report, what?s the best way to conclude that document?"
• What's the Competition Doing? -- a cursory overview of resources for competitive intelligence
• M&A: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- a look at mergers and acquisitions (via BusinessPundit)
• Corporations Vs. People -- A Split Decision
• Blogging for Business: A presentation by 37signals (via del.icio.us)

• SYMBOLS.com -- encyclopedia of Western signs and ideograms (via del.icio.us)
• Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures Signs Body Language (ibid.)
• Memes, and Related Ideas about the Evolution of Culture (ibid.)
• Hot Tub Monkeys Offer Eye on Nonhuman Culture -- When Japanese macaques began receiving food handouts more than 50 years ago— freeing them from the daily grind of foraging for food—they invented "cultural activities" to fill their newly acquired leisure time (via Anthropology in the News)
• Left-handedness common in Ice Age (ibid.)
• Did Neanderthals breed with humans? (ibid.)
• Human brain began evolving early (ibid.)
• MSNBC - How your brain handles love and pain -- Scanners reveal mechanisms behind empathy and placebo effect
• Meditation for clarinet and (optional) signal processing (1989) 
• Sound Collage Lowercase Sound / Micro Sound / Sound Collage / Noise / Sound Art / Field Recordings / Sound Injury
• Beams cut need for cancer surgery -- Scientists are perfecting a 'virtual scalpel' which uses ultrasound beams to kill cancer cells
• Darpa Offers No Food for Thought -- the Pentagon is looking into ways for GIs to fight for up to five days without eating a single meal
• The Complete Newspeak Dictionary (via Michael Douglas)
• BBC News Quiz: Are you a cynic? (via plasticbag)

Sorry, but the ol' brain just doesn't want to do any blogging today.  Anyway, here's some more linkage on information overload/management/display.

• Bit Literacy: An Overview
• Managing Your Attention to Avoid Information Overload
• Reeling from All That Information? -- the virtues of pattern recognition (via Column Two)
• Personal Content Management
• My Personal KM
• PowerPoint as a Toy for Thought (via del.icio.us)
• Evil Genius (The Good Site of PowerPoint) (via paranoidfish)

Yep, it's an overload of links on overload. Time to turn off the computer again.

I'm going to dispense with work-related linkage today. I'm sure life will go on.

• Half of all languages face extinction this century -- "(E)ach language lost leaves a gap in our understanding of the variable cognitive structures of which the human brain is capable. Studies of different languages have already revealed vastly different ways of representing and interpreting the world." (via del.icio.us)
• Where are the Chinese-speakers of the future? -- "Despite the fact that Chinese is the most widely spoken language on the planet - there are 874 million native speakers of Chinese, compared with 341 million of English - only 50,000 American schoolchildren study it." (ibid.)
• Monkey Talk, Human Speech Share Left-Brain Processing -- " An area near the left temple responded significantly more than the same area on the right only to monkey calls, not to other animal calls, human voices or various other sounds." (via Anthropology in the News)
• Monkey Mating Requires Lots of Brainpower -- "brain regions associated with complex, organized neural processes?in addition to those linked to sexual arousal?light up when males encounter appealing mates" (ibid.)
• Catapult Makers: Rock Stars of Antiquity -- "The rise of advanced catapults, better fortifications, and manuals on artillery and tactics was accompanied by a rise in the visibility and status of engineers, who also worked as architects and surveyors." (ibid.)
• No Pants Day 2004 is Friday, May 7th -- Oh good, another excuse to avoid doing laundry. (via Jeremy Zawodny's Linkblog)

• Make Your Own Luck -- a link from Curt Rosengren that breaks things down into "five luck skills"
• Anil Dash links to a different Make Your Own Luck article that covers networking skills
• Personal Intellectual Capital -- "Ultimately, you're responsible for the life you lead. It's up to you to learn what you need to succeed. That makes you responsible for your own knowledge management, learning architecture, instructional design and evaluation."
• The Knowledge Savings Account -- "A model of information accumulation behavior"
• Personal Knowledge Mapping And The Concept Of Data Emergence
• A Roadmap for Long-Term Knowledge Management Success
• Knowledge Discovery Resource Tools (PDF, 935kb) (via Robin Good )
• How to Handle Career Mistakes

• Search Engine Optimization Part I and Part II
• Microsoft's in-house sociologist (via Tomalak's Realm)
• What's the point of using pixels? (via Digital Web)
• The Jobs of Tomorrow: A New Low? -- "According to a new Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast, most of the big growth areas will be low-skill -- and low-paying"
• Replacing Paper
• How To Select Appropriate Images For Publication
• Test Your Website At Modem Speed And See Which Images Slow You Down
• The Origins Of User Interface Patterns (via Robin Good )
• Statistical Data Mining Tutorials (via del.icio.us)
• An Atlas of Cyberspaces -- many different ways to draw sitemaps (ibid.)
• Introduction to RSS Feeds (PDF, 2.0 MB) (ibid.)
• Free New Fonts at Acid Fonts (ibid.)
• DecisionSoft Online Tools for working with XML (ibid.)
• Searching the Internet for Images via Neat New Stuff on the Net

• Syllogomania -- Zed has some fun linkage on squalor and hoarding
• Monkey morality -- "Sharing might not be as nice as it's cracked up to be." (via del.icio.us)
• The 12 universal dreams (via leftblank)

I've gone and overloaded myself again.  I'm going to have to do something about how/what I blog here, because this is getting unwieldy.

Meanwhile...

Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks was a talk given by Danny O'Brien at the recent Etech Conference on methods used by prominent tech types to handle the huge gobs and gobs of information they both consume and produce on a daily basis.  Here are notes from:

• paranoidfish
• Cory Doctorow
• Bob McWhirter
• x180
• Matthew Boedicker (commenting on Cory's notes)
• Trevor Smith (via insufficient time)
• Hydra (?) (ibid.)

And here are Danny's notes from last year, when he was preparing for the talk, as well as the discussion board he set up for gathering ideas of who else to talk to.

In the same vein are these links that I've come across recently about recording and tracking ideas and information:

• Methods and materials for recording ideas (via Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Weblog)
• Shower Slate -- write down your ideas in the shower, or in any other water-logged environment (via FC Now)
• Inc. looks at brainstorming and why the best ideas happen in the shower (via flashblogging)
• Two good posts by Piers Young on information retrieval headaches and multitasking
• In response to Piers' multitasking post, FC Now links to this old Fast Company article on The Art of Multitasking
• Jack Vinson comments on the continued search for personal KM
• Chandler is an open source personal information manager for email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as well as a platform for developing information management applications. It is currently under development and will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux-based PC's." (via push button paradise)
• Haystack -- is another universal information client, still in preliminary release form (via del.icio.us)
• Ambient Orb is a frosted glass orb that glows different colours to convey information (via plasticbag)

A quick search through the Circadian Shift archives also turned up these two posts:

• The Infojunkie's Toolbox
• Info-Wrangling Tool Update

The second item mentions my sadly-neglected Bloki site, which includes linkage to more tools.

Lastly, there's this page on Software for Research (Using Windows), with yet more linkage to more PIM tools than you can shake a stick at.

• RSS Templates for TypePad Pro/MovableType   (via del.icio.us)
• XMLmind XML Editor is available in a free (Standard) version, and a not-free (Professional) version; it also runs on multiple platforms (ibid.)
• dodgeit is a free service that provides throwaway e-mail addresses (ibid.)
• Floppyswop -- "A place for sharing any files small enough to fit on a conventional floppy disc "; multimedia files, mostly (ibid.)
• Morguefile.com -- a free stock photo archive (ibid.)
• OpenOffice.org XML Essentials: Using OpenOffice.org’s XML Data Format -- a book in progress, currently licensed under a Creative Commons License (ibid.)
• The Design Management Institute looks like it has some useful resources (via angiemckaig.com)
• Angie also has The Ultimate Blog Template List on her site
• The Contract Employee's Handbook (via Contingent Workforce)
• Agenda Detection -- tips for bailing out of meetings (via hotlinks)
• User Interface Design: Is it A Science, An Art, or A Craft? (via InfoDesign)
• Accessible Web Typography is a book that's available in its entirety online for free (ibid.)
• The Visual Language of PowerPoint: Q&A with Bob Horn (ibid.)
• Since many of my workdays of late have been spent wrangling spreadsheets, I found this page of Excel keyboard shortcuts from Techrepublic quite handy (free registration required to download)
• Why Am I Talking? -- tips on "high-performance listening"
• The Thinkers 50 ranks the leaders in business and management thinking (via How to Save the World )
• More Marketing Budgets Shifted to Online Strategies (via MarketingWonk)
• Without Conversion Rates You Don’t Know If You’re Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle (ibid.)
• Styling acronym and abbr (via paranoidfish)
• 'Oedipus Wrecks' and other business names to avoid (via Fresh Inc.)
• Valentine Flower Sites No Bed of Roses: Usability Thorns Await -- a review of top flower sites

• All-in-one gadgets test consumer patience
• Cell phones top list of hated tech necessities
• Hubble Space Telescope: 1990 - 2007
• The Cultural Recession -- "For almost its entire history, the United States has been a magnet for the world’s creative talent because it enshrined certain institutional biases into its government and culture to favor open-mindedness over rigidity.... The modern Republican party in its policies and temperament represents the fullest and most arrogant expression of anti-intellectual, moralistic authoritarianism that America has ever seen in a position of government leadership." (via del.icio.us)
• The Science of Inequality -- "(Y)ou always knew that the rich got richer through no merit of their own, didn't you? Now, with the aid of computers, scientists think they have proved it." (ibid.)
• The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (ibid.)
• Periodic Table of Mathematicians (ibid.)
• Five Geek Social Fallacies  (ibid.)
• The Beastly Garden of Wordy Delights -- The plural of 'moose' is... 'moose' (via LanguageHat)
• The Best Photo Blogs, according to Forbes magazine
• Living Machines -- "Technology and biology are converging fast. The result will transform everything from engineering to art - and redefine life as we know it." (via Tomalak's Realm)
• The megapixel myth -- more isn't necessarily better when you're buying a digital camera (via mezzoblue)
• Human clone produces stem cells
• The truth behind fear and cloning
• Beating back the next pandemic -- thoughts from a virologist

Uh, yeah, been neglecting things here in The Hovel again. Posting will be light to nonexistent between now and Saturday.

If you're really impatient, you can take a peek at some of my linkage accumulation on del.icio.us. And there are my long neglected and clumsily implemented news portal things. And there's all that sidebar linkage.

See you on the weekend.

• Downloads outsell DVDs and vinyl -- "Sales of legal music downloads have reached a new high to become the second most popular singles format in the UK."
• Someone's put together a sales popularity chart for ringtones (via MarketingWonk)

• Cheapskate's Guide to a Safe PC -- "There are plenty of free tools available for download that do a good basic job of purging and protecting computer systems. And some of these tools, such as SpamBayes, Spybot and the Mozilla Web browser, work better than similar commercial products."
• Value-Driven Intranet Design -- "Many corporate intranets lack thoughtful, focused, and disciplined design and are often extremely large and unwieldy. Fixing these intranets can seem an impossible and futile task."
• Managing the Complexity of Content Management
• A way out of automated phone hell -- "Getting transferred from one automated message to another while stuck in a company's convoluted telephone system is enough to make even the most unflappable individual's blood boil. A solution that may prevent violence against handsets comes in the form of a new software program designed to detect callers' frustration and transfer them to a human operator."
• 10 Steps to Measuring Web Site Success
• W3C fixes the CSS validator
• Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line -- "Commercial websites are still, in the main, scary, difficult, and undependable. Responsibility for many e-commerce problems lies with designers. Responsibility for others lies with engineers, marketers, managers, and executives who are willing to accept mediocrity or worse." (spotted on InfoDesign, Tomalak's Realm, and elsewhere)
• Corel Sheds XML Business -- Corels sells XMetal to Blast Radius (one factual error in this article: Corel did not create XMetal, but instead acquired it when they bought SoftQuad Software).  Just what the hell is Corel doing, anyway?
• A Fresh Bunch of CSS Goodness -- linkage ahoy (via Mezzoblue)
• PC drives will reach 500 GB by 2007 -- that's a lot of MP3s
• RSS with CSS (via del.icio.us)
• Faux Columns (ibid.)
• FSF/Unesco Free Software Directory (ibid.)
• Nuts and Bolts of Transaction Processing (ibid.)
• Pages is a lightweight CMS that doesn't require a database
• Mapping and Visualization Resources (ibid.)
• Monkeymagic pointed me to this Relevance Theory Handbook (MS Word .doc, 151 kb); to quote: "According to relevance theory, any external stimulus or internal representation which provides an input to cognitive processes may be relevant to an individual at some time. Utterances raise expectations of relevance not because speakers are expected to obey a Co-operative Principle or some other communicative convention, but because the search for relevance is a basic feature of human cognition, which communicators may exploit."  Uh, yeah, the prose is a bit dense.  Will have to sit down with this over a large vat of coffee.

• Solving the real productivity crisis -- "When it comes to work, a lot of us have a little problem: We don't know when to say when. Or worse still, we can't." (via bBlog)
• There's no quick fix in job hunting
• Planning Your Future -- pointers on putting together a five-year plan for your career
• Five rules for posting your resume online
• Experts recommend daily schedule and positive attitude for a successful job hunt
• FC Now points to an old Fast Company article that notes "There is no correlation at all between success and hours worked."
• IT salaries picking up momentum
• Fluidtime -- "a project to help create tools to help people work with time more effectively"
• Why Good People Hit the Wall
• Setting Expectations, Part 1 and Part 2 (via Dewayne and Shadow His Webdog)
• Embracing Uncertainty: The Executive's Challenge (PDF, 83kb) (via Reforming Project Management)
• "What happens when a company's motivational program (your career is your own responsibility, its up to you to carve your path etc.) simply motivates it's employees to seek more fulfilling work elsewhere?"

• Mapping Between XML and Relational Data
• Larry Chase's Search Engine for Marketers -- "This free service features short reviews and links to the top sites in 40 marketing categories, such as: Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Increasing Site Traffic, Link Popularity, Direct Marketing, Web Analytics, Search Engine Marketing, Affiliate Programs, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Media Buying, CRM, and more. For each site listed, 35 were rejected. " (via Seth's Blog)
• What Do Instructional Designers Design? (ZIP file with various documents, 599kb) (via elearnspace)
• Microsoft to protect Disney films -- "The venerable animation studio has signed up to use Microsoft software to stop its films being pirated."  <sarcasm>Because, after all, Microsoft is all about security.</sarcasm>
• Unstoppable Rise of the Home Computer -- "Computers pervade every aspect of our culture. But only 50 years ago, they were considered futuristic devices that belonged to the scientific world"
• Foiling Laptop Data Thieves -- some tools you can use to protect your data
• Personal Information Management Bibliography (via Monkeymagic)
• The Art of Blogging, Part 1 has the "Overview, Definitions, Uses, and Implications", while Part 2 covers "Getting Started, 'How To', Tools, Resources" (via Seb's Open Research)
• Information Architecture: Creating Order Out of Chaos -- "a Quick and Dirty Presentation" (via InfoDesign)
• Social Networks: Will Users Pay to Get Friends? -- "A New York Times reporter had trouble digging up a real business model behind the fabulous new fad of social networking." Some people never learn. (via MarketingWonk)
• Firebird Firefox 0.8 has been released (via kottke)
• SkillMarket -- "A daily look at in-demand tech skills" (via del.icio.us)
• Answers to technical interview questions -- a big list of links (ibid.)
• File-Mirror -- "a small and useful tool which "mirrors" the content of specified directories to other ones.  This can be very useful if you have two harddrives and want to back up your data regularly. Neither you need an expencive RAID-Controller which mirrors the whole harddisk (and also all directories, you can't specify it) nor you need to copy the directories by hand (and maybe forget it)." (ibid.)

• Swapping Out Image Maps
• CSS Crib Sheet #3: Centering a DIV (via Clagnut)
• Multivalued CSS Class Attributes
• SimpleCode -- Takes normal (X)HTML markup and spits out entity-encoded markup suitable for <code> examples; SimpleBits wrote the original Perl source, which you DIY types can download and use on your own server (via paranoidfish)
• JavaScript Pie Menus for Internet Explorer (via del.icio.us)
• Using Background-Image to Replace Text (ibid.)
• Easy CSS drop shadows (ibid.)
• Shadowboxing (ibid.)
• CSS Code for Vertical Text (ibid.)

• What's Wrong with the Current System? Compensation without Long-Term Value Creation -- "The problem with the current corporate compensation system may lie in the fact that it rewards stakeholders for behavior that does not create long-term value for shareholders. Compensation has been and continues to be a major issue that needs to be addressed one way or another as corporate accountability comes to the fore."
• Why Capacity Planning is Seldom Done Well -- "Almost every infrastructure manager and most analysts will acknowledge the importance of ensuring that adequate capacity is planned for and provided. And there's nothing inherently difficult or complex about developing a sound capacity-planning program. So why is it so seldom done well?"
• What is a Death March Project and Why do They Happen?
• Systems Manglement -- thoughts on the management of complex systems (you may have to scroll for this one) (via this week's Carnival of the Capitalists, via BusinessPundit )
• Communication Theories and Herd Mentalities (ibid.)
• Steven Covey on Management -- "In most organisations there is a lack of trust, and most employees are powerless. In this era of knowledge-workers we still use the industrial model of control, in which we treat people like objects. It is as if we are still practising bloodletting, although we know all about bacteria and how they work." (via Psybertron Knowledge Modelling Weblog)
• Establish policies for communicating bad news to users -- "Delivering bad news to end users is tough, but when communicated badly or too soon, it can turn into trouble. Reduce the risks and make the process easier by publishing guidelines for your tech support team."
• What it takes to create an effective whitepaper
• Implement problem management with these seven steps
• Making the Most of Multiparty Negotiations -- "As soon as you sit down with more than two people, chances are that coalitions will form"
• How to Make Your Best Case - key success factors for effective business cases
• Organisational Memetics?: Organisational Learning as a Selection Process

• Spot the Fake Smiles (spotted on Conversations with Dina and elsewhere)
• Amy's 2003 Top Ten Web Diversions
• The 80s Makeup Massacre
• Make a camp stove out of a Pepsi or Guiness can (via Cool Tools, via del.icio.us)

• Merchants Need Some Timely Improvements -- a survey of E-mail Response and Fulfillment Times Among Top E-tailers
• Google Voted Best Brand of 2003
• Why Brand When Positioning Will Do?
• Seven Product Launch Tactics for 2004
• How to Make Print Ads Work -- a quick checklist
• Why Online Ads Don't Work (via MarketingWonk)
• Is Ad-Supported RSS the Next Big Thing? (ibid.)
• What Web Performance Metrics Really Mean (ibid.)
• SEMPO's Search Engine Marketing Resources (ibid.)
• Three Reasons Analytics Fail Companies
• Use Data to Improve E-Mail Effectiveness

• Over on Whitespace, there's a discussion about what makes a good domain name
• Whitespace also waxes forth on Developing Traffic to your site
• yet more thoughts from Whitespace on designing websites for friends
• FavIcon from Pics (via xBlog)
• JavaScript jockeys make want to check out jslint: The JavaScript Verifier for their troubleshooting needs (ibid.)
• another online color calculator (ibid.)
• RSSTop55 - Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites (ibid.)
• XHTML CSS Layout Templates from About.com
• Everything I Needed to Know About Web Design I Learned from Watching Oz (via tbit)
• CSS Design: Customer Underlines (via DigitalWeb)
• Browser Support 2004
• Meryl once again urges web designers to give the Accessibility Toolbar a try
• Jakob says: Keep Online Surveys Short
• Sun.com Turns 10 -- "How customers helped shape Sun's Web sites over the past decade."
• TV-style adverts arrive on the web
• Lou Rosenfeld: The InfoDesign Interview
• Discovering DOM Scripting
• Designing and Managing an XML Warehouse
• Seven Myths of Usability ROI
• Jeffrey Veen on The Rules of Unix
• Pronunciation Guide for Unix (via kottke)
• Building a Better Browser
• Dave Pollard offers some operating instructions for new bloggers
• Forbes reports on The 25 Fastest-Growing Techs
• Create an Object-Oriented JavaScript Calendar Using the Façade Design Pattern
• More Thank Just a Footer
• Cascading Severity Sheets -- a rant on CSS's failings as a design tool (via paranoidfish)
• fonts for programmers (ibid.)
• Successful CIOs offer tips for conveying the value of IT to the business
• W3C's CSS Validator is broken
• Kalsey Consulting has a presentation on How to Capitalize on Blogging
• Exploring Footers
• Javascript Image Gallery
• Jef Raskin, Macintosh inventor, looks to the future of computing (via Tomalak's Realm)
• Integrated Web Design: CSS Beyond the Retrofit (via meryl's notes)

• Guide to Effective Searching of The Internet (via del.icio.us)
• Concept Mapping/Semantic Networking/Knowledge Representation -- tons and tons of linkage (ibid.)
• Content Analysis Resources -- " This site aims to support researchers interested in quantitative analysis of texts, transcripts, and images." (ibid.) 
• Google Guide is an interactive tutorial on using Google (via Seb's Open Research)
• 2003's Most Wanted Search Terms -- SearchEngineWatch.com wraps it up
• Most people use 2 word phrases in search engines
• How to Make Spam Unstoppable -- "With a little ingenuity it is possible to create messages that get past anti-spam filters every single time."
• The Deadly Duo: Spam and Viruses, January 2004  -- "The spam volume has consistently risen 2 percentage points every month for the last three... and at this rate, spam can potentially rise to nearly 80 percent of e-mail by the end of the year."
• Writing with Images (via InfoDesign)
• PeopleSoft Case Study: Acquisition-driven Information Architecture (ibid.)
• Douglas Adams on How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
• two nifty Java-powered information visualization apps
• Definitions of information management terms (via Column Two)
• Open-Source Content Management Systems (ibid.)
• Great Taste, Less Privacy -- "A patron walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender asks to see some ID. Without asking permission, the barkeep swipes the driver's license through a card reader and the device flashes a green light approving the order. The bartender is just verifying the card isn't a fake, right? Yes, and perhaps more."
• With Liberty and Surveillance for All -- "Law professor and author Jeffrey Rosen argues that, in theory, security can be done in ways that won't scuttle privacy and civil liberties. But that's a tall order, and he acknowledges that it may not play out that way in practice."
• Notes from Information Work Productivity Forum 2004 (via IA Slash)
• Powerbullet is free Flash business presentation software (via NetworkScience)
• Do Weblogs Accelerate Expertise (PDF, 749 KB)  (via Monkeymagic)
• How I Handle Email (via Knowledge Jolt with Jack -- Jack offers his own tips on same)
• Get the Picture -- "In the age of information overload, visualization software promises
  to cut through the clutter " (ibid.)
• BetterManagement.com has some resources on Business Intelligence (ibid)
• Lessons in Time Management (ibid.)
• e-mail = primordial human activity

• Profiles in Organizational DNA Research and Remedies
• The Best Bosses -- a special issue from Fortune magazine (via bBlog)
• Two from CareerJournal: Lazy and Unimotivated? Could be Procrastination and Don't Let Procrastination Hold You Back at Work
• Mapping Your Corporate Strategy
• Leadership: A Matter of Sustaining or Eliminating Groupthink?
• A Short Guide to Consensus Building
• Charm School for CIOs, plus a reader Q&A on same
• How to Avoid Repetitive Change Syndrome
• Writing a Personal Value Proposition That Sells
• The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week: Take Care of Yourself First to Make Room for Others (PDF)
• How to Think Like Leonardo daVinci -- a quick checklist; I started reading this book two years ago; got halfway through before it got lost in the shuffle; really should finish it at some point (via Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Weblog)
• Mapping the Invisible Workplace (via Monkeymagic)
• Seven Steps to Better Presentations (via anil's daily links)
• Views of knowledge are human views -- "a person's answer to the question 'What is knowledge?' is strongly related to the answer to 'Who am I?'"(via Knowledge Jolt with Jack)

• Pac-Man goes multiplayer on the Nintendo GameCube
• Dance Dance Revolution becomes a spectator sport
• Tamagotchi reborn as an adult
• Escher's "Relativity" in LEGO (via Eyebeam reBlog)
• Buddha.Brot (via kottke)
• The Wizard of Id -- very bizarre visuals
• Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, is available as a free download; there are also some; interestingly enough, the book has also been "remixed" (via McGee's Musings)
• author Paulo Coehlo also offers some of his writings online for free  (via Seb's Open Research)
• Iran's Most Wanted: Filmmakers
• Stay Fat and Live Long -- Yay! More donuts!
• Population: A Systems Approach
• Climate Collapse: The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare (via blackbeltjones)
• FindSounds -- "a free site where you can search the Web for sound effects and musical instrument samples" (via MarketingWonk)
• lunchclock.com -- covertly extend your lunch hour
• Coffee's Mysterious Healing Powers (via Badgett's Coffee e-Journal)
• The children who won't grow up

Yet more linkage related to information wrangling and overload:

• Social Networks - "Battle For Your Mind" -- Friendster, Tribe, Orkut, oh my...
• Mathemagenic has a few posts on "Personal Something Management" and "The Role of Information in Knowledge Sharing" (scroll down)
• What is a Knowledge Worker (via Mathemagenic)
• Interruptions -- "Research shows that multitasking is counter productive." Good linkage. (ibid.)
• Freemind -- free mind-mapping software written in Java
• The Easy Bee -- "a Windows software product that allows everyone to easily automate tedious Web navigation tasks and build aggregated pages with always up-to-date Web extracts"; comes in 'Free' and 'Standard' editions
• Technology and Worker Efficiency -- if that link doesn't work, try this one (it's a New York Times article> (via Jon's Radio)
• The Ritual of Information -- "we all tend to become anchored - not just to a number - but also to the way the information is reported and we react. Thus, we don't tend to drill down through the information presented"
• "The Information Work Productivity Council is an independent group of companies and academics that have joined together to study the issue of information work productivity and profitability." (via IA Slash)
• Traditional take on data clutter -- "The former students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a gadget which looks like a traditional analogue meter but masks a complexity of digital information. "

OK, between my newly established parking lot for links on del.icio.us, and my ever-growing list of Bloglines subscriptions, I'm accumulating way too much information way too quickly. Again.

I've also discovered Furl, which is similar in function to del.icio.us, but (seemingly) with more features. I'm sorely tempted to set up some kind of quick linklog in the side bar, but that seems silly, given that this entire freaking site is a linklog for the most part.

What to do, what to do....

Anyway, I've also run across this neat New York Times Link Generator, which creates blog-friendly permalinks to NYT articles. Another handy item for the blogging toolkit.

And, in response to my linkage on information overload, Joy London from Excited Utterances links to a couple blog items of her own:

• KM and Attention Deficit Disorder? (you might need to scroll down to find this one)
• The Retention of Attention

Anyway, more extensive bloggage will have to wait until tomorrow. And you know what that means -- there'll be even more of it to wade through. sigh

How nice. My sleep patterns are all shot to hell once again.

What else to do at this hour, but sign up for yet another web service to keep track of everything I come across while online -- I've set up an account over at del.icio.us.

I haven't quite decided how it'll complement this site. Right now, I'm thinking of having it as a "holding pen" for links that I'll want to look over and may or may not include here -- sort of like how I save things in my Bloglines account, but don't necessarily blog them.

Then again, maybe it's just an excuse to spend more time on the computer.

I've probably linked to a few of these before....

• Dealing with Information Overload
• Tackling Information Overload
• The Sociobiology of Information Architecture -- "We are by no means the first species to grapple with the basic problems of what we now call information architecture: how to acquire knowledge in social groups, how to get the right information to the right party at the right time, how to distill meaning from raw data." (via bokardo)
• Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators (via The Virtual Chase, via Library Stuff)
• Humanity will survive information deluge – Sir Arthur C Clarke (via Split Focus)
• Legal Reference Services Quarterly article on information overload
• Overcoming information overload (via Bill's P.O.V.)
• Information Obesity and Dealing With Information Overload
• Impact of "Too Much Information"
• Spinning around -- this one's got linkage to more resources (via LIS News, via Schooliblit)
• Google Web Directory linkage (via Library Stuff)
• Look.com's collection of links (via explodedlibrary.info)
• Employee Turnover Creates Corporate Memory Loss -- "Gartner also estimates that 90% of businesses surveyed suffer from 'information overload.'(1) Of the companies surveyed, Gartner found that the perception of information overload was 20% higher overall among companies that had knowledge management systems in place, compared to those which didn't." (ibid.)

The photo is from Early Office Museum, which has all sorts of workplace pics dating way-back-when. (Link to Early Office Museum via Way Down Here.)

Yeah, it's getting late. Just one link before the clock hits midnight:

• Design philosophy, in ten points

(via Diary of a Superfluous Man)

Better get this down before I forget about it:

How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think
"It talks about visual language, maps, computerized notebooks, theory of notebooks, yadda yadda yadda."

Available for download in a variety of formats; plus some MS Word templates to use.

(via del.icio.us)

1. Stop negative management talk before it damages your staff
2. Update team members with an Internet project portal -- has some sample project documents that you can download
3. The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business (2004 Edition) (via The Modulator)
4. Grist: What's in Store for '04 -- Inc. Magazine makes its predictions for the upcoming year
5. Dave Pollard does a quick roundup of tools for easier blogging
6. Is Business Waking Up To The Need For Innovation?
7. Search Engine Relationship Chart -- in Flash, but also downloadable in PDF (via kottke)
8. Caffeine Content of Foods and Drugs (ibid.)
9. Tanya Jessen lost 95 pounds by playing the video game Dance Dance Revolution (ibid.)
10. US State Department bans 'Courier' font from all US diplomatic documents -- yeah, that'll help bring about world peace... (ibid.)
11. Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist Attacks: A Quick Guide -- a free downloadable PDF (via Cool Tools, by way of kottke)
12. "Ooooooh! I know! We could print out the data, scan it in, and then paste the image into Excel!" -- Welcome to the Hell that is Marketing. (via Joel on Software)
13. Monkeys 'grasp basic grammar' (via Anthropology in the News)
14. However, Monkeys Deaf to Complex Communication (ibid.)
15. Study Explains Why Humans Feel Disgust (ibid.)
16. Designing Online Forms: Eight Simple Tips -- some advice for the marketeer
17. Strategies for Protecting Your Intellectual Property (via Mezzoblue)
18. Accessible Website Menu: Ultimate Drop Down Menu v4.0 [beta] (ibid.)
19. Random Content Rotation Made Easy
20. Information In Society -- some readings (via peterme)
21. Rhetoric & Design - Introduction
22. The Joy of Style (via InfoDesign)
23. Zzstructure is software that purports to represent the structure of information (ibid.)
24. Interface Design Issues #02: Consistency and standards (ibid.)
25. The typographic contribution to language: towards a model of typographic genres and their underlying structures (ibid.)
26. How to manage smart people (ibid.)
27. Blogs Bubble Into Business (via anil's daily links)
28. CSS design tips for Sidekick and other mobile devices (ibid.)
29. Guidelines for learning
30. Website tips for knowledge-based consultants (via MarketingWonk)
31. Early test shows new CAN-Spam law has little effect on junk e-mail -- quelle surprise (ibid.)
32. Five Common Site Annoyances
33. I've had 150 jobs (via FC Now)
34. Communification -- discussion and research on gossip (ibid.)
35. "The Nub is a new online magazine about today's workplace. Irreverently serious, we provide daily news, links and comment." (ibid.)
36. Too much video gaming = deep vein thrombosis
37. The New Face of the Silicon Age -- "How India became the capital of the computing revolution." (via MIT Technology Review Weblog)
38. Meet the inventor of 'CtrlAltDelete' -- we all know and love the three-fingered salute (via Signal vs. Noise)
39. CSS pseudo-elements ::first-line & ::first-letter
40. awesome linkage on systems thinking and complex design problems
41. Build and check your virtual identity and online reputation or you will be in trouble (via Seb's Open Research)
42. Fun With Numbers -- think your blog is hot stuff? maybe this'll change your mind
43. Definition lists - misused or misunderstood? -- "What are definition lists? When are they appropriate? And how to style them to look like tables, image galleries, calendar of events and more." (via paranoidfish)
44. Rhetoric & Design - Introduction (ibid.)
45. CIOs discuss their toughest decisions ever
46. 3 Questions: Preparing for Business Intelligence projects
47. Launch BI warehousing in a client's ERP environment
48. The importance of business intelligence networks to the future of BI
49. Business by Design -- a nine-step process for enterprise architecture planning
50. Pervasive Computing News has a series of posts on analyst best practices (via Road Warrior Collaboration)
    • Analyst Best Practices #1: What is an Analyst, Anyway?
    • Analyst Best Practices #2: Project Management
    • Analyst Best Practices #3: Communications
    • Analyst Best Practices #4: Working in Distributed Teams
    • Analyst Best Practices #5: Requirements
    • Analyst Best Practices #6: Doing the Work
    • Analyst Best Practices #7: Publishing the Work