appliedthinking

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WordPress for iPhone

I’m REALLY looking forward to this. Not sure the expected date, but the Wordpress for iPhone app will support both Wordpress.com and .org sites, enable full management of existing posts AND allow you to post pictures directly from your iPhone. The only remaining question is…when will it be available?

I stumbled upon this advise that Bill Gate’s apparently gave to a group of High Schoolers. I love the rules, because they express tough, but simple facts about the world. The underlying theme? You are responsible for your own life and success.

I wonder, though, how many in his audience paid attention and how many just rolled their eyes? And I’m curious too…did Bill start this speech by saying, “Listen here you little shits…”

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2 : The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault; so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Startup Warrior

To be specific, the map above shows the known computer technology startups in the West Michigan area…all three of them (although I know for a fact that there are at least a couple others!). Startup Warrior (link above) provides this Google Maps mash-up of start-up from around the world. Of course, when you look at the map of the rest of the states, you see the startup pockets where you’d expect them to be (coasts, major cities and places like Denver and Austin). And, although West Michigan isn’t known for technology, it is still somewhat shocking (not surprising) that we only have three…ok…maybe 6, but still…

So what others startups are missing from this list? By my recollection we have:

• Elevator Up
• Spout
• TheCommon.org
• ThinkWise

What else…help me fill in the list…

Things iPhone App [by Cultured Code]

I’ve been using the Things app from Cultured Code for the past several months now and have really found it useful. After moving my team away from MS Exchange Server and on to Google Apps for email et al, I find it much more useful for organizing my day/tasks than Outlook or Entourage ever did (especially the 2008 version…I hated the My Day widget).

But this wasn’t meant to be a promotional post for Things. What I wanted to call your attention to were these photos from their blog post about their coming-soon iPhone app. How incredibly refreshing and what a sense of real craftsmanship in seeing that they develop (what appears to be) screen progressions with pen, cardboard templates and paper. Feels a little like a lost art being re-captured.

Who else works through design issues like this? Got a photo to share? The ones below (I think) are beautiful…


Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter from biz stone on Vimeo

I get asked questions like this an awful lot from my family. Actually, less about things like twitter and more about things like Spout (and for the umpteenth time, “We help people find movies they will love”). I think that Jack does a pretty good job in explaining twitter starting with his early observation about his mother’s daily life and end with her using twitter to better communicate. According to Jack, twitter is all about helping people to more efficiently and effectively communicate their state and status. It is a real-time application that sparks conversation and highlights trends.

But I guess the real test will be if my Mom can understand it (although my Mom is not the standard Septuagenarian…she IM’s with the family and has her own blog).

So Mom, does twitter make any sense?

• Geotagger
  (tags: photography GPS geotagging software mac osx)

• Wetpaint - free wiki websites
  (tags: wiki web2.0 wikis collaboration free tools community)
• GoSquared - About - 365wallpapers
  (tags: wallpaper design graphic desktop)

• Brijit: The world in 100 words
  (tags: news reviews aggregator magazine articles)

• Minggl — socialize from anywhere on the web
  (tags: aggregator socialnetworking web2.0 social socialnetwork mashup extensions tools)