An incomplete list of things that are cool #1

New semi-regular series on the blog of things I like, things that are cool, things I think are really interesting but have not gotten around to posting about, and other miscellaneous items hanging out in my Feedly 'Saved for later' queue.

Submitted in no particular order...

1. Why are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation - Long read for the long weekend from the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Worth your time.

2. Canoe Check pocket squares from The Tie Bar

3. Nike Gold Rush running shoes for the Fall

4. Purple, the on-demand gas (like for you car) company. Not incredibly interesting, but it did make me think of what other product categories could benefit from the 'on-demand' treatment. How about an app called 'Beer Run?' Two taps and within 13 minutes a cold 12-pack of Miller Genuine Draft shows up at your door.

5. Speaking of beer, super post from Grant McCracken titled Cultural Leaders and Laggards, the Problem With Beer Ads. You know you have seen the TV spot that is the subject of the post, but have you really seen it?

6. Super take on some recent pro-labor court cases from Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak - Why Good #HR Leaders Aren't Worried About The NLRB 'Joint Employer' Decision. Matt is 100% on the money here - employees at companies that are treated respectfully, paid fairly, and have opportunities to learn and grow generally are not rushing to hold quickie union votes.

7. Pantone Smoothies - perk up your blender game with some of these colorful ideas

8. The Rise of Work Doping - To what extent are we willing to go to improve our performance?

Currently, people require psychiatric diagnoses in order to be prescribed any of these pills. But if these medicines are ultimately found to be safe, and they work for almost everyone, should anyone be able to take them?

And if modafinil does become more widespread, where does it end? Will we soon be locked in a productivity arms race, pumping out late-night memos with one hand while Googling for the latest smart-drug advancement with the other?

9. American Chess May Finally Emerge From the Shadow of Bobby Fischer - A potential renaissance for American players at the highest levels of international chess

10. Robots are better at bricklaying than humans. But a human/robot team is the most productive combination of all.

11. One generation's obsession with Pep. Man, back in the 40s, Pep was a really big deal.

Have a great long weekend! Go Labor!

Cleaning out the attic: A Few Friday links

Some quick links to a few interesting reads on a 'feels-like-it-should-be-the-holiday-break-but-we-are-not-quite-there-yet-Friday'.  Mostly these are items that have been sitting as perpetual open tabs in Chrome or as 'starred' items in Google Reader for a while and that I thought might be subject matter for the blog, but I just never got around to using them.

In no particular order of importance or relevance:

Most infographics kind of stink. This one, covering the T-shirt history of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is awesome. 

Did 'Big Data' give you a big headache in 2012?  Well, you are not alone. For a very readable and brief look at Big Data for the rest of us check out A Veteran Mad Man Tries to Figure Out the Point if Big Data in Advertising.

The McRib is coming back! - And it looks like it will be with us for the Holidays!

From Retronaut - some very cool British WWI Recruitment posters

There are always quite a few 'The High Cost of a Bad Hire' stories kicking around the HR blogosphere at any time, but few of those carry an $11M price tag like Auburn University has to shell out to bid farewell to their football coaching staff.

If you don't have big plans for the holidays, or just don't like to cook, you can always go for the 'Self-Heating Holiday Dinner in a Can' this year.

I have always held that basketball is the greatest sport of them all. This (long-ish) piece from Wired, Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success, breaks it down more scientifically, but arrives at the same conclusion - basketball is the greatest sport of all. 

The birthrate in the US has sunk to its lowest level since 1920.  I guess we will all be working longer into our old age.

Not a fan of Klout or other attempts to measure 'influence?' Well you may not be able to simply ignore what you don't like (or understand). According to this HBR piece, the future of enterprise influence analytics will be inside the organization.

Let me know what you're reading!

That's it from me for a Friday - have a great weekend everyone.

Read These Instead

Travel, work, and some personal stuff all conspired against having fresh content on the blog today - so I offer these fine pieces of news and information which represent certainly better and more interesting ideas and topics than anything I could have come up with today as an alternative.

Enjoy the Slideshow! (email and RSS readers may need to click through)

Read These Instead

Note - the slideshow is built using a really neat and free tool called Slidestaxx, I'd encourage you to check it out for a fun and engaging way to collect and share links, images, and other content.

Have a Great Weekend!

Five for Friday - July 21, 2011

Every week it seems like I read about 47,000 blog posts, articles, press releases etc. all in my continued quest to provide you, loyal readers, with ideas and insights to help, inform, or amuse you. But each week also, I am lucky if I can draw on at most 4 or 5 of these pieces that might eventually become the basis for posts, the rest slip off into the ether.  Sure, I share some of the links on Twitter and Facebook, but we all know how fleeting those media can be.

So today I thought I'd do a classic 'Links to 5 articles I thought were interesting this week' take, so that at least I could find a way to share and promote some of the great stuff I read. But then I thought about it for a minute more and realized the 'Here are 5 links' posts are pretty weak, a little tired, and sort of a blogger's way of raising the white flag of 'I have no more good ideas this week. I surrender.'

But then while I was debating this, (the mental debate was at least 43 seconds), I remembered a neat little presentation-type tool I read about this week that might make my little '5 links' post just a bit more interesting.  Below is the embed of the tool and the links, more details on what it is and how you can try it out after the jump). Email and RSS subscribers may need to click through and there is a little arrow on the upper right corner of the slideshow to use for navigation.

Steve's Top 5 (or really 7) Reads of the week:

Pretty cool right? 

The tool is from a web service called Slidestaxx, and it allows the user to create embeddable and shareable slideshows from multimedia and social web content. Sign up for a free account, and in minutes you are creating a cool slideshow that can consist of online images, video, website links, and more. Add a short little description to each slide, (about the length of a Tweet), and publish.  You can then share your slideshow on social media, share a direct URL link, and grab the embed code to use on your site.

All told, I think it is a nice improvement from the list of hyperlinks.

Give Slidestaxx a try and let me know what you think.  And check out the 5, (really 7), links in my Slidetaxx presentation above.

Have a great weekend!

Links for the Week - November 21, 2008

Some assorted links for a cold, snowy Friday in the Northeast USA.

1. Boston College to stop handing out e-mail addresses to new students - from Read Write Web
2. The company as Wiki - an interview with Brad Anderson of Best Buy
3. From Mashable, how to keep track of 500 blogs in 10 minutes
4. Some amusing examples of corporate misadventures in new tech from Fast Company
5. From Citizen Marketer - how Yammer helps new employees
6. Working the 'stache into your employment brand - from Fistful of Talent
7. From Bersin - could a wiki be your next Talent Management system
8. Create short URL aliases and track the impact using Cligs
9. More businesses turn to microblogging for internal collaboration and communication - from the New York Times

More to follow as I stumble upon interesting stuff......

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