Ev inspired me, too.

Add this blog entry to those I’m reading from people I know and respect (Marshall, Alex, to name a couple) that are publicly thanking Ev Williams tonight for his inspiring them on their career paths and in their respective roles in shaping web culture. Thank you, Ev. Looking forward to seeing and using what’s next.

I Get Older; The Blog Entries Stay The Same Age

Me: “Get off my lawn!” (w/apologies to Grayson D.) I’m thinking about finally closing comments on my lengthy anti-hashtag screed from February of 2008. My opinion of them hasn’t changed much. But they have taken on more frequent use within Twitter, and in the meantime Twitter usage has grown, spread out, taken on more users… Continue reading I Get Older; The Blog Entries Stay The Same Age

A potentially unwitting homage to the link economy

In the culture of blogs, permalinks, trackbacks, and a now somewhat fading ethos of online publishing behavior, to link to something is/was to not only reference it but also to credit it. In linking, we build a new pathway to it, ascribe some authority to it in the eyes of Google and the world, expose… Continue reading A potentially unwitting homage to the link economy

John Henry and the drive-thru queue

Two things about this I wanted to think a little more on: first, most efficient doesn’t always mean most automated. Sometimes a human being with a clipboard, a brain, a smile, and a microphone still trumps an advanced order read-out screen, speaker, and video camera. I’m curious how this started at CFA – was it something they serendipitously observed at one location and shared the idea across franchisees, or was it something they discovered via testing? Second, adopting a new tool doesn’t make your old ones all useless. This is as true for business processes as it is for gadgets. It’s kind of a corollary to “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”