Best of Feeds – 36 links – programming, humor, career, rss, windows, google

Best of Feeds is a regular series where I link to the stuff I found interesting from my feed reader. This time I have 36 links covering the following subjects: programming, humor, career, rss, windows, google, business, howto, css, webdesign, virtual, tips, social, nsfw, free, advice, laptop, debt, collaboration, psychology, xbox, neopoleon, yahoo, wisdomofcrowds, tutorials, fighting, raganwald, marketing, gaming, security, technology, funny, games, quadzilla, rands, analogy, desktop, anecdote, nofollow, users, seo, books, vista, microsoft, design, web, websites, rant, 37signals, conference, interview, passionate, adoption, UV, blogs, copywriting, language, tshirts, background, airport, advertising, work, exploitation, tags, online, interviewing, job, xp, contracting, gallery, cliche, rel, search, coding, jobs, blackhatseo, community, retail, future, freeware, charts, resolutions, ps3, culture, algorithm, images, internet, tech, bittorrent, lifehacker, origin, service, networks, backlight, verification, theory, creating, illustrator, Wii, pie, heroes, rules, writing, tv, rel=nsfw, keyboard, make, inspiration, bookmarking, web2.0, software, graphs, customer, nintendo, sony

• “Vista laptops for bloggers furor misses the real story” from The Intuitive Life Business Blog
  • (windows, vista, free, laptop)

  That’s the only conclusion I can draw, because if it were a breeze to upgrade from WinXP to Windows Vista, with all your apps backwards compatible, all your data intact, and all your files untouched, you’d be happy to install Vista on your existing PC and

• Beating the Debug Delivery Rush using Packaged Metrics
  • (verification)

  Has your project team been really good this holiday season? Give them the gift of efficient debug using packaged metrics and metric driven processes.

• O’Reilly Radar > BitTyrant: Selfishness Comes To BitTorrent
  • (bittorrent)

  If you use this, then you will get a faster download. If someoneelse in a swarm uses this then you will get a slower download. If everyone in a swarm uses it then everyone gets decreased performance. Doesn’t sound like a pretty picture to me. Will this sp

• HowTo: Make Pretty Pie Charts
  • (illustrator, charts, tutorials, pie, graphs, howto)

  Making pretty pie charts using Adobe Illustrator.

• Deep Jive Interests — Understanding How Social Networks Get Gamed
  • (social, bookmarking, networks, web, gaming, exploitation)

  The potential for any social network / software site to be gamed is a relationship between roughly three variables ” the popularity of a site, the exploitability of that site, and the level of moderation of that site.

• Programming News: Aggregated
  • (programming)

  A list of programming news aggregators by individuals, groups and voting.

• SUCKBUSTERS.COM
  • (websites, software)

  This site will show examples of software and web sites that just work and others that don’t. Publicly praising the good ones and ridiculing the bad ones will lead to more of the former and fewer of the latter.

• Neopoleon : Metamorphosis
  • (neopoleon, debt, anecdote)

  This must be what it feels like to get out of prison after a decade, not knowing what to do with yourself. Or to have spent years in the church, only to find out that you don’t really believe. It is simultaneously liberating and terrifying. I get to live

• Monkey Bites :: New Year’s Resolutions for Coders
  • (programming, coding, humor, funny, resolutions)

  Here’s a special presentation from the Wired Blogs team: our list of New Year’s resolutions. Feel free to apply these to your daily life whether you’re a coder or not.

• Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm – New York Times
  • (google, interview, job, culture, technology, algorithm, career, interviewing)

  Google — in typical eccentric fashion — has created an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 job applications it receives each month. It is starting to ask job applicants to fill out an elaborate online survey that explores th

• Download of the Day: Dexpot (Windows) – Lifehacker
  • (lifehacker, freeware, windows, virtual, desktop)

  reeware virtual desktop manager Dexpot provides you with several ways to manage and organize your Windows.

• instructables : Photography in the Ultraviolet spectrum
  • (howto, make, UV, backlight)

  Fake UV photography by mounting the glass from a UV bulb as a filter for your camera.

• RSS Will Not Make the Mainstream — Wisdump
  • (rss, adoption)

  While in the past we have lauded RSS as the next great thing after email, it really is nothing more but another way to read sites. In fact, RSS has been around in one form or another for a very long time.

• The MineThatData Blog: Four Out Of 150 Online Retailers Truly Leverage RSS Feeds
  • (rss, retail)

  Only 4 out of 150 retail websites tested offered an RSS feed.

• Rands In Repose: Ninety Days
  • (rands, jobs, career, advice, work)

  Your job interview lasts for the first three months of work. This is what you need to know to get something out of it.

• Why numbering should start at 0 | Lambda the Ultimate
  • (programming, theory)

  Dijkstra explains why indexes should start at 0.

• Raganwald: Where were you on Saturday, November 9, 2002?
  • (programming, raganwald, conference, language)

  A look back at the Lightweight Languages conference in 2002 and how relevant the topics have been over the past four years.

• Cornwall SEO — Who the hell does Quadzilla think he is?
  • (seo, quadzilla, blackhatseo)

  Loose transcript of recent podcast with Shoemoney and blackhatseo Quadzilla. Best quote: “get rid of AdSense and you’ll get rid of spam” and “get rid of blogger search engine rating and you’ll get rid of spam”. Google is the cause of spam. :)

• Creating Passionate Users: The “Dumbness of Crowds”
  • (creating, passionate, users, community, wisdomofcrowds, social, psychology, collaboration, web2.0)

  While ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber. Crowds does not mean “mobs”, “groups acting as one”, “committees”, “consensus” or even “high collaboration”.

• T-Shirts 2006 – a photoset on Flickr
  • (tshirts)

  Adicteed’s huge collection of 600 tshirts mentioned on their blog in 2006.

• When Some Keys on the Computer Keyboard Aren’t Working — Digital Inspiration © Amit Agarwal
  • (windows, xp, virtual, keyboard, tips)

  Type “osk” in a winxp run dialog to bring up a virtual keyboard.

• Stevey’s Blog Rants: Parabola
  • (programming, humor, airport, security, analogy)

  A very well written analogy of trying to get a production system to handle an exception. Must read for programmers.

• The “invention” of RSS and the snowball effect (Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard)
  • (rss, origin)

  The arguments over the history of RSS are interminable and overheated, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for tuning them out.

• Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing (Skrentablog)
  • (google, search, business, yahoo, future, internet, advertising)

  Google has won both the online search and advertising markets. Google is not your competition, Google is the environment. Online businesses which struggle against this new reality will pay opportunity costs.

• Coding Horror: On the Use of Clich�s
  • (writing, cliche)

  Some of these catchphrases are fun– in moderation. But you have to be aware that you’re using a common catchphrase, and you have to use it selectively and judiciously. Most people don’t realize how often they’re using a catchphrase, which is why they bec

• Cr�me de la cr�me of CSS: List of CSS Galleries | Smashing Magazine
  • (css, webdesign, gallery, inspiration)

  One can discuss whether numerous CSS-galleries challenge our creativity, however they can serve as a quite nice source for inspiration. The galleries of CSS-based designs showcase exemplary design practices, solutions, ideas and templates.

• Where can I find textures and background images? | Smashing Magazine
  • (css, webdesign, free, background, images)

  Below you’ll find a hand-picked selection of some useful resources related to textures and background images. We tried to pick the best ones which offer quality and professional content without annoying advertisement.

• How To Warn The Reader If An Article Is NSFW
  • (rel=nsfw, nsfw)

  More information on rel=nsfw

• Full Episodes > Heroes
  • (heroes, tv, online)

  All episodes of the TV show Heroes legally available online (from NBC) in streaming video. The only new series I started watching this year.

• Rubber ball lessons – Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
  • (design, books, 37signals, copywriting, rules)

  #1: Put your name on it. #2: Write a story, not copy. #3: Start with an evocative hook. #4: Overcome writer’s block by starting with small bits. #5: PR starts with you. #6: Sticky points are sometimes tiny/hidden.

• Hacknot – The Joys and Perils of Contracting
  • (career, contracting, tech)

  A decision all developers must make when entering the job market is whether they are seeking a contract or permanent role. Having spent about half of my time in each capacity, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons of each type of em

• Violent Acres — Archives — Two Phrases That Destroyed American Culture
  • (humor, rant, customer, service)

  The phrase ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the single worst philosophy that has ever been adopted by American culture. It gave an entire generation of people the green light to be impolite because they were always going to be considered right.

• How To Fight
  • (fighting, advice)

  Be like Violent Acres, who, on the advice of her Marine father, kicked a bully in the nuts with her Cabbage Patch rollerskates and yelled while standing over his body, “I’LL EAT YOUR EYES! I’LL EAT ALL OF YOUR EYES!”

• Blogtards – our expert panel weighs in on blogging, bloggers, blogs and what went wrong.
  • (blogs, tips)

  A summary of everything that is wrong with blogging.

• The Frosty Mug Revolution: Genius Grant Please, or The NSFW HTML Attribute
  • (nsfw, nofollow, rel, tags)

  You have rel=”nofollow” to prevent search engines from following links, now add rel=”nsfw” to prevent accidentally accessing “unsafe” content while at work (or around children, etc). Brilliant, simple idea.

• In Praise of Third Place
  • (business, nintendo, Wii, games, marketing, sony, microsoft, xbox, ps3)

  In praise of third place. How focusing on core competencies can bring greater returns than trying to have the largest marketshare.