Archive for February, 2010

Good Or Bad, Design Influences Behavior – A Look At Feedly

February 18th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I realized this morning that my behavior has changed dramatically over the past two weeks.

Two weeks ago I made Feedly the home page for Firefox on my desktop computer. I did it after going through a few sites I hadn’t visited in a while. It was an experiment of sorts. I’d given up on my Google Reader long ago in favor of human aggregation via my social networks. I wanted to see if it would bring some value back to the RSS feeds I had subscribed to in the past. It did.

Feedly’s design changed my behavior. Good or bad, design influences our behavior. The noise of the Google Reader format influenced my decision to give it up almost as much as the value of the social recommendations I migrated toward. The clean, magazine-style design of Feedly has cut out the noise and allowed me to get to more information faster, moving me back toward my targeted material. That’s a good thing.

If you’ve never given Feedly a try, I think it’s worth setting up an account and seeing how it impacts your own behavior. Here’s a quick video to illustrate my thoughts. If you’ve given Feedly a try, what are your thoughts?

Related reading: 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock

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Success Or Failure Can’t Be Judged In The Moment

February 4th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I have had many pinnacle moments in my life. I’ve had many low moments in my life. I’ve done good. I’ve done bad. I’ve had millions in the bank. I’ve had debt up to my ears. I’ve been applauded. I’ve been denounced.

Every time I allowed myself to think I had arrived, I hadn’t. Every time I called myself a failure, I wasn’t.

Every moment – each high and each low – was simply a step on the path to this moment.

Period.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

True success can’t be defined by a moment. Neither can failure.

Success. Failure. It’s all just part of the journey.  Where I find myself today doesn’t really matter in the big picture.

I can’t linger in success and I shouldn’t wallow in failure.

Every moment is simply a lesson. I can learn things from the moments of success that I can’t learn from the moments of failure. And vice versa. I enjoy the moment or I endure the moment. But I know this – no moment is permanent. The moment moves on and so must I.

Feeling like a success today? Enjoy it. Learn the lesson. Move on.

Feeling like a failure today? Endure it. Learn the lesson. Move on.

…….
(I orginally wrote this three years ago in response to an email. It popped up on my radar screen today as a result of a new comment. It was timely. I needed the reminder. I’m sharing it again here in case someone else needs it too.)

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Twext.me Terms Of Service

February 2nd, 2010 - Jeff Turner

We had a request for a terms of service page at Twext.me, so I thought I’d write it without the typical legal language. Let’s see how this flies.

Twext.me Terms Of Service

  1. We’re a free service that depends on Twitter’s API to function properly. If our service isn’t working, it’s likely because Twitter’s API is acting up.  It happens a great deal. So, we can’t be responsible for outages that are Twitter’s fault.
  2. We use Twitter’s OAuth to access your account, so we don’t know your Twitter password. We don’t want to know it. That said, in order to communicate your mentions to you, we must store some of your twitter information on our servers. This information is visible to the public anyway, so there’s nothing in our database that is of any value. Except to you.
  3. We won’t spam you. Ever. Once again, we’re a free service, so if you’ve chosen the “true SMS” option, instead of the email SMS option, we use a service called Textmarks to send the SMS. They DO put an ad at the end of the SMS message. That is NOT our ad. We don’t make a dime off of it. If you don’t like those ads, or you consider THAT to be spam, chose the other options. Just note that some systems, like AT&T don’t support threading with the email SMS option. The choice is yours.
  4. As for privacy, we won’t be selling your information to anyone or giving your information to anyone for any reason. Ever. Period.
  5. I suppose we (Twext.me, Zeek Interactive, our employees, officers, affiliates, agents, partners, anyone we’ve ever met face-to-face, on the phone or on the internet, or anyone we’ve ever thought about meeting, real or imaginary) should tell you that we’re not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, including without limitation, loss of profits (yeah, right), data, use, good-will, or other intangible losses, resulting from using our service. We can’t imagine what that could possibly be, these are just your Twitter mentions for goodness sakes, but we felt like we had to say it. We live in a pretty litigious society. A better idea: If you feel like we’ve done something to hurt you. Send us a tweet. Twext.me will alert us and we’ll work it out. Promise.
  6. If we fail to enforce any of these terms, that doesn’t mean we’re waiving our right to do so. If one of them is not enforceable, that doesn’t mean the others aren’t. We think that’s just fair.
  7. We don’t feel compelled to keep this service running forever. If Twitter changes their service offerings to include SMS notification for mentions or some better solution comes along, we reserve the right to shut this service down without asking for your permission. Sorry, it’s just too hard to get consensus on these things.
  8. When in doubt, we always take the high road.

We’ll have this up on Twext.me, along with a more formal Privacy statement, in short order.

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