Voodo Tax Cuts Does this chart illustrate the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of voodoo tax cuts? I can't decide. The blue line shows government expenditures, the red line shows government revenues (both as a percentage of Gdp). Click to see enlarged version. The last two thirds almost look like a mirror image. 10:28:04 PM    comment []

Work-life Balance Another work-life balance post, something the Workitecht would write about. This time it's a Boxes and Arrows entry by AOL Product Designer Erin Malone: Understanding what else makes you tick and makes you happy and then spending time doing those things will make you a better designer and craftsperson. Experiencing new things outside of work will open your mind to alternative solutions and ways of thinking while you’re at work. Being curious, reading anything and everything, traveling to other places and meeting new people will give you insight in your work that you may not have had otherwise. Learning how to balance the things that make us who we are with the work that pays for everything is as important a skill as figuring out the shortcuts in Visio. So true, so easy to forget. Erin Malone has written a piece that might have just the words someone needs today.[Rodent Regatta] Indeed. Obvious without getting old. 9:22:30 PM    comment []

Today's Links GoogleGuy says a site archiving the Google employee's answers to WebmasterWorld forum questions. WebmasterWorld - news and discussion for the advanced web professional. Includes category The Search Engine World. GoogleVillage Headlines - a blog? not sure, but asks the question What Google Leaves Out Feedster IS really cool. I am the last to discover this. Website Optimization - an interview by Digital Web including a few gems I hadn't thought of. The Ultimate Weblogging System, Outlined - an excellent, excellent, detailed outline of a weblog wishlist, a list of weblog software features that would make the ideal package. 7:59:01 PM    comment []

Non-Bloggers ignored by Google? Whoa - Scoble: "Google is getting a lot of pressure from its advertisers to devalue webloggers." [Scripting News] Well, it's too bad. But what do you do when a google search for your company's url (.com suffix included) only yields one result which has NOTHING to do with your company's site? Contact Google? Done, still waiting for a response. Buy some textads? Did that too, but if the searchers do not click on your ad, your ad-buoyancy falls for all ads you pay for. We changed our domain 10 months ago and our old domain (which still works) appears higher for every search. Is the indexing on those search terms out of date? Google and out-of-date seems like an impossible combination. Valuing according to adverstisers' influence would be a terrible thing for Google to do. But if they have been valuing bloggers at the expense of reindexing all other parts of the web, then something's out of balance. 5:18:23 PM    comment []  - See Also:

Thinkers, Linkers, and Uncool Blogs Yet another article on styles of blogging that starts off good, quite good in fact, but veers off course by assuming that each and every blogger only blogs to be linked to and to be read by the widest audience possible. The author lists how to be worthy of being linked to, adding: If that's too hard for you to do - or if you're just not good at it - then put your blog away before somebody gets hurt. Perhaps "- then don't complain if you don't make my blogroll" was what the last half of that sentence should have said. Sometimes I don't have anything original to say, but do I charge people who read this site? If I did I would make less than a dime, and that's fine with me. The thing that really gets me is the assertion that there is a correct, agreed upon way to craft a quality weblog, and those who do not practice said quality blogging techniques are clueless dolts, those who do and are still unpopular according to Technorati and the Blogoshpere Ecosystems are pathetic. Maybe my outrage stems from the guilt I've had recently - "damn, it's probably been a month now, I really should post some new content" I thought. But why? Why post something if I have nothing to say? And why did I start a weblog in the first place? It was for myself, and if other people happened to benefit from my notes, quotes, and links, then all the better. I began on the assumption that noone would read "me" or this weblog on a regular basis. I still hold that assumption. I'm a C-list blogger and still going, so take that and run it through your Technorati query to see if I'm worthy of your blogroll. Sheesh. 4:50:28 PM    comment []

Intranet Blogs and Wikis Talked with our CTO about implementing some intranet blogs a few months back. He laughed at the word "blog" but about a week later the idea must have marinated because he asked "did you tell Tim about your blog idea"? Tim is my manager. I am sort of in an Office Space situation - multiple bosses. I started fiddling with blojsom snipsnap and CocoBlog for a few days. But I couldn't really explain the idea of intranet blogs to Tim. I tried to describe the concept, but I didn't really see the lightbulb go on indicating he understood what blogs were and how they could benefit us so I moved on. The idea resurfaced on Friday when I heard the phone slam down in our CTO's office. Communication, and the challenges of communicating with developers scattered accross the country, some support reps at customer sites, had him a bit frustrated. We revisited the idea of intranet blogs as a means of communicating through blog-style status reports. We agreed that if it worked, if people participated, a growing knowledge base would be the natural byproduct. So today I was looking at the original wiki by Ward Cunningham. I think maybe a wiki would be a solution to our communication woes. Or maybe we need both blogs and wikis. I know there are some blogs such as DECAFBAD which are both blogs and wikis. How? Blogs are organized by time, wikis are organized by topic. Are these two better left separated? Is there a "best practices" document for fusing the two? Is there an open source blogging tool that makes this easy? Could we write extensions ourselves? What about using the Radio Community Server with livetopics? Is this what Easy News Topics is all about? Would it be easier to use Manila than the RCS? Just a small sample of the questions that arise as I consider the best way to go about this. 3:14:35 PM    comment []  - See Also: