Tueslinks

I’ve been working on a bigger piece all about attention, but it’s not quite ready yet. So, to keep you satisfied in the meantime, here are some links for your enjoyment:

Design

• The Swiss National Bank held a competition to redesign the country’s banknotes. The winner’s design includes a rendering of the AIDS virus, a skull and an embryo. Needless to say it’s a bizarre, but they are impressive looking.
• This is awesome. Dorian Lynskey took the London tube map and used it to map out the connections of 100 years of music. I’ve got it in front of me at my desk and it’s amazing. The Circle Line, which is connected to most other lines, represents pop music. The line with only two stops on it is called the DJ Shadow & RZA line (two musicians strangely connected). Go explore!
• AIGA looks at how being in the studio audience for the daily show is like witnessing great product development. By involving the audience early, they make them feel like they have more invested in the show. Sounds a lot like illusory attention, which Michael Goldhaber describes in The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net.

Business

• CNN.com’s got an interesting list of words that you can hurt your resume.
• Guy Kawasaki is really smart. It seems like every week he writes something that I’m incredibly impressed by. Last week it was his ten tips for recruiting. Well worth a read.
• Scott Berkun of Art of Project Management gives his three reasons why vision documents usually suck: they’re often written by committees, they’re written to serve the reader and the author confuses hype with reality.

Finally, I end with a quote my Aunt sent me that I liked quite a bit from B.C. Forbes: “Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity, and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain.”

February 7, 2006