Graphite wool felt and black leather iPad sleeve, handmade in Minnesota by Angie Davis. Also comes in grey wool felt and brown leather.

(Via swissmiss)

Peter Del Tredici, senior research scientist at Arnold Arboretum in Boston, says we can learn a lot from the highly adaptive plants we often dismiss as mere weeds:

If we saw this motley collection of plants differently, Del Tredici suggests, we’d realize they’re a kind of marvel: living things in the harsh and stressful urban landscape that don’t just survive there, but thrive. With no effort on our part, they fill the city with greenery, providing cleaner air and water, shade, and food and habitat for wildlife. They do it without expensive fertilizers and irrigation. It’s time, he suggests, that we learned to embrace them — to stop thinking of them only as weeds to uproot, and start considering what they have to offer.

(Via Bobulate)

Joel Spolsky explains why your company blog shouldn’t be all about your company:

These days, it seems like just about every start-up founder has a blog, and 99 percent of these bloggers are doing it wrong. The problem? They make the blog about themselves, filling it with posts announcing new hires, touting new products, and sharing pictures from the company picnic. That’s lovely, darling — I’m sure your mom cares. Too bad nobody else does.

Most company blogs have almost no readers, no traffic, and no impact on sales. Over time, the updates become few and far between (especially if responsibility for the blog is shared among several staff members), and the whole thing ceases to become an important source of leads or traffic.

Liz Danzico:

I propose that we’re too impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if, as communicators and designers, we became more comfortable with the pause? Because it turns out we can add by leaving out. The pause has power.

Anand Giridharadas writes about the vitality of cell phones in developing nations, and the implications for highly-developed nations like the US, where cell phone use is not as well-entrenched.

From Kenya to Columbia to South Africa – the kind of places that have built cellphone towers precisely to leapfrog past the expense of building wired networks, which have linked Americans for a century…cellphones are becoming the truly universal technology. The number of mobile subscriptions in the world is expected to pass five billion this year, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a trade group. That would mean more human beings today have access to a cellphone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet.

He cites the greater rate of dropped calls in the US and the less-prevalent use of text messaging as things that surprised him after spending time in India.

There is a question about whether the United States, which gained so much from the Internet revolution, will similarly profit from the entry of billions more people from the developing world into a massive worldwide middle class — consumers now but not yet rich, with a simple cellphone and a less-is-more sensibility.

Behind the Logo is a rebranding contest for the BP logo launched by Greenpeace. The entries are stunning, shocking, witty, moving, and all worth a look.

Mike Anderson, Technology Manager and Web Applications Project Manager for HOK Advance Strategies, chronicles his typical day working from home:

I am definitely more productive than when I worked in the office. My work time is more focused; I can work when I’m a little under the weather; and my time off is not spent in traffic. If I have a break between tasks, I can use that time personally and then go back “on the clock” when I’m needed. How much time do employers lose when their staff is waiting for the next task, or trying to fill their down time?

So what’s the downside?

My wife’s only real complaint is my nine hour work day has now turned into a 15 hour work blur. I fade in and out of work so easily no one in my family knows when and if I’m available. It’s very difficult to “leave work at the office” since the office is also my home.

Penelope Trunk points out the risks in blurring the boundary of work:

People who work longer than the typical eight hours a day start to lose their effectiveness quickly. “If you work all the time, you lose your edge,” warns Diane Fassel, CEO of workplace survey firm Newmeasures and author of Working Ourselves to Death. “Often these people are perfectionists, controlling and not good team players. The hardest workers are “not the best producers in terms of efficiency and creativity.”

The Ben Franklin Project is an initiative started by the Journal Register Company to refocus the journalism process on producing stories for the Web first, and print second:

Traditionally the model has been for the reporter/editor to determine what should be covered and how it should be covered. That story would then weave its way through the journalistic process – reporters gathering facts from the usual stable of sources and the editors guiding the efforts – before ending on the printed page. From there the vast majority of newspapers have then pushed those stories onto the web. They are literally going from a slow medium to fast. And that’s just backwards both in timing and audience desires.

The project is prompting journalists to rethink how they plan and research stories with the help of readers, and write those stories for publication on the Web:

Taking a digital first, print last approach motivates journalists to tap into readers before they even start reporting. To inform their reporting, journalists at both papers have used polls, online chats and other free tools to ask readers what stories they want the paper to cover and what questions they want answered about their community.

When reporting on a story about local electric rates earlier this month, Perkasie News-Herald Managing Editor Emily Morris asked the community via Twitter and Facebook to share their questions about the rates. She then asked those questions during an interview with local officials and created a separate article listing the answers.

(Via Carrie Brown-Smith)

Gerry McGovern:

Remote testing websites is better than lab-based testing because it is less disruptive. The classic problem with any test or experiment is that the experiment itself impacts the subject’s behavior. You bring someone into a lab where there’s cameras and lights and people watching and you ask them to use a computer that is not their own and then tell them to “just act natural.” With remote testing it’s their own computer and you’re only there in voice. It’s much, much better.

This strategy will result in better websites that are simpler and a better fit what the customers actually want. The Web customer demands that we move beyond old school PR statements like: “we listen,” “we care”, “it’s simple.” By actually using the Web to listen, observe, respond and adapt you can show that you care by creating simpler websites.

Newly installed Countdown Clock on the platform at 79th Street Subway Station in Manhattan:

“We are moving ahead steadily with this vital customer information initiative,” explained NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast. “With the PA/CIS screens activated on a regular basis across the system, more and more subway riders will be able to just look up and see when their train will arrive.”

(Via NYCTSubwayScoop)