Vanish – Finding Evan Ratliff

Of course those that do this for real wouldn’t likely gather the attention and sophisticated audience that would organize around tracking them down, but it does help to understand how people are able to disappear from their life and start over.  The challenge was put out to catch Evan within a month to claim a $5k prize, which helped to motivate catching him.  In real life I expect most that do this don’t have a reward and you can only imagine the police force having few resources to keep up a search.

Evan in this piece makes a few intentional mistakes to help motivate the search, but it still took a wide network of people to uncover his new home.  I wonder if he would have been caught it he truly had done all he could to avoid it.

A healthy, confident, well-adjusted manager knows their job is to do three things:

1. Hire thoroughbreds, point them at the finish line,  and get out of their way unless they ask for help
2. Coach, teach, encourage and position ordinary horses to maximize their potential and approximate thoroughbreds in some of their work.
3. Fire those who can never do the work needed without your constant involvement to make room for those who can.

It just seems so much easier when you have a strong team of direct reports that both respects the challenges in delivery and understands that you are there to help but shouldn’t need to be there to hold their hand.

It reminds me of another quote:

You can accomplish anything you want in life provided you don’t mind who gets the credit. [Harry S. Truman]

via An open letter to micromanagers « Scott Berkun.

I am just starting to really dig through the new version to uncover all the new niceties, but the interface is clean and I can now easily get to the most common tasks in less clicks.

Oh and I won’t have to update it manually moving forward, now you can update from within WordPress itself.

Interesting mix in the top 100 – with many 1 way conversations mixed in among the more typical conversational users.  Also good to see that CNN creeps into the top 10.

Twitterholic: Who are these people?

Digg Dialogg lets you submit your questions to notable people (including recipients of the Digg Effect). You can even include a video of your question by posting it on iReport.

TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, and LostRemote have all covered Dialogg.

We have more in the works but they aren’t yet public so I will sit quiet for now.

So now you can embed your favorite CNN video on your blog.

Update: ReadWriteWeb covers it as well.

Anita Elberse analyzed data for music downloads and movie rentals and showed that while the long tail was indeed getting longer it wasn’t really getting fatter.  In fact her analysis showed that the blockbusters were holding or gaining in their share.

Point: In 2006, "The Long Tail" made a splash arguing that the Internet, with its expansive shelf space, would mean a smaller role for mega-hit products and a bigger one for also-rans.

Counterpoint: Now, a Harvard professor has published a study suggesting the Web is only cementing the prominence of a small number of cultural favorites.

At Issue: The basics of consumer behavior. Do we want infinite choice, or do we prefer to pick up on the likes and dislikes of others in forming our own tastes?

Chris Anderson has already responded on his blog and still sees a difference despite agreeing with her numbers.  Basically he feels it comes down to how you define the "head" and "tail".

My take is that while the tail is getting longer I see the whole graph getting deeper thanks to the Internet, so you can look at it two ways.  The blockbuster hits get even more now with digital distribution but so does the tail as everyone is now able to uncover media that otherwise wouldn’t be found.  While we may not have changed any paradigms with the Internet we have definitely made consumption easier.

Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web

I just noticed that our embedded player doesn’t give you any path back to the site, maybe something we want to take a look at.

cnewmark: Okay, I try the CNN iReport thing

Parent Hacks is a collaborative website that collects and publishes parents’ tips, recommendations, workarounds, and bits of wisdom – their hacks – in a single pot so we can all partake. Here’s the stuff that would have been left out of the instruction manual…if there were one. We’re not experts in the pediatrician-, psychologist-, or teacher- sense. We’re just out there, raising our kids, finding the little tweaks that make this crazy adventure go a little more smoothly.

They have tons of practical advice and I found myself making mental notes on several of the entries that applied to my life as a parent.  Nice mention that they were inspired by the series or hack books from O’Reilly.

Another feed added in to Google Reader.

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More on the meme at snopes.com