http://uxstorytellers.blogspot.com/2009/01/about-this-project.html

Does this situation seem familiar to you? … You're at a conference or a party or another occasion, you're talking IA and UX and suddenly someone tells a remarkable story. You and your pals either laugh or shudder; perhaps the story made your skin crawl. Days later, when you think back, your hair stands on end, and every time you face a certain situation, you remember what you learned through this particular story.

At UX Storytellers, we want to collect those stories and publish them here on this blog, as a free PDF, an online magazine and as a book (translated into various languages).

Do you have a great story from the realm of IA or UX? Please tell us about it. More info on how to submit a story and become an official UX Storyteller can be found here: Submit a story.

Download the PDF here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13448882/UX_Storytellers_v1.1.pdf 

UX Storytellers

Check out a little of how this incredible video was made ---> http://najork.net/mt_bts.html 

Excerpt: "All the animation in this video was done in After Effects.Tracking dots all over the actor where used to move around matte shapes (isolating and shading sections of the actor's body), as well as the non-anatomical pieces added in later. Both tasks made extensive use of AE's puppet tool. "

THEINSPIRATION.COM Interviews George Lois

[From Forbes]

On April 25th I turned 26, and a few weeks later my web marketing agency turned two. What started as a single person mini-business, has turned into a 27 person global web marketing firm in just two short years. I’ve been immensely grateful for the opportunities life has presented me with. And, as I look forward to the future, it would only be fair to look back as well.

Here are 26 lessons I have learned as a young entrepreneur and CEO: 

1. A written vision of what you want your company to look like in 3 years is important. The pen (or keyboard!) has power. It isn’t enough to envision your goals in your mind. You must have a blueprint on paper. Every decision you make, ask yourself: does this help me get closer to my vision? 
   
   
2. Learn to listen to your clients. When we started, we were only offering social media consulting services. But, clients quickly demanded more. We eventually ended up serving as their web marketing department. The marketplace will tell you what it needs. You have to listen, and then deliver.
   
   
3. Half the job is keeping up. The pace of technology will only continue to quicken. It doesn’t matter what your industry is, you have to keep up in order to constantly leverage it for your business.
   
   
4. Always think in terms of value — not price. Always judge based on the value something or someone brings to the table. Price is arbitrary.
   
   
5. Only hire people who have fire. This is especially true if you are running a small to medium sized business. In a large corporation, there is room for many types of personalities and people. In a smaller business, passion is a must in every position. Hire people who are driven to do well and see your business succeed.
   
   
6. If you must fire, be graceful and professional about it.This is hands down the worst part of being a CEO. It is tough to let people go, but for the greater good of the business, sometimes it must be done. It doesn’t matter if you are firing or being fired, don’t burn bridges.
   
   
7. Learn to forgive. Things happen. People change. You can’t move forward in business — or in life — if you can’t forgive and move on.
   
   
8. Cash flow is crucial. This is especially true in a recessionary economy, and if you are growing quickly. Work with clients to get payments upfront.
   
   
9. Balance is overrated. Aim for joy. When work is fun, you don’t feel the need to take as many breaks. Balance in today’s world looks very different than it did just 20 years ago. Embrace it.
   
   
10. Don’t underestimate the power of PR. The power of the press may now be in more than just the hands of journalists (umm…social media, anyone?). Learn to be a friend to the press.
    
    
11. Treat your team well. People will follow a leader who treats them with respect. Learn to value your team’s input, and always reward them for a job well done.
    
    
12. Focus is the most underrated skill that you must master.90 percent of the time, what is on your computer screen is not resulting in a positive ROI. Learn to focus on what truly matters in your business. Then, do it consistently.
    
    
13. Multitasking doesn’t mean greater productivity. Don’t put “good multitasker” on your resume. Numerous studies have shown that multitasking decreases brain power.
    
    
14. Age isn’t just a number. Age does matter. Managing a Gen Y employee is different than managing a baby boomer.
    
    
15. Appearances matter. I just interviewed an intern who showed up in an outfit more appropriate for an 8 a.m. class. I had to wonder how he would represent us in front of clients. Whether we like it or not, appearances matter. Dress appropriately.
    
    
16. Learn to view situations objectively. Just because you would or wouldn’t do something, doesn’t mean others are the same way.
    
    
17. Life is short, and very easy to take for granted. Sounds like something you’d read in a self-help book, but true nonetheless. Life is temporary, and the only thing that matters at the end of the day is how you treated those around you.
    
    
18. Pets make the workplace better. I propose that every office should have a mascot. Ours is a little Maltese-Poodle mix named Snoopy. No day is a sad day.
    
    
19. A support network is crucial. As much as you try, you can’t do it alone. Building a personal and professional support network is imperative.
    
    
20. Give luck its due. Luck has played a huge part in my life. I don’t deny it. I am just grateful for it.
    
    
21. Hard work is a given. Struggle doesn’t have to be. I’ve learned that there is always work that will need to be done. The task list is never complete. So, just enjoy it!
    
    
22. It IS lonely at the top. And, yes, the view & the food are both amazing.
    
    
23. Ignore the trolls. They like the power the anonymity of the internet gives them. Don’t pay them any attention.
    
    
24. Be picky when choosing your friends. My friend list (and I don’t mean Facebook) is short. Surround yourself with people who inspire you.
    
    
25. Karma exists in business and in life. The old adage says “what goes around, comes around.” The older I get, the more I see this being true. Think twice before you act.
    
    
26. Being a CEO means being a CVO. CVO stands for Chief Value Officer. Always ask yourself: How can I create value for our clients? Our prospects? Our internal team? The answers will guide you to building a better company.

Shama Kabani is the award winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group, a full service web marketing firm in Dallas. She is also the author of the best-selling, The Zen of Social Media Marketing; and hosts her own web TV show at Shama.Tv.

 

 

by Edward Hallowell

Brain Science, Peak Performance, and Finding the Shine

WHAT MAKES A PERSON SHINE?
What separates people who feel fulfilled from those who suffer with regret? Here's a hint: it isn't money in the bank, fame, trophies, or rank, as much as those may matter. Many people don't finish first but nonetheless achieve greatness and long will be remembered, while many who do finish first will never be called great and will soon tumble into oblivion.

lt doesn't much matter what you've got in your personal asset bank. Smart is overrated. Talent is overrated. Breeding, Ivy League education, sophistication, wit, eloquence, and good looks—they matter, but they're all overrated. What really matters is what you do with what you've got. If you hold nothing back, if you take chances and give your all, if you serve the world well, then you will exult in what you've done and you will shine—in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of those who matter to you, and in your own eyes as well.

The more a manager can help the people who work for him or her to shine, the greater that manager will be, and the greater the organization as a whole. Put simply, the best managers bring out the best from their people. This is true of football coaches, orchestra conductors, big-company executives, and small-business owners. They are like alchemists who turn lead into gold. Put more accurately, they find and mine the gold that resides within everyone.

Managing in a way that brings out people's best is a critical task, perhaps second in importance only to parenting in shaping the future of our world. More than any other quality, it takes heart to be such a manager.

(More inspiration in the book!)

 

Google is the first choice in search for more than 65 percent of the Web, while the shared efforts of Microsoft and Yahoo have earned Bing the market’s only other significant share. But the most successful Web professionals are those who explore all of their options; and for additional choices in search, look no further than the following list.
(Source: Website Magazine)

Blekko  http://blekko.com/

When Blekko launched back in November 2010, there were plenty of doubters who didn’t expect the startup search engine to last more than a year. While that may not be guaranteed just yet, Blekko is making good on its promise of creating a new and exciting alternative in search.

Blekko’s mission, some three years in the making before its actual launch, was to enlist human editors in an effort to eliminate spam and personalize and socialize the search experience. The team of 25 or so employees includes former Google and Yahoo search engineers and the project has received significant backing from some of the best-known investors in the tech world, including Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway.

The magic behind the Blekko vision was to use programmingrelated slashtags or topic tags to create the most relevant search verticals for users. Those very users would be among the editors curating and maintaining the slashtags, and after three months Blekko reported that it had more than 110,000 human-curated tags.

Blekko clearly could not compete with the size and scope of Google’s or Bing’s indexes, but what it could — and does — do is produce more relevant, more accurate, better search results. Before Google made headlines around the globe with its Farmer Update algorithm changes, Blekko had removed the very same content farms (and many more) from its search index as a matter of standard practice — and to much less fanfare.

But what it may lack in publicity Blekko has made up for in terms of a devoted user base. Its January 2011 numbers indicated an average of 1 million queries per day and between 10 to 15 queries per second. And Google and Bing’s own publicity does them as much harm as good — the controversy over Bing’s “stolen” search results and Google’s paid links scandal with J.C. Penney being just two recent examples.

Perhaps that’s why Blekko and the alternative search options below have become favorites for many SEOs and Web professionals of every kind.

DuckDuckGo  http://duckduckgo.com/

Blekko recently forged a partnership with fellow startup search engine DuckDuckGo (DDG), in which the two companies share technologies and information in the name of improving the quality of search results for users. The partnership is sure to evolve over time, say the CEOs of both companies, but right now DDG receives access to Blekko’s auto-fired slashtags in seven categories (health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels) in return for use of DDG’s proprietary feature, zero-click info.

Similar to Google’s Instant Search, zero-click info gives users the most relevant information on websites and search terms without having to click on search results. Local business listings from Yelp, word definitions from The Free Dictionary, Wikipedia entries and content from 13 additional StackExchange sites are some examples of information users can find with zero-click results.

Like Blekko, DuckDuckGo has developed quite a following and averages more than 5 million searches per month.

Greplin  https://www.greplin.com/

Greplin is a user-authorized search engine that can search and index social services and applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, Google Docs, Evernote, Basecamp, Salesforce and more, and it’s adding more all the time. The startup recently announced the addition of a Chrome extension to its search presence so that users can now search their social data directly from the browser without having to go to Greplin’s website. The creation of a 19-year-old entrepreneur from Israel, Greplin may be the best known of a growing number of services such as CloudMagic that are designed for searching users’ social graphs for personal data and those hard-tofind items that often get lost in the cloud.

Wajam  http://www.wajam.com/index2.php

Wajam is another socially driven search tool, but unlike Greplin it returns its results as part of your experience with Google or Bing. Where Greplin searches only the applications that have been preauthorized by the user, Wajam searches the entire Web but with an emphasis on returning personalized results from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites a user has bookmarked. It is used as a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, and injects these social results into the search queries submitted to larger engines.

Quora  http://www.quora.com/

Quora is the extremely popular new platform that strives to be the definitive question-and-answer site for just about any topic on the Web. Like Blekko, it is largely human-driven and invites users to ask questions, provide answers and share their knowledge and comments. Questions are organized into different categories that can also be created by users, leading to a wide range and growing index of topical information.

Nobody believes that these solutions will threaten Google’s dominance in the world of search any time soon, least of all the people behind each service. But most of them seem to be much more focused on improving the Web by providing a better way to access information.

Just like Google was when it first launched.

Mark Zuckerberg's second-in-command provides "adult supervision" at the company, trying to keep growth at an optimum level

On a Tuesday afternoon in late April, 30 managers of Facebook's various business units come together to discuss a matter that preoccupies its famous founder: how to keep their rapidly growing little company from getting too big. The meeting, organized and led by the second-most-famous person at the social network, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, focuses on how to solve the problems of users, advertisers, and partner websites by using automated systems rather than bringing in thousands of new employees.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek or download PDF below.