Weekend Comedy 8/15

This Week in Sports: Gearing up for the World Cup

My favorite World Cup article so far is by The Unlikely Fan and is called "The World Cup, Translated Into American". The author compares all 32 World Cup teams to what he perceives as their American equivalents, to give Americans a point of reference.

I enjoyed reading every comparison, even if some are a little weird (Mexico) while others seem pretty good (Holland). Although it did really hurt to see my (and Aaron's) beloved Chargers compared to unlikable (okay, hate-able) Portugal. Causing MP to coin the phrase Ronaldo Rivers. Grr.

Which of these comparisons work, and which need to be reassigned?

How the Mayo Clinic Uses Social Media

For me, the Mayo Clinic is in the Buffett Zone - I will read anything about them, because I find their achievements so interesting. I was surprised to discover how extensively the Mayo Clinic uses social media, as Guy Kawasaki (who is great, by the way) describes in his interview with Lee Aase, the "syndication and social media director" for the Mayo Clinic.

Buffett Buys Dinner for Fund Manager Based on Letter

I love this story. Warren Buffett recently flew a 29 year-old fund manager to Omaha and paid for her meal because he liked the research she submitted to him so much. The linked story has all the details so I won't repeat. Dinners with Buffett have sold for over $2 million at charity auctions, so to be flown in by Buffett for a meal, all based on your letter to him, is amazing.

She put the picture with Buffett, whose wallet she's holding, as her Facebook profile pic:



The crazy part to me is learning about Cara Goldenberg, who is like a wunderkind 29 year-old managing partner of Permian Investment Partners, which she co-founded 18 months ago. She must be smart as hell to be in that position that young, and have some good ideas to submit as research to Buffett that would impress him so much.

PS, I found this story on the Everything Warren Buffett blog feed which I once linked to in our Content DJ post.

Neville Hobson: 5 Examples of Twitter Innovation

Neville Hobson, a blogger about social media (albeit from an older generation than C-Mac, et al) recently wrote about Five examples of innovation with Twitter from five major companies.

He in turn is pulling these examples from Entrepreneur magazine, as linked in his blog. To be honest there isn't a lot of analysis here beyond a vague description of the campaign. But look at the total number of followers - 6,000 for Subway, 4,700 for McDonald's, 38,000 for Dunkin' Donuts? And have you looked at what those accounts post? As Aaron explained yesterday, this is almost a lesson in how NOT to use Twitter, right?

Random Thoughts Thursday

Inspired by Aaron's random thoughts, the assorted links blogs by Matthew Yglesias and Marginal Revolution, and Ezra Klein's "tab dump" posts, here some links I've been reading but don't have a strong angle to craft whole blogs around:

- I enjoyed this transcript of William Faulkner's great acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature while looking for a transcript of Obama's acceptance speech

- the public intoxication blog's fondness for the scale of 1 to 10 makes me want to use the scale in more daily situations... how much did you enjoy these random links, on a scale of 1 to 10?

- the site It Starts With Us is interesting (if sappy) for its concept, and I agree generally with this article describing why your attitude matters - because you influence others by proxy, and vice versa

- National Geographic has a photo gallery of the Best US Drives; a quiz about Jamaica; and a wintertime photo tour of the US

- the list of men who look like old lesbians that Scott linked to... seriously, it slays me

- Bill Simmons' discussion in his BS Report on 12/7 with Dave Jacoby that they had a fantasy draft of "celebrities most likely to be unfaithful in the next 12 months" a la Tiger... I move for FIWK to conduct more such random fantasy drafts

Creative Blogs that Impress Me

I just want to share a series of cool blogs I read regularly that really impress me with their creativity. Generally speaking, I am most impressed by people who do things well that I can't do well myself (I call this the Dwight K. Schrute Tipping Rule, in honor of a great line from The Office). The following three blogs are creative in ways I am not.

A Life in Translation, run by Jamie Varon, has a joyous layout and style. It covers Jamie's life in Italy and her writing style is creative and fun; the blog is also full of great photos.

Une Femme Curieuse is, as far as I can tell, a lifestyle blog simply run by a creative person. The layout is very cool and the subject matter generally touches on interesting subjects, similar to Smile Like You Mean It.

I consider Your Ill-Fitting Overcoat the poet of the bunch. I am regularly blown away by the writing on the site, and the photos, language, and subject matter stoke my imagination on a regular basis. Plus you get recipes thrown in the mix, which is nice.

You have any suggested blogs to add to my favorites?

HowStuffWorks Dominates Us

I read howstuffworks.com regularly. I love their blogs. I listen to their Stuff You Should Know podcast weekly. The site is awesome, it's packed with interesting stuff. It covers a spectrum of topics. I am always learning something. The research is solid and frequently leads me to other interesting sites or articles. In short, it does a lot of the stuff that FIWK tries to do - but a whole lot better than us.

Have you ever visited HSW and, if so, how do you feel about they way they present information? Too much stuff all shotgun blasted at the reader at once, or an interesting selection of articles for you to parse at your leisure?

Home Workspace Ideas

Our friend C-Mac at Smile Like You Mean It wrote a very interesting blog about creating a home workspace for your personal business needs. I like a lot of her suggestions.

The Hot Property Blog

I was recently turned on to the Hot Property Blog over at Business Week which I have enjoyed reading. It takes the general BW tone of "bland informational posts" but is a nice primer for general real estate trends. I do wish it would rely more on expertise, because rather than ask Could Home Prices See a Double-Dip? they could easily do the research and present a well-formulated opinion (consensus of people I've talked to anecdotally: yes we could see a double-dip). Also their feature on practically free houses in the US was an interesting read. They are on my regular reading list now.

Buzz Beast

We just got a new blog follower of FIWK, so I looked at Buzz Beast to see what their blog is all about. It's a pretty cool site. They use the Google Blogger back end but have a custom url at buzz-beast.com and I like the slickness and color of the blog layout. They also have a recent comments section, like we do.

The site focuses on cool product design, which is a blog topic covered by Caitlin, among others. For instance, Buzz Beast just featured a post about the design of the new Facebook office, which is a topic we recently discussed on FIWK.

How Do We Crush It? F*ck if we know...

Grace Boyle has posted an interesting contest related to the new book by Gary Vaynerchuk titled Crush It: Why Now is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion (full disclosure: I've already ordered the book on Amazon but it hasn't shipped yet). We of course remember Gary Vee from his antics on Wine Library TV and his social media thoughts. Here is the prompt that Gary lays down for Grace:

"Take this quote from Gary in Crush It: “Skills are cheap, passion is priceless,” and write a blog post about how you’re crushing it, your dreams to crush it, and what this phrase means to you.



But what to do if you lack skills and passion? Every single 'personal branding expert' will advise you to pick a single topic, be really passionate about it, and then proclaim that you are an expert in that subject. Well, our whole premise is that we just talk about stuff we find interesting, with no discernible focus or expertise. Hence the self-conscious blog title. But maybe we're actually crushing it by just doing what we feel because we like it, critics (and readership) be damned?

Music Tuesdays at Smile Like You Mean It

Speaking of running blog series, Caitlin (we call her C-Mac) over at Smile Like You Mean It consistently drops some good music links on Tuesdays. Today she has offered up 'We Are the People' by Empire of the Sun. Last week was a gem by Marina and the Diamonds called 'The Outsider'. Incidentally, that song shares the same name as one of my favorite songs by A Perfect Circle:

Gary Vaynerchuk: Content DJ

You may remember Gary Vaynerchuk, marketing blogger from his comments about AOL's use of blogs. Now in a recent video he talks about the value of being a content DJ with a blog. We have already kind of touched on this with the content of bloggers like Penelope Trunk and sites like Brazen Careerist. I think the content DJ philosophy is relevant to FIWK because it is half of the stated goal of the FIWK blog - the other half being conversation around the content we post.

Wired: Craigslist and Simplicity

Two great articles in the most recent Wired Magazine - the first is titled The Tragedy of Craigslist and the second is titled The Good Enough Revolution" (it's about the popularity of simple-to-use technology). There is some parallel logic in the two articles that I find interesting.

Penelope Trunk on workplace creativity

Penelope Trunk's most recent blog on being creative at work struck me as interesting and fairly unique.

You may remember Penelope from both our Brazen Careerist feed and our discussion of her personal blog a long while back.

Brazen Careerist

Today there was a re-launch of the networking site Brazen Careerist, which is run by Penelope Trunk, a blogger who we discussed in the context of her very personal blog a while back. I already have a feed of our blog on Brazen which is linked to my profile there.

AOL Making Smart Moves

Gary Vaynerchuk, a blogger and entrepreneur, discusses the smart moves that AOL has been making lately

What Blogs Are For

Recently I stumbled upon a blogger named Penelope Trunk, and her blog entitled "How to decide how much to reveal about yourself" fascinated me. Be warned: it gets really heavy, really fast.

Writing is Stephen King's job

Stephen King treats writing as his job and put his 8 hours in the office every weekday.