April 20, 2009
by Kara Swisher
Writer, All Things D

As of today, we have made important changes to the All Things Digital Voices section, which should be of interest to some (and not at all to others).

Why? Well, a few weeks ago, ATD was caught up in a bit of the controversy that broke out due to louder-than-usual complaints by several traditional media companies about how their content is treated on the Web.

Without going into a long explanation: They expressed displeasure that some sites were misusing their content via aggregation.

In fact, Robert Thomson, Dow Jones editor-in-chief and also The Wall Street Journal managing editor, was widely quoted in an interview in The Australian saying, “There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet.”

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The lifehacker’s dilemma
Originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Dave sums it all up nicely, as far as I’m concerned.

(N.B.: the paper-based crotchal coverage hack.)

Typical Portion Control Tips/Guidelines

“Deck of cards, Merlin; deck of cards,” my friend Dennis would always say as we sat down to eat ribeyes the size of kittens.

What does everyone drive?

motivation solutions? | Ask MetaFilter

Good Ask Metafilter thread on finding ways to motivate yourself to do things you don't want to do. Good advice so far includes:

• "Incentivise yourself, e.g. 'If I spend an hour cleaning and tidying, I definitely deserve <insert vice of choice here> when I'm done'."
• "I set the timer for one hour every weekend and make myself tackle chores before I'm allowed to do anything else. When the beeper goes off, I stop and do something fun for a while. Repeat all day Saturday until everything truely essential is done."
• "Don't look at everything all at once! Otherwise you won't get anything done other than worry about all the stuff you need to do. You have to pick at it, otherwise it overwhelms you."
• "just pick one thing and do it, I pick the smallest thing if I'm feeling unmotivated. As you start chipping away the motivation will come to tackle the larger things."

Great tips, and a good time to mention The Procrastination Dash and most especially The (10+2)*5 Hack.

plain text wiki (20 May 2007, Interconnected)

TextMate users in search of a simple wiki should check out Matt Webb's new plain text wiki bundle. He's made it very easy to quickly generate new "pages" and links using nothing but TextMate, the Finder, and CamelCase words:

This is exactly what I need: A bunch of text documents that I'll be able to read at any point in the future, in a wiki structure that will be simple to implement in most extensible text editors.

I'd also note that Matt's bundle works handsomely with Quicksilver's venerable prepend/append and new file functionalities, so, once you've taken the requisite 45 seconds to set this up, you don't necessarily need to even be in TextMate to make additions. You gotta love text.

Nice work, Matt.

Edit 2007-05-22 17:36:17 Forever confusing my British Matts; This bundle is by Matt Webb not the also-wonderfully-talented-and-funny Matt Jones. Many thanks to jjg for the correction. 43 Folders regrets the error.

Rands In Repose: Repetitive Information Injury

The other day someone asked if all my hot-roddding, organization, and Mac fu have truly made me any more "productive," and I said what I usually say: "Yeah, on most days, absolutely. But sometimes I'm just procrastinating with lightning efficiency."

Sciral Consistency lets you track repeating tasks using fuzzy intervals.

• It's Time to Stand Up to Your Email - WSJ.com - Quoth your (alas, unlinked) author, "checking email and not doing anything about it is the worst habit." It's true.
• Custom search forms with Views and Fastsearch | Lullabot - I love Views so danged much, and fantastic recipes like this make me just point and gesticulate whenever people say "Why Drupal?" Them Lullabots are some smart cookies. [via deli/siliconmeadow]
• Antony Johnston (Getting Things Written) - Thoughtful, complete, and coherent GTD-based workflow optimized by an accomplished freelance writer. An excellent read. [Thanks, Kelly DeConnick]
• Cool Tool: Craftsman Auto Switch - "Whenever you turn your tool on, it will automatically turn the other outlets on. When you turn your tool off, it waits a few seconds before turning the accessory outlets off..."
• Pile of Index Cards - a photoset on Flickr - Okay, I'm not made of stone, people; I admit that some byzantine systems totally turn my crank. I wonder if Josh D has seen this one.
• Michael Randall [Giving More Engaging Presentations] - Ton of great resources on doing presentations.
• Lunchbox - Find lunch around your workplace - Fun Yelp and gMaps mashup for deciding where to eat. Would be super-handy for traveling. [via Daring Fireball]
• Eye for an iPhone - Jerzy wins the internet this week with this handsome Chuck Norris-esque tribute to Scott Bourne's mad fighting skillz (context: MBW 54). Because you know who else hated iPhones? That's right....