Hello, Apple.

Started today. Happy as a clam.

Bye bye, Yahoo!

Yesterday was my last day at Yahoo! It's been a good run for just over two and a quarter years but it's time to move on.

Special shout outs to my peeps at Yahoo! Search. I'll be rooting for you all the way.

How Google runs meetings

From Businessweek via 37signals' Signal vs Noise:

I'll pull out the bullet points, but read the article for more fun details. Wish more people ran meetings this way. So simple, yet so rarely done, or done well.

1. Set a firm agenda: "Agendas need to have flexibility, of course, but Mayer finds that agendas act as tools that force individuals to think about what they want to accomplish in meetings."
   
2. Assign a note-taker: "When people are trying to remember what decisions were made, in what direction the team is going, and what actions need to be taken, they can simply review the notes."
   
3. Carve out micro-meetings: "Mayer sets aside large blocks of time that she slices into smaller, self-contained gatherings on a particular subject or project."
   
4. Hold office hours: "During office hours, Mayer can get through up to 15 meetings, averaging seven minutes per person."
   
5. Discourage politics, use data: "She encourages such comments as 'The experimentation on the site shows that his design performed 10% better.'"
   
6. Stick to the clock: "It's literally a downloadable timer that runs off a computer and is projected 4 feet tall."
   

Tesla Roadster: An electric car that actually looks cool

The head of Tesla Motors spoke at Yahoo! last week and even demoed one of these beauties. I'm sorry I missed it but at least I got this video.



And, oh yeah, it starts at $100K (what did you expect?).

Dieter Ram's design principles

Rams in 1969 (Picture taken from Design Museum Collection)

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Back to purity, back to simplicity.

From a Design Museum Collection interview with the former design head of Braun. (Picture credit: Design Museum Collection)