What I like about WeekPlan is that it is not just a todo list tool (though there’s nothing wrong with that). Instead, it is a weekly dashboard with your todos for the week as well as your goals that you can break down by into groups (E.g. here the author has stated his Dad goals, his husband goals and his own goals. You could add work goals, creative goals, etc.).

It also has likes to your overall vision, helping you stay focused. As Lifehacker states, WeekPlan Pairs Your Tasks with the Motivation Behind Them. Check out the Lifehacker article and then checkout the tool. It’s simple and easy to use. I highly recommend it.

Looking at this photo and reading this post on the blog on The Edge of the American West and learning that Vishniac selected his photos to suggest a narrative made me think of the phrase: what we want.

Like this….

…go see…Intimate Vignettes: Selling photographs

A fascinating documentary by a fascinating documentarian on the art of the street and the search for the elusive Banksy. Watch:

YouTube – Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop (Exclusive 5 min Extended Sneak Peek)

P.S. Love the title.

Kevin Kelly coins a new term, The Shirky Principle: “complex solutions (like a company, or an industry) can become so dedicated to the problem they are the solution to, that often they inadvertently perpetuate the problem.” Sadly, though, he refers to the Peter Principle in devising the term.

The Peter Principle “says that a person in an organization will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. At which point their past achievements will prevent them from being fired, but their incompetence at this new level will prevent them from being promoted again, so they stagnate in their incompetence.” It was developed by Dr. Lawrence Peter in the 1960’s. I think it may have had alot of revelance in the 1960s and the 1970s, but when I started working in the 1980s, a new phenomena was occurring. In the 1980s, you had the notion of plateauing. With plateauing, no one was being promoted, competent or incompetent. The Peter Principle was, if not void, was severely limited. People at higher stations in the company who started work in the 1950s and 1960s may have experienced the Peter Principle, but people who started work after the baby boomers had been promoted did not. Indeed, may people who suffered from plateauing had a different outlook on work than the baby boomers, an outlook that was resigned to not getting promoted, and looked at work differently.  The same was even more true for new employees that came after that.

That leads me back to The Shirky Principle.  I wonder at what point it will no longer be true. It may be that it has no sooner been stated that it is already becoming obsolete.

This post by Clay Shirky, The Collapse of Complex Business Models, has been getting alot of attention, as it should. Let me cut to the chase and by slightly paraphrasing Shirky, highlight the main idea:

“Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond….When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.

In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. … Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites.

When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.”

I think this is a valuable analysis of a complex system, and for complex systems where all the inputs and outputs are tightly linked together, I think that this collapsing behavoir is one you would expect to see.

I also think his examples of media companies and AT&T are good ones, because you have companies where all the input (the lines of business and associated revenue streams) are tightly coupled to the output (profitability). Furthermore, the dominant lines of business (e.g. print) constrict the subservient but more profitable lines of business (new media).

I think there are a few things wrong with this idea, however, and they center around the ideas of complexity and collapse. Some of the organizations with complex business models that are due for a collapse aren’t just in trouble because of complexity; they are also in trouble because they are singularly focused. There is little if any diversification. They are not just inflexible: they’re like one big tower of playing cards. Smart investors and businesses diversify their portfolio. Not only that, but smart businesses should have parts of their businesses in different phases of development, so that if a new line of business collapses, other new lines of business or mature lines of business will continue to support the growth of the company. Indeed, in most organizations, the mature lines of business may be complex, but the new lines should be less so. If not, then this is an organization behavioral problem more than a complex business model problem.

There is also the notion of how you manage collapse. For example, smart businesses recognize mature lines of business and know how to milk them while preparing for their eventual demise. There is not so much a collapse as there is an orderly winding down of the business. It takes discipline and an acknowledgement of the circumstances, but the collapse is orderly, not catastrophic (walking down stairs versus tumbling down them). Companies that don’t have discipline and don’t acknowledge the circumstances will fail catastrophically.

A number of years ago CityTV in Toronto took on a new, cheaper approach to gathering the news. It was simpler and cheaper than the way other media companies did it. But it was effective, and it forced the other companies to do that. The other media companies did not collapse, however. They adjusted, however painfully.

I think Rupert Murdoch is trying to make the adjustment as well. He is experimenting with different forms of media (MySpace) and different ways of generating revenue. He is failing to some degree, which makes it easy for people to say he is a failure. He may fail completely, unable and incapable of generating new business models to support his company. But if he succeeds, he will have found a way to be profitable with new media and likely generating new, simpler business models that will support them. Other companies will follow his lead. (Or someone else’s lead.)

I think media/communications companies may have to abandon some of their business models, but I think such companies will remain and they will eventually develop new mature and complex business models.

Anyway, some thoughts on Shirky’s post. It’s a great post, and a great extention of the idea of collapsing complex societies to collapsing complex business models.

It seems absurd at first thought. But read this article in The Atlantic, on Papalgate: The Pope’s Nixon Problem, which starts this way:

The ever-widening scandal over Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of Church sex abuse cases has an eerily familiar ring: it’s unfolding in much the same way that Watergate played out for Richard Nixon. Each day brings new revelations, to which the Pope and his supporters respond with carefully crafted explanations and pointed counterattacks.

Is this Watergate with holy water? Here’s a look at some of the ways in which Pope Benedict XVI has found himself caught up in a scandal of Nixonian proportions…

As author Tom McNichol explains, there are four ways this is similar:

1. The nagging question: What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?
2. It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Cover-up
3. Shooting the Messenger
4. The Dangers of Infallibility

I see alot of #3 happening right now. Obvious the Pope has risk #4 in a big way. As more and more investigation happens in various countries, #2 is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. Which leads more and more to #1.

Difficult times for the Pope and the Church lie ahead.

according to the BBC News, they are thinking of allowing proper nouns to come into play in Scrabble rule change. Proper Nouns!? Madness! Next they’ll be letting you form words on the diagonal! 🙂

I am not a conservative person by default, but when it comes to such things as Scrabble, I think the way the game is currently designed is perfectly fine.

Bruce Schneier, Chief Security Technology Officer for BT, has a good article in Forbes on Google And Facebook’s Privacy Illusion.

The commentary is good and something I strongly agree with. If I can effectively sum up some of his points:

• Young people care about privacy.

• To them privacy is about control.

• Big companies like Google and Facebook have a vested interest in you surrendering some of that control, and so they take steps to make it easier for you to give up that control.

Before you read another “privacy is dead” article, read Bruce’s first/instead.

What do Chicken Little, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and How to Slay your Dragon have in common? Well, you could apply this paragraph which I tweaked very slightly from the Movie Review in the NYTimes.com by A.O. Scott on How to Train Your Dragon and use it for all three movies:

The hero is a misfit adolescent who proves his mettle, pleases his hard-to-please father and saves the world while learning important lessons and rattling off some wisecracks. Supporting characters include a spitfire love interest, a gaggle of goofy friends and a cute nonhuman sidekick.

(Ok, everyone is non-human in Chicken Little, but there is still the sidekick.)

There’s other similarities: there is no mother, the father is big and gruff and has a hard time with emotions and is ashamed of his son, and the son has a secret. The films are so similar I looked them up on imdb.com to see if they came from the same studio or same writers, but they don’t.

I liked all three films, as did my son. But I think there are better ways to show father-son relationships, and I hope they show them in upcoming animated films. At least these fathers aren’t the hopeless inept fathers I see so often on TV shows. Still.

I love this video: I love the song, the setting, the way it’s filmed with the splitting of the frame. Of course Ayo is gorgeous and the many things she wears are beautiful as well. All in all, a fine way to spend some time on as Sunday evening. Here’s Ayo, “Life Is Real”.

…then read this: iPhone Users Are More Than Willing to Pay for Apps – But Don’t Want to Pay a Lot.

Bottom line: people will pay some money, but not alot (as the folks at Wolfram discovered with their $50 app).

In this article Historicist: Greeting Easter 1910 – Torontoist there is an ad featuring men’s hats from a century ago:

…with Silk Hats (think:deluxe top hat), derby hats (think: English banker) and alpine hat (think: German hat geat in Oktoberfest). Clearly if women had to have their Easter bonnet, then men had to have their corresponding new hat to make the social circuit at this time of year. Eventually silk hats faded away sometime after 1919, and by the time the 1960s arrived, hats in general for men disappeared. (Unless you count baseball hats, which I don’t.)

Back in 1910 I am sure people would have found it difficult to believe that men would go out in public without a good hat. I wonder what people a century from now will think about our attire. I am sure that they will find it odd we still wear two piece suits and neckties. Perhaps even dress shoes as they are now will see odd.

It’s hard to match up orange with other colours. But one thing that goes well with it is beige, as you can see here:

The beige mutes the orange which brightens up the beige. A great balance of colours.

(Found via A CUP OF JO: Airplane wedding)

If you have alot of money, you can get clothing that is constructed impeccably of the finest materials. But there’s more to having style than that. Indeed, as this Joe Fresh show at Toronto Fashion Week illustrates, you can look very stylish indeed with low cost clothing. H&M have been proving this for years by having big name designers like Lagerfeld and McCartney creating lines for them. Now Joe Fresh does it too.

It’s all about how you wear your clothes and carry yourself that determines your style. Not how much it all costs.

I’ve been reading alot of pro and con articles about the iPad. David Pogue at the NYtimes.com had both in his review. And now there’s this:
Cost and Redundancy Issues Confront iPad – NYTimes.com. I partially agree with this: the early adopters are going the snap up the iPad, just like they did with the iPhone. And if the iPad was a design dead end, then I would worry if I were Apple. But of course it’s not a design dead end; if anything, it is designed as just the start of a new platform for people. There are lots of things that can be done to improve the iPad, and I am willing to bet Apple will include those overtime. Overtime the people with netbooks and laptops and other portable devices will be looking to upgrade and then they will buy an iPad or some other tablet device. (I wouldn’t assume that Microsoft is going to be left out of this, or RIM for that matter, or Acer, or HP or Dell.)

I would be hard pressed to imagine some future other than one where Apple sells alot of these. Then other devices like the Touch will die off. Costs will come down as competition ramps up, too. But by that time, Apple will have some new device. It’s a pattern we have seen before, and I can’t see it being broken.

As for me, eventually I will get one, I think. I love my Touch, I have a few iPods, and I like my netbook and my laptop. I think it will be a good thing to have, but it is just a computing device, and not even a terribly innovative one at that.

The question is hard to hear, but the answer is clear, in many ways.

Philp Pullman talked about his book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

(Found via Andrew Sullivan)

Ok…I am a big fan of CBR….I mean, what’s not to like?

YouTube – Corinne Bailey Rae – Closer (Live on Ellen DeGeneres 01-28-2010) [HD]

If you get nothing else from this frightening article, How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords on Lifehacker, get this: make you password is long (at least 8 characters) and make sure it has upper and lower case letters with some numbers and other characters (e.g. “curse” symbols like #$%@) mixed in.

I knew alot of this stuff, but something I should have guessed was this: if you can’t use a different password for every site you log into, make sure the really important passwords (e.g. for banking) is very good and very different than those sites (e.g. newspaper sites) which may have weaker security.

Hey, it’s your money and your identity. Protect it.

Well, if you are Bill Cunningham (who is 81), you want to continue to be a great photographer. The Lens Blog has a story about Cunningham and a documentary about him. What I love about him, though, is that he is “old” only in the sense of having lived many years. Otherwise, there is little that is old about Bill Cunningham. He is a hard working fashion photographer, a role that needs you to think “new”, not “old”.

So what do you want to be when you are 80? And if you are 80 already, then you should be planning your 100 birthday. Please invite me.

There’s a good review of the new Toronto bistro, Cafe Leopold, in blogTO. I am a big fan of bistros and their well prepared, tasty, unpretentious, (and great value) food. Seeing new bistros open cheers me up, which makes me happy and looking forward to checking out Cafe Leopold. If you are out on St. Clair, just west of Bathurst, and you are feeling hungry, look for this place….