Who is Farhan Lalji?

But we don’t always know what it was made for.

Jason Calacanis is an entrepreneur, he’s behind Mahalo.com – a people powered search engine, he’s also a blogger, tweets on twitter and is pretty well connected. Anyhoo, I recently came across a tweet from Jason leading to a page on Flickr where Jason had posted a potential redesign of the Mahalo site and asked users for comments. In under 5 minutes he had about 20 comments - and by the time I hit publish on this post he had nearly 200 comments.

Flickr wasn’t created to be a user feedback on design tool, but a funny thing happens when you allow the community to use a site in any way they want, good things can happen.

If you build it they will come was a great line, personally I like if you build it people will find a way to use it for the internet. Think that’s what’s happening with sites like Twitter and other web start ups, their launching something without a business model not sure how they’ll monetise it but getting people to use it in whichever way suits them. Hoping that they’ll have an “aha moment”, will this work? Not sure, but it’s fun to watch.

I finished reading the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt this week. A lot of it was pretty common sense and some things were surprising, like religious people being happier.

One of the things that caught me off guard was work and achievement of work as a source of happiness. In hind sight this looks obvious, but for some reason I hadn’t thought of it. The book goes over the notion that people can look at work as a job, a career or a calling. Me and the wife had an interesting discussion around this subject. I’ve, personally, gone from work being seen as a job (coding websites – aside: this wasn’t my calling, but I can definitely see how some developers would see this as a calling) to a career (managing coders of websites) and now I’m trying to find my calling in the internet industry. She’s always looked at teaching as a calling.

Of course people who find work as a calling are happier then people who look at their work as a job. But beyond that actually getting down and working and having accomplished stuff – whatever that stuff might be or however task oriented it is – can also be a source of happiness.

So, do you see what you do as a job, career or a calling? And are you happier when you get stuff done, regardless of how miniscule or detailed the tasks might be?

Great post from the boys over at SvN about planning. They’re talking mostly about software, but I think it totally applies to business as well.

Why do we spend so much time planning? Does preparation really help anything? Business plans, marketing plans, blah blah blah. Thing with plans is no matter how much you plan you don’t know what you don’t know. This is especially true when it comes to all things online.

According to RWW 5 years ago Ad Sense wasn’t around, web 2.0 hadn’t been invented, the top blog was Slashdot. By my recollection, 5 years ago Flickr was independent, big web companies were IPO-ing, and not having a mobile phone wasn’t unheard of. That’s all changed. So what about all those business plans that weren’t written 5 years ago?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think planning is all bad, I think you need to set some milestones and a general direction. But planning every detail so you don’t change or allow for flexibility as times change is just silly. When the world is changing at the rate it’s changing at you need to be able to change with it.

A plan might look great today, but tomorrow something might change the circumstances around the plan and it will look like crap. People need to plan less and do more.

I’ve been using twitter for the past few weeks and have really enjoyed the service. I like updating and enjoy reading other peoples updates. I think the SMS integration is sweet and I’m pretty hooked.

Found this video on Vimeo, via blog.andrewparker.net which does a good job explaining what twitter is and why it works:

Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo

One of the things I’ve done with my tweets is used the twitter facebook app to pull in the updates to twitter. This has meant a lot more status updates on Facebook, occasionally confusing users. I’m not sure whether to uninstall the Facebook app or to keep it running and wait till most people figure out that they too should be on twitter.

So, here’s a poll (users on facebook you’ll probably have to come to the blog), let me know whether you think I should keep twitter on my facebook profile or not.

Some colleagues of mine went/came to Switzerland last week. They stayed mostly in Lausanne and spent a couple of hours in Geneva. They had terrible weather and in short they hated it. I had been hearing for a few days about how few people would be on the streets, how little there seemed to be to do, all in all how unliveable it was.

My experience has been totally different. I had pleasant weather on my first day (pictures will be uploaded to Flickr when I get back). Loved the scenery, saw some great restaurants and have enjoyed practicing my French, even if it’s just a listening and understanding exercise for now. We’ve seen some really nice villages around Lausanne, there’s a nice little buzz in the area. And I can totally see myself here, at least for a little while.

I think this is largely due to priming effects. The fact that my expectations were set so low, that I was told how unpleasant it was and how few people there would be, has meant that Lausanne has been able to exceed my expectations. Phew.

I blog on my own site and - with Facebook’s notes import feature - my notes get reprinted on Facebook. This works well in some ways as (assumption) most of the people who read me on Facebook don’t use RSS so when they login to Facebook they see that I’ve written a new note. For people who read the blog through RSS or visiting the blog directly they (assumption) prefer using readers and commenting directly on the post. The problem is this separates the conversation and instead of comments being shared and great conversation taking place there are comments in two places and the conversation is in parts and not as great as I think it could be.

Examples, my play and work posts got comments on both Facebook and on my blog and my government posts got a ton of comments on my Facebook page and I know that people who read my blog would have added to this conversation.

So that’s the dilemma, what’s the solution? Some visitors on the blog aren’t Facebook friends, don’t think there’s a way to keep the Facebook posts open to people who aren’t contacts, is there? Should I just ask people to comment only on the blog? Facebook readers click on where it says “View original post”. I don’t think I can block comments on Facebook and force folks to comment on my blog, can I?

Any tips? Suggestions?

During my last job, at a design agency in London, we had a pool table. At 530 everyday, almost like clockwork, 2-4 of us would go and shoot some stick. It was a great semi release, we would end up talking about projects or developments in the world of technology more often then not. When we moved offices and ditched the pool table a large part of me felt that was a mistake, but I couldn’t articulate why.

At Yahoo! we have pool, foosball and ping pong tables and though I rarely get the chance to play these days it’s good to know they’re there. I’ve had some good conversations about life, work, philosophy and politics around these tables. One of the best times I’ve had at Yahoo! has been when we went out to play golf in the middle of Soho, not only was the golf fun but in winning the closest to the pin competition I’ve been inspired to play more golf. There was also some great work-related conversation that evening in a relaxed non-traditional environment.

And then I read about the Google Games (hat tip: Brad Feld) where students from MIT and Harvard came in and played various physical, mental and just plain fun games. Great recruitment technique if you ask me.

Last week I came across an article in the London Business School Business Strategy Review regarding the role of play at work. It’s weird but I’ve always felt that having a playful outlet was important to being able to work effectively. And this article makes that case.

If/When I start my own company I think play will play an important part in recruitment, engagement and strategy. If for no other reason then the fact that its fun and we spend way too much time at work not to have fun there.

This morning I saw a headline and story that bothered me on my feed reader,

Obama under fire after fundraiser remarks (Reuters)
Reuters - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama came under fire on Friday for saying small-town Pennsylvania residents were “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion,” in comments his rivals said showed an elitist view of the middle class.

But then I went on twitter to see what Obama News had to say about it. And sure enough there’s a posting with the response from the senator in Indiana where he clarifies that:

“And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we’re going to make your community better. We’re going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement– so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’

And a YouTube clip so you can see the full context.

This is what I mean by the web facilitating democracy, it’s the transparency in stories that wasn’t there before and is there now. Before you would have seen the story in print media and had nowhere to turn. But today you see the story, and through the power of the web you hear straight from the source and make up your own mind with more information.

Officially: Baron Davis “Framed” by Emmanuelle Chriqui
Actress Emmanuelle Chriqui (HBO’s Entourage) directs a short film starring Golden State Warriors’ star Baron Davis. Novice director Chriqui sets her sights high by using some challenging filmmaking techniques while coaching Davis through the process of getting into character for her first film.

Unofficially, this series of videos with actors/singers and atheletes is pretty funny. This is B Diddy in short shorts while Cool it Now by New Edition plays in the back (facebook readers you might need to view the original post on the blog). In a word hilarious.

Cathy pointed me to the LordsoftheBlog.net today. It’s about page describes it as:

“a collaborative blog written by Members of the House of Lords for the purposes of public engagement.”

Last year I discovered David Cameron’s blog, I was skeptical (sk or sc? Seems like it can be spelt both ways) and unsure as to whether or not we would see DC blogging and posting in a years time and although the blog is being updated everyday it’s still updated more then once a week. It could be better, but it’s better then I thought it would be.

Earlier this week, I started trying twittering again to see if I can find any value in the service. One of the reasons why was the fact that Downing Street was twittering and I would be damned if Downing Street was an earlier adopter of something then myself.

Sometime between the discovery of LordsoftheBlog.net and the Downing Street Twitter I watched an address by Obama at the Google offices - sorry to lazy to find it again and link/embed it - in California.

Today it downed on me, all of these things are signs that information is being spread to people on their terms. People can engage or chose to ignore the information, but governments and officials representing government are finally leveraging the ability of the web to truly empower people. At the same time people have more access to information and the thinking behind the decisions made by government then ever before.

With blogs people can comment on posts around decisions and government officials can reply. With Twitter people can follow activities closer and respond with questions and concerns and watch the reaction to feedback. This is a giant step and I think this brings us closer to truly having government for the people and by the people.