DefinitiveInk

Lifemanship - Guides for oneupmanship

In the 1940's and 1950's  a British writer named Stephen Potter wrote several very funny guides to getting the upper-hand in different situations. They covered;"winning without actually cheating" ("Gamesmanship"); "creative intimidation" ("One-Upmanship"); and making "the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly" ("Lifemanship"). I remember reading the one on gamesmanship and am convinced that my father and other men of his age with  whom I've golfed  have studied these books very carefully. My father is a master of the  coin-in-the-pocket jiggle, which I think he does unconsciously while others are putting. He will  then glare at you if you make a noise while he is putting. This seems to combine both gamesmanship and lifemanship, so there is a distinct possibility that he is a student of the entire series.  These books have been recently republished and the NY Times has a really nice essay about them.

The guides were loosely based on, or certainly inspired by, Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".  Recently David Sedaris had  a very funny This American Life piece about how his   father  made him use the techniques on his fellow sixth graders.  His friends didn't take kindly to  being repeatedly addressed by their first names.  Surprisingly this book and its ideas live on. One of the small joys of my consulting work at iVillage is walking by the give-away table of rejected books and products sent to editors.  In the pile of relationship workbooks this morning I saw a true gem, Donna Dale Carnegie's (Dale's daughter) soon to be published "How to Win Friends & Influence People for Teen Girls". 

What Is There To Smile About?

It can be tough to smile and not just when you're freaked about being in a new situation. And let's face it, sometimes your life feels like the lyrics to a bad country song: you're fighting with your boyfriend, your parents want to ground you, you forgot the geometry homework, and it's only Tuesday. Actually, these are the times when smiling can help you most. Studies have shown that a smile is enough to boost your mood, even when it's fake! So if you're feeling lower than the gum on your shoe, pretending to be happy or at least forcing a smile can give you the lift you need to get through the day. Who knows? You may make someone else's day while you're at it.

Morning reading

Mojo fight - Google adds satellite imagery to maps. Good for consumers and probably fun for the employees of both Google and Yahoo.

One in three of the 22 million MP3 player owners has listened to a podcast, according to a new Pew study.

Editor and publisher story about newspaper revenue
Another way of looking at it: 

Revenue for newspaper websites, year 2004, aggregate:$1.19 billion, with nearly half that amount coming from classifieds.

Revenue for Google adwords, year 2004: 3,143,288,000–roughly half that amount on Google, the other half on third-party websites (the adsense program).

Likelihood of only newspaper classifieds growing 25% this year, given the lower costs and better reach offered by others? 0. (via: John Battelle)

A line from a paypal spoof I received this morning, "One of our Customer Service employees has already tryed to telephonically reach you."

Having an electric kettle and drinking tea in the morning means never having to go through the day worrying about not turning off the coffeemaker and burning the house down. Plus you get to drink almost twice as much tea for one cup of coffee. Lately I've been buying tea from the Upton Tea Company. They have a nice feature on their site that enabled you to make custom labels for your tea.

CNET bought a 4 month old photo sharing service yesterday. Talking with a friend about this yesterday I said that I thought I was living on the wrong coast.  He said we were living in the wrong country since Korea is doing so many impressive things with mobile devices. He is a bit of a futurist.

Morning reading

The Neighborhood Project.  Neighborhood boundaries generated by posts to Craigslist. Perhaps it will one day shed light on the real boundaries of  ever expanding Park Slope.  (via craig newmark)

Amazon buys two publishing related companies.  One of them is POD publisher booksurge.com and the other a PDA e-publisher called Mobipocket. Perhaps Amazon will start to offer POD versions of some of the digital titles it owns.

Folio Magazine's list of the Folio 40 movers and shakers in the magazine and online magazine world.

We got our first copy of Cabinet Magazine at home last week. They also have a nice  website.  Sadly the excellent article on the history of jigsaw puzzles in this month's issue isn't available online. Still visit the site. It's a really interesting magazine and the link below is from it.

Leaflets dropped over Iraq by American forces.

Morning reading

Kevin Fox's post dissecting Ben Hammersly's article about Yahoo being the new Google. (trail via Kottke) Do I really want giant e-mail limits?By the way not to be outdone earthlink went from 10megs free space to 100.

Saw a friend who works at MTVi last night at a wedding, they are adding over two hundred hires in a realization that there is an enormous shift going on over the next 10 years about how people access consumer media.

In the 1970s my father used to have a CB radio in his Lincoln Continental. We would occasionally use it while driving up the West Side Highway. I'm not sure we ever managed to speak to anyone. I'm trying to remember his handle.

Maximized out my recent obsession with buying a great pair of old sneakers when I found myself going to A Life yesterday on Rivington Street, the "temple" of cool sneakers, only to find that they had exactly the same pairs as a store on 34th and 6th. The whole process of choosing was getting the best of me so I'm just going to pass on the whole thing and  feel better for it.

Morning reading

Fred Wilson on RSS and feedburner's new pro product, google ads and other things. A good read and more importantly a must do when I get my act together and flatten these templates.

Fools in April playing polo on their Segways.
A very funny parody of BoingBoing (via Susan Mernit)
A link to a parody of Yahoo 360 - a community site for community sites (via kottke.org - earning his keep)