Random Articles

• New Years Productivity Tip - Removing On-Screen Distraction While getting a few things done this holiday season I paid special attention to what was keeping me from staying focused, on-task. To kick this year off right, I’ve made some dramatic changes to my OS X desktop. From the menu bar, I’ve removed applications that change just enough to distract me. Including: clock (replaced with the
• Pandora.com - The Good and the Annoying Apologies for no Tuesday Triple Play this week. Perhaps a review of Pandora.com will make up for it. On a tip from Steve Borsch - I started a couple Pandora stations using two of my favorite bands as starting points (Too Much Joy Station, Transplants Station). On the plus side I’ve got nearly a solid work day of
• Faster Big Macs Through Outsourcing 2 minutes 36 seconds is the industry average for a McDonald’s drive-thru transaction. How does Steven Bigari keep his 12 franchises under half that? Outsourcing. All the drive-thru orders at his Missouri resturants are taken by a call center in Colorado Springs - increasing his capacity 15%. Brilliant. Original Article: New York Times, 18 July 2004. Thanks
• Apple’s Weather Dashboard Widget Won’t Go Below 28F? As you might have heard, we finally got winter here in the upper Midwest. Not the Christmas-fluffy-white-snow-perfect-for-skiing-and-hot-cocoa-winter, the death-to-all-who-venture-out-of-doors winter. Both weather.com and accuweather.com say it’s a brisk -2°F (one degree lower since my last post). Strangely, Apple’s Weather Dashboard Widget tells me it’s a tropical 28°F and snowing. It’s way too cold to snow and
• Changing the Government Government agencies are some of the most notorious change resistors. In 1999, the Mint started to change that reputation - receiving a customer satisfaction rating second only to Mercedes Benz. “In the old days, we shipped fewer than 50% of our orders within eight weeks. Today, if it takes two weeks for customers to receive an