Friday Five: Purging the RSS feeds, again

It’s Homecoming Weekend here at UMR. I’m getting ready to meet with the alumni association’s communications committee this morning, then this afternoon I’ll be helping departments set up tables outside the student center. It’ll be a lovely Ozarks fall day, and I’m looking forward to it.

But you, dear reader, are not interested in that. You have your own Homecoming Weekend coming soon. So, here’s some stuff that’s been clogging my RSS feeds lately — just five of the hundreds of items that may or may not be worth your time. Enjoy.

  • Findings from A List Apart‘s latest web design survey. This is fresh stuff, folks. “The findings we present here have never been seen before, because until now, no one has ever conducted public research to learn the facts of our profession. This report is not the last word on web work; it is only the beginning of a long conversation. Read, reflect, and let us hear from you.”
  • How Blog‘s take on Motivating creative types talks about peer recognition. (And they thought we were only in it for the money.)
  • Generation Q: a new label for college students That’s what NYT columnist Tom Friedman’s calling them nowadays. The “Q” stands for “quiet,” because they’re “the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad. But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good.” Via Brad J. Ward at SquaredPeg, who wonders: “Who gets to name these generations, anyways? … Are they the same people who name hurricanes?”
  • 10 myths to include in crisis planning, from SimpsonScarborough.
  • Radiohead and the mediocre middle is Seth Godin’s take on Radiohead’s recent launch of its new album online as a “pay-what-you-want” mp3. What he has to say about the music industry — and business in general — connects nicely with the disruptive marketing concepts discussed here last weekend and over at Zen and the Art of Higher Education Marketing. Godin’s point, worth pondering this weekend:

    Most industries innovate from both ends:

  • The outsiders go first because they have nothing to lose.
  • The winners go next because they can afford to and they want to stay winners.
  • It’s the mediocre middle that sits and waits and watches.
  • Could the same be said for education?

    Have a good weekend.

    Friday Five: Purging the RSS feeds

    So many interesting links. So little time. I’ve starred so many must-share tidbits in my RSS reader over the past several weeks that I could never share them all with you. So I went through the list, purged the no longer relevant stuff (all that “breaking tech news” that happened in late August), and winnowed it down to something a bit more manageable. Here’s a judicious sampling of linky goodness for your weekend reading pleasure:

    • The end of web 2.0 as we know it, as predicted by CrunchGear columnist Seth Porges. Porges predicts that human laziness will be web 2.0’s undoing, and I’m inclined to agree. We just don’t have the gumption to keep up with all our social networks, RSS feeds, etc. Give us the lazy way out and we’ll take it, every time.
    • Web 3.0 lives in a van — “down by the river,” I’m tempted to add. Marketing Pilgrim points us to two entrepreneurs who are defining web 3.0 on the road.
    • /. turns 10. Hard to believe that Slashdot, the granddaddy of all social networks, precursor of blogs, celebrates a decade on the net this month. Great interview with Slashdot founder CmdrTaco.

      Our desires are incredibly simple: We look for stories that will generate a good discussion. I’m not looking at big-picture, long-term repercussions from our posts. When I look back at 10 years of doing this, it’s nice to see all the good we’ve done. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to provide interesting content for our readers.

    • BuzzMachine ponders: Can we stop seeing it as news when some company opens up an island on Second Life?

    • Google: the 800-pound social networking gorilla?
      This is a couple of weeks old now, but the story is that Google is about to enter the social networking business in a month. Scobleizer pointed to a TechCrunch post about Google testing an app to rival Facebook. According to TC, Google will unveil the new app on Nov. 5.