PicoBlog

In 2007, founder Andrew Mason launched a website called The Point, a tipping point based collective action website trying to improve online fundraising. The "tipping point," set by the fundraiser, was an amount of money or signatures needed for the plan to actually go into action. With limited traction, after about 8 months they pivoted to an MVP called Groupon in 2008, while still applying the tipping method. After several months trying to grow The Point, they realized the primary issues was that as a new user, it was challenging to find campaigns that were serious and that engaged you in a way that was compelling enough to join a cause.

This is a post analyzing the USC Neely Center Ethics and Technology Indices. You can read more about the project with links to other posts here. Social media and technology companies had an eventful 2023 and beginning of 2024. Together, these companies laid off tens of thousands of employees, a disproportionate number of whom specialized in combating abusive behaviors and harmful experiences on these platforms. This may have created a digital environment where harmful content might surge.

Summary: Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics were defined from a factor analysis of the use of a much larger set of usability principles to explain a database of usability problems in development projects. The 10 heuristics in the final list from 1994 had the greatest explanatory power in this analysis, which is why they are still useful today. 2024 marks the 30-year anniversary of the 10 usability heuristics. (See the infographic at the end of this article for a summary of the heuristics, if you can’t recall them.

I don’t know exactly when it started, but I can clearly state that dealing with my emails has been one of the most stressful aspects of my working life for many years. On the one end, I am looking forward to receiving emails to see if anything interesting has happened in the last few hours. On the other hand, I am always stressing about processing my inbox and taking care of the many pending things that may be hiding there.

I recently realised that I’ve been pitching stories since 2008 (!)  I tried to dig out my very first pitch, but I couldn’t find it because it seems that back then, my email subject lines consisted of “article” and “review”. I doubt I even knew that what I was doing was called pitching.    A lot has changed since then (my email subject lines for a start), so I thought it’s a great time for an update on my own pitching process.

One of my first money moves after becoming meticulous about my spending was deciding I was done paying full price for gas. Each time I fill up now, I save money and honor my late grandfather. My mother told you back in February that her father, Shelby Johnson Sr., retired from Shell after more than 40 years with the company. My grandpa was the best father figure I had. He was a husband and hard worker, father and friend, protector and provider.

I’ve just sold the 10,000th copy of my debut book, The World Is On Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes, a pocket-sized manifesto / roadmap / journey toward a better relationship with fashion. The response to it has been amazing, but not much has been said about the fact that I published it myself. Hitting the 10k milestone feels like the right moment to talk about why I chose to go down the self-publishing route, how I made it work, and why it’s been such a big success for me.

My wife recently had some dental work done, and as you can imagine, I’m the one in our household that monitors our health care bills.  I know I wrote the book, Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System and Win, but going through medical bills doesn’t come naturally to me. I don’t think it comes naturally to many of us. It’s a learned skill, an essential aspect of financial literacy, like balancing a checkbook or reviewing a credit card statement.

What are your great-grandparents’ names?  I don’t know mine. I’d venture most of you reading this also don’t know yours. And that’s normal. We’re a few generations apart, and people tend to forget about people who aren’t in our close circles after some years.  Which is why it’s so ironic that we’re all so obsessed with legacies and leaving one behind. Pretty much all of us want to be remembered once we pass on; we want something, anything, of ours to be cherished, recognized, and retained in history.