Cover Oregon Becomes a Political Organization

Yesterday the official account for Cover Oregon tweeted a link to an official Cover Oregon Tumblr. The site is dedicated to fighting “misinformation about Cover Oregon.” This Tumblr posted a picture that originated with the Facebook group Opinionated Democrats (the post can be seen here).

The photo says Republicans should “quit whining” and that they should “win elections” if they want to repeal or defund Obamacare. It's really sad to see Cover Oregon turning into a blatantly political organization.

The aforementioned photo is embedded below.

quit_whining.jpg

How Perfectionism Hurts Creators

This essay was originally submitted as a graded assignment for my college writing course.

One might suggest that perfectionism is a good thing. The theory goes that perfectionism allows you to produce work that is better than the average person. It's often thought of as a desirable quality that allows for the creation of a one's best work. I challenge this assumption as a writer who oftentimes finds himself struggling, yes struggling, with perfectionism. I think of perfectionism as a vice far more often than I think of it as a virtue. Perfectionism is a form of procrastination. It is the bane of the existence of creative people everywhere.

Before we begin, we must define our terms. I define procrastination as "knowing what you must accomplish, and not doing it". I would define perfectionism as "the act of requiring something to be perfect". Based on my personal experience with both procrastination and perfectionism, these definitions offer us a simplified but accurate look at these two subjects. I offer myself as a test case for our theory that perfectionism is a form of procrastination.

I consider myself to be a writer. This is primarily a good thing but can lead to thinking in a manner which a writer should not. I commonly put off the very act of writing with a plethora of excuses. For instance, if I'm not in the mood to write, I'll use that as an excuse not to. I make the ridiculous assumption that most writers write because they are in the mood to do so. Here perfectionism rears its ugly head before the project has even begun. Instead of writing like I know I should, I do something else because my mood is not in the correct state. The reason this can be so deadly is because somewhere in the recesses of my brain I know that I hardly ever feel like writing. This lack of the perfect mood, environment, or idea can cause a project to not be completed despite my knowing that it must be done. You are now probably coming to the realization that this is exactly how we defined procrastination mere moments ago.

Another common instance of perfectionism often occurs after the preliminary draft stage. I often do not wish for anyone to see my work until it has reached a presentable state. This can be harmless to a point. Unfortunately, deadlines eventually render this approach untenable. When a paper is due to be graded, hiding my work becomes not only counter productive but also destructive.

There are other reasons perfectionism runs rampant among creative types. It can provide a false comfort. It's easy to think that perfectionism is responsible for keeping the bad stuff from ever seeing the light of day, and that the truly good creative work will eventually be allowed to float to the top. This is a false assumption. Perfectionism, by definition, does not allow you to reveal to the outside world something that is imperfect.

Perfectionism is such a terrible vice for creative people like myself. We as creators understand that creativity is not a machine; perfectionism assumes that it is. If perfectionism were a human standing over our shoulders, we would likely find its only job would be to endlessly encourage redoing something until perfection is achieved. This isn't the least bit helpful. In this sense perfectionism could actually be responsible for ruining your best creative work.

Perfection as a standard for humans is unrealistic. The definition of perfection varies from person to person. Thus the chances of achieving it become even more unrealistic. Let's not allow egregious expectations of perfectionism to get in the way of doing our best work. When we let perfection get in the way of doing good creative work we're, more often than not, left with nothing at all.

Yahoo Mail Memo →

Yahoo sent out a memo to their employees asking them to switch to Yahoo Mail for their corporate email. The memo is so terrible I feel the need to break it down. It begins:

Hello Yahoos,

Ugh.

Earlier this year we asked you to move to Yahoo Mail for your corporate email account. 25% of you made the switch (thank you). But even if we used the most generous of grading curves (say, the one from organic chemistry), we have clearly failed in our goal to move our co-workers to Yahoo Mail.

Why not just make it company policy?

It's time for the remaining 75% to make the switch. Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team, as a company it's a matter of principle to use the products we make. (BTW, same for Search.)

Same for search? You mean the search that's powered by Bing.

For some reading this email, you are saying, "Jeff, shut up, you had me at hello." hug Jump over to yo/dogfood, click "Corp Mail/Cal/ Messenger" and you are ready to join our brave new world at yo/corpmail or https://mail.yahoo-inc.com.

URLs are unnecessary. Hyperlinks on the other hand…

For others, you might now be running in your head to a well worn path of justified resistance, phoning up the ol' gang, circling the hippocampian wagons of amygdalian resistance. Hold on a sec, pilgrim.

Ugh. What's the problem with a professional company wide email? I can almost garantee your employees won't be switching to Yahoo mail because you wrote a fun memo.

First, it doesn't feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana. At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl. There was a similar outcry when we moved away from Outlook's suite-mates in the Microsoft Office dreadnaught. But whether it's familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic...go deep in this pun, it is layered].

Important point: If people are clinging to Outlook because your email isn't better, you have a serious problem.

Less important point: Half the words in that last paragraph were unnecessary because you included a ridiculous pun. A pun for crying out loud. How does the author of this email have a job? I'm starting to get the feeling that Yahoo management doesn't take stuff seriously.

Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes. In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds.

Sales pitch from management to employees about their own products. Solid. Gold.

But wait there's more. By using corporate Mail, you'll automatically get to dogfood our new features first. I'm especially excited about a new feature premiering in just a few more days: smart auto-suggest, powered by a platform from the still-have-that-new-acquisition-smell Xobni team. We have been testing this feature with select users in and out of the company and the response has been fantastic: "Whoa!", "Amazing", "Already in love with it. Woot!" and, my favorite, "So nicely integrated that it appears as if it's always been there. I already can't imagine it not being there again."

But wait there's more to this infomercial turned corporate memo.

Feeling that little tingle? Take a deep breath, you can do this. We want you on board, sailor!

Twitter bio of a Yahoo employee: Sailor, pilgrim, Yahoo.

Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!). And, like all dogfood offerings, there is a feedback link in the product. Use it generously so we can make the improvements to make Yahoo Mail the unquestioned inbox champion of the world. I pitty [sic] the fool who resists.

"Our corporate email doesn't support modern phones." That might actually be a feature. If I were Yahoo employee, I wouldn't want to read these kinds of memos at work let alone anywhere else.

Thanks for your support. It really does matter and we appreciate it.

What support? You said at the beginning only 25% of your pilgrims have signed up for corp Y mail (mangement using trendy lingo always works well, btdubs). Who is the world wrote thi…

Jeff Bonforte, SVP Communications Products Randy Roumillat, CIO

Oh. Two people wrote this email. All is becoming clear. Carry on sailor.

Why Phonebloks Can't Work →

Clearly, this concept is consumer catnip. It offers the promise of staying current—without the guilt. And of saving us money and of making it easy for anyone to build a customized phone.

There’s only one hitch: Phonebloks will never happen.

I've previously been asked for my thoughts on Phonebloks by a few people. I had the same general ideas but Mr. Pouge puts it in much more eloquent terms.

QuizUp's lax security lets other players see your private data →

Also of note is how QuizUp handles access to your contacts. The game allows you to invite your friends to the game via text message, which you need to grant QuizUp access to your contacts to allow. Once this is done, QuizUp sends your contact's emails, in plain text, to their servers, in violation of federal privacy laws.

Last week I downloaded QuizUp on my iPhone and was planning to sign up as soon as I had some free time. Today I deleted the app without signing up.

Squarespace's New Mobile Apps →

Squarespace recently released some great new mobile apps (iOS only at this point). They're completely redesigned and have a lot of new fucntionality. For instance, they've added the ability to do linked list style posts via mobile which was previously a source of frustration.

The apps do need some refining and performance enhancements (particularly for older devices), but I'm glad Squarespace has taken care of one of their major weaknesses. I now feel I can recommend Squarespace as a complete solution to anyone looking to make a great website with minimal knowledge and time investment. Squarespace is a top-tier CMS.

Music Streaming Startup Rdio Lays Off Staff To ‘Improve Cost Structure And Ensure A Scalable Business” →

This worries me a bit. We don't have any solid numbers but TechCrunch suggests there could approximately 105-175 people working at Rdio. I'm not an expert on music streaming services but that seems hight to me. Assuming most of them were making decent salries (let's just guess 60k each but that could be high) you're looking at an easy $1.5 million dollars.

Reglardless of the situation, I really do hope they get it figure out. I'm concered we're watching an repeat of Everpix in slow motion. Execpt this time I'm a paying customer and this time it's one of my favorite services on the Internet.

Yahoo to Encrypt Everything →

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently announced that Yahoo is going to be encrypting all communications to and from their properties (I don't presume to know whether or not this includes Tumblr). This is a great PR move for Yahoo and will make users a lot safer from the average hacker. The important question is whether or not this will protect users from the NSA. Mayer seems to think so:

As you know, there have been a number of reports over the last six months about the U.S. government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies, including Yahoo. […] There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy. To that end, we recently announced that we will make Yahoo Mail even more secure by introducing https (SSL - Secure Sockets Layer) encryption with a 2048-bit key across our network by January 8, 2014.

Today we are announcing that we will extend that effort across all Yahoo products. More specifically this means we will:

Considering this Washington Post report I'm going with no. Allow me to quote the rather humorous caption below the article image:

In this slide from a National Security Agency presentation on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where user data resides. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing.

Back to Yahoo encryption. This is a win for Yahoo PR, and user security. Privacy isn't fixed yet. I think Yahoo is being a bit disingenuous by implicating that this will lead to greater privacy when the data suggests otherwise but I hardly think we should be attacking Yahoo for this. The government has tied everybody's hands. I'm hoping this signals everybody is angling for their escape.

The Macalope on Linking →

Well, guess what: Linking is a privilege, not a right. Linking is currency. And the Macalope isn’t giving Macworld’s currency to a pundit unless he thinks the pundit deserves it.

He's right. The web isn't one big college paper that must be throughly cited. Links drive traffic and consequently profits. I want to be able to write about something without also handing the author a check.

Imagine you were required to link to the contribution page of a candidate or political party every time you mentioned them. You'd essentially be raising money for them even if you disagreed with their positions. Unheard of. Absurd. So is linking to everything you write about.