links for 2011-09-05

Crikey! SEO vs IA smackdown

"We took a stop watch, kept it with us all day and recorded all the time that where we were waiting for the computer to do something - from opening apps, running builds and tests, searches and refactorings in visual studio - any time at all where the developer had to wait for the machine to work, be it 5 seconds or 5 minutes the stop watch was running. It took quite a lot of discipline. The results were startling."

"Our rule about the use of Photoshop and other picture-manipulating software is that cropping and toning – basically anything that might have been done in a darkroom – is OK, but the moving of pixels or "cutting and pasting" is forbidden."

Great nostalgia about own brand packaging, with the WTF moment that Sainsburys used to package and sell a range of broken eggs. W.T.F?

"I wish more people were making tools for a specific creative purpose rather than for general consumer adoption. I wish more people were making tools that very intentionally do not scale—tools with users by the dozen. Tools you experience not through a web signup form, but through pathbreaking creative work."

"In communications, business, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and information technology departments across the nation, theories of social media -- and how to teach it -- are becoming more prevalent."

Introduces "Operation: Eliminate Booth Babes" from tech shows with a brilliant idea. Treat everybody at a booth as if they should be able to answer tech queries. If a "booth baba" or marketing person passes you on to the lead tech guy, then berate him about his company just wasted your time...

"We built Bagcheck as a command-line interface first." - always start with the API, not the page

Can it *really* be the case that in 2011 people still refer to "hits" on their website. Really?