Ten Things to Learn This School Year

I'm intrigued by this bit of advice from Guy Kawasaki on the stuff you don't learn in school (but should):

How to write a five-sentence email...Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

While exaggerated for effect, this strikes me as sound advice. And, in the context of a discussion about education, I'm reminded of the "hamburger essays" we used to have to write in school. Yeah, sure, there aren't many times in life where you have to sit down and write an actual 5-paragraph essay, but they sure did encourage you to think about structure, rhetoric, and arc. As ever, that bit of constraint gives you the focus needed to improve the quality of your presentation.

Man, in retrospect, I've sent a lot of emails that could and should have been whittled down to five sentences (if that). Emailarrhea.

MacBreak Weekly 48: The Next Big Thing

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Andy Ihnatko, The Macalope

Variable pricing comes to iTunes, iPhone hacks, and where's the Mac?

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 48.

My pick for this week's MacBreak Weekly is Fly Gesture, which is a nifty little freeware app from Flying Meat's boy genius, Gus Mueller. Like it says on FG's home page:

I've recently added a 43 Folders job board, and I wanted our first post about it to feature family, so I asked some friends to post open positions in their organizations.

• Support Ninja - The Omni Group, Seattle, WA
• Marketing Manager - Adaptive Path, San Francisco, CA
• Intern / Indentured Servant - The Sound of Young America, Los Angeles, CA
• Designer - Grockit, Inc., Telecommute
• Chief Wiki Czar(ina) - 43 Folders, San Francisco, CA

We also carry jobs posted from selected other sites, so there's already plenty to browse. Want to be an iPhone Engineer at Apple? How about working for The Motley Fool? Maybe just make a quick $1,000.00 on a referral? Well, dig in.

And for the folks out there who need to put butts in Aerons, it's fast and easy to add your own organization's jobs to the board. Plus your job may be featured in posts here on the site highlighting the more interesting-looking positions that have been added. (Hint: Check the footer of posts in the 43f RSS feed for news about a substantial launch week discount -- ends 7/20, so act soonly)

Thanks for the interest everyone has expressed in us adding a job board -- whether you're looking or hiring, I hope you'll find it useful and vocationally satisfying.

Rule the Web (and Rule Your Email Inbox!)

Alex from the always-swell Neatorama has written up the bullets on his preferred method for keeping an email inbox at zero.

4. Have a Simple Filing System
Don’t overthink this: a complex folder with subfolder system is not what you need to remain organized. Obviously, your particular needs will dictate how many folders you have … but in my experience, you rarely, if ever, need subfolders.

5. Have a Follow Up Folder There will be times that I need to research an answer to a particular email or do something before I can reply. I let these emails sit in my inbox for a maximum of 1 day (gasp!), then they get put into a Follow Up Folder if I haven’t gotten around to them - and then I add an entry in my to-do list.

Good tips, and my only (seemingly omnipresent) comment is to underscore that need to empty all your baskets regularly. Hence, one benefit of keeping your email storage and action structure light is that you won't have to dash around to multiple places to see what's on your plate.

Jon Udell: The LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator

I covered this one back in the bronze age of 43 Folders, but I wanted to highlight the awesomeness again today for those who might not have seen it the first time around.

As described in September, 2004:

I still can’t get over how cool this is. Jon Udell’s little wizard [direct link] lets you generate a bookmarklet for requesting a library book—based on the Amazon page you’re currently viewing. It’s clearly a flawless lifehack.

You just need to know your library’s URL and which system your own city uses (which Jon makes simple by providing preview links to see which style your system seems to follow). San Francisco folks, use “http://sflib1.sfpl.org/” and leave the default system of “Innovative” selected.

At some point over the years, Jon's bookmarklet fell out of my favorites bar (J'accuse, Amazon Prime). But today I was able to recreate my bookmarklet in about ten seconds, and now Bobos in Paradise is en route to the Parkside Library.

To modernize the tip just a bit, I'll mention that this (and many other browser tasks involving entering passwords) gets so much easier with the amazing 1Passwd. In this case, you can tell the app to remember your library card number and PIN and autofill the library login page automagically.