Wouldn’t you like to buy a car from this gentleman?

Link (via Tmblg)

Data visualizations fascinate me like fish tanks enthrall cats.  This is an interesting map of Walmart’s growth across the United States.  I think the designer choose to make the stores green dots on purpose…

What do you think?

Link to the dynamic map (requires Flash).

- Dave

No, this is not a pill or a new type of underwear, it is a website that tracks the price of gas by county across the United States.  Green is good.  Red is bad.

Check out Gas Buddy here.

- Dave

Video link

_{* Kellogg North America Company is not responsible for your continued good health should you wear these clothes “in the hood.” Odds are some form of physical harm will come to you. Wear at your own risk.}

(via craplinks)

- Dave

Houston Calling, a great local music blog, has made my day.

If you’re in the area, stop by and show them some love for re-opening their doors. It’s not easy being an independent music seller these days with the popularity of music downloads, BitTorrent, etc. I hope the local community shows them some love.

- Dave

If you are currently unemployed and desperately looking for work, please file this story under “quit your bitching.”  The photo above is of a job fair in China.

Link (via Digg)

-Dave

I hate email.

You see, I get around 300-500 emails every day at work.

About a third of these are generated by automated server processes and are filtered into folders so I can keep an eye whether or not those processes were successful or not. Another third are sent from various applications that my teammates and employees use to initiate and confirm yet more processes. These, too, can be filtered into folders to keep track of them.

This means that I actually have to read (and potentially respond to) around 100-160 emails a day.

Yes, I think this is pretty insane, considering that I don’t work in customer service or deal directly with the public in a significant way. 90% of these emails are internal communications. Half of these internal communications could be completed by walking 50 yards or less and actually speaking to a person.

So, 100-160 emails a day. That means I need to process one email every 4 or 5 minutes (assuming I average 9 or 10 hours at work each day, which is about right).

That seems crazy to me, so I don’t actually operate like that.

I skim emails in batches of 30-40 several times a day, focusing on the subject line and the first few sentences of the message. I usually determine whether or not I need to read the whole email in about 3-4 seconds based upon the subject line, who is CC’ed, and the first few sentences. Sometimes I need to respond, sometimes I don’t.

I love email (yeah, I know I said I hate email earlier).

You see, I can respond to many more people in email than I could possibly call in a day. I can also eliminate the need for frivolous meetings with a simple email. I’m not sure my job would be possible without email. It would certainly be much more difficult.

Something else I love and hate at the same time is instant messenger.  Our whole department uses a popular instant messenger client at work to enable us to contact each other in the blink of an eye.  This is mostly used to ask short concise questions and get fast responses.  It’s faster than email and much more informal.  I like that part.

When 6 people are trying to message you at once it’s a bit chaotic with all the flashing document windows in your toolbar.  I hate that.  Here’s an easy solution for that.  Only login to your instant messenger when you want to use it.  Then log off when you are done.  That way you don’t have 20 people virtually tapping you on the shoulder all day long.

Amidst all this communication, you will need to get some actual work done, right?

What are they paying you to do anyhow?  Get back to work!

-Dave

The bad news: I can’t tell you what they are yet.

As soon as we register both, I’ll spill the details in the blog.

-Dave

P.S. – I’m pretty excited about all this.

1. It’s easy to remember
2. It’s easy to spell and requires no explanation
3. It describes your business category
4. It describes your benefit
5. It describes your difference

Read the whole article here. Very interesting stuff.

-Dave

P.S. – If you have any creative suggestions, post them in the comments. Keep in mind, the name has to be an available internet domain as well.