Fighting Off Telemarketers

Jolly Roger are artificially intelligent bots that keep telemarketers on the line for as long as possible. Listen to this example. OMG!

Critical Edit Checks Before You Hit Publish

This article by Barry Davret is helpful if you do editing work: 10 Unusual But Critical Edit Checks Before You Hit Publish

(via)

Design Resources

Wow! Check out this design resources collection shared by Jessica Paoli.

(via Carly)

My Favorite Interview Questions

When I talk to my friends who run companies or are in hiring positions, I usually ask them for their favorite interview question. Here are some of mine that I collected over the years:

  • – Why do you want this job?

    – What do you know about us?

    – What did you like about your last job? Why did you leave?

    – Tell me something about yourself that I can’t find out on Google!

    – Who do you admire?

    – What’s a reason why I should not hire you?

    – What do you do when you’re not working?

    – What’s something you’re bad at that you really wish you were good at.

    – What’s your favorite part of your current or previous job?

    – What’s your secret superpower?

    – When was the last time you wore a costume? And what was it?

    – What’s the shittiest job you’ve ever had?

    – What are you learning right now?

    – How do you organize your closet?

    – What would the title of your autobiography be?

    – Tell me about some people you’ve helped in your career.

    – I’m going to give you 5 minutes. Teach me something new. Anything!

    – If I was to ask your friends 3 words to describe you what would they be?

    – When is the last time you went out of your way to do something nice for someone?

    – What are the biggest values you think your parents taught you?

    – When is it okay to break the rules?

    – What is an article or book you read recently that changed your mind about something?

    – If you had a magic wand, what would you like to be know for?

    – Give me a single sentence to tell our CEO about you when I see her later today.

    – If you weren’t getting paid for what you do, would you still be doing it?

    – How does this position relate to what you really want to be doing?

    – What do you dream of?

    – What is the thing that breaks your heart?

    – What are you pretending you don’t know?

    – What do you want?

  • Do you remember being asked an interesting interview question? What was it?

    UPDATE: Inc.com featured 10 of my favorite interview questions after seeing this post.

    Panobook: A Notebook for Your Desk

    Panobook Kickstarter Video from Studio Neat on Vimeo.

    A panoramic notebook for your desk? And eventually, your shelf? Panobook looks fantastic!

    Facebook Social Fixer

    Social Fixer, a plugin for Facebook lets you hide sponsored posts, remove politics, make your feed chronological again and much more.

    (thanks Manu)

    This Contract!

    “You give me money, I give you creative!” This contract is after my own heart.

    A Mobile Phone Contract for Teenagers

    13) Learn to overcome the uncomfortable feeling of striking up a conversation with those around you! Try not to use your phone as a means of avoiding others.

    Love #13 in Cameron Moll’s phone contract for his teenage sons. Grown ups should have to sign something similar.

    Pause Button For Email

    INBOX PAUSE is a handy pause button for your inbox. It allows you to put new messages on hold, making it so they won’t appear in your Inbox until you are ready for them. If you choose, INBOX PAUSE can notify the people who email you to let them know that their message will not be delivered to your Inbox. When you unpause your Inbox, all of the messages that you received during the break will be moved to your Inbox, and new messages will arrive as before.

    This is by the same folks that created Boomerang for Gmail.

    Women Who Design

    Women Who Design is a Twitter profile directory of inspiring women in the design industry. Go and nominate more women!

    New Instagram Feature

    You can now organize your saved bookmark on Instagram by tapping and holding the bookmark to save posts by collections. Getting all Pinterest-y on us!

    Business Fundamentals Made Clear

    I wish I would have access to these lessons in business fundamentals when I started out 11 years ago.

    Essays on Design and Inclusion

    50+ essays on Design and Inclusion curated by John Maeda and Mark Armstrong.

    Flow state

    I watched my coworker Emerline use Flowstate and it blew my mind. It is a writing tool designed to snowball a person’s primal focus into a serene state of creative flow. No overthinking what you wrote. No instant deleting, going back and editing. Just writing! How? You set a focus time, you start writing and when you pause, the app blurs out and makes everything you wrote disappear. The document only gets saved if you complete your timed-writing exercise. Terrifying and brilliant all at once. Try it: Flowstate.

    Small Victories

    Small Victories takes files in a Dropbox folder and turns them into a website. I just gave it a try with an photo folder that is sitting on my Dropbox but I am not doing anything with. It works like magic. Wheee!

    Sun Calculator

    Worried about the plants in your garden getting enough sun or if the apartment you saw with a broker yesterday is as bright as he said? Try SunCalc. It’s a little app that shows sun movement and sunlight phases during the given day at the given location. Here’s a sample of my office.

    (via)

    NOPE Button

    This Nope Button Chrome extension is just what the office world needs: A coworker drops by and wants to ‘pick your brain’? Press a button in your Chrome browser to send a call to your phone. Apologize sincerely as you pick it up. Then watch your co-worker walks away. Funny.

    The Fashion Search Engine

    Tagwalk is apparently the world’s first fashion search engine. According to this Fast Company article the site was created by a former Vogue assistant called Alexandra Van Houtte.

    Data Selfie

    A new Chrome extension reveals the unsettling amount of information Facebook might have on you.

    Self-Education

    “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
    – Isaac Asimov.

    Thank you Open Culture for making it easy: 1200 Free Online Courses from Top Universities

    MailChimp for Designers

    MailChimp for designers

    Super handy MailChimp guide for designers.

    Women Who Draw

    Women Who Draw Website

    Women Who Draw is an open directory of female* professional illustrators, artists and cartoonists who take freelance work. YES!

    How to Keep a Commonplace Book With Evernote

    common book

    Paul Jun explains how he uses Evernote to keep track of all the books he’s read and the things he’s learned by keeping a Commonplace Book.

    PhotoScan by Google Photos

    Old printed photos floating around in your house? Digitize them with PhotoScan by Google.