Circumstances can cause you to question who you are.

A boss writes you a stinging performance review.

A reader leaves a bitter comment on your blog post.

A vocal audience member questions your authority in the middle of your presentation.

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When you fall into this deep pit of treachery and despair, you need something to pull you out. An image, a word, a note. It helps when this object reflects both the love you have for yourself as well as the love someone has for you.

If life is letting you down right now, please go read this beautiful article. It is short and powerful. Remember who you are.

P.S. I haven’t had a single reader leaving a bitter comment on this blog. Thank you, you’re great.

I then asked myself a follow up question: “So what?” Even though I’m a huge fan of Apple products, I never considered myself as a fanboy. But looking at this spoof which clearly mocks Apple fanboys, I’m guilty of most of the points made above. Apple has a lot of brand power today. The type of brand power that other companies dream to have, regardless how they feel about Apple. The type of brand power that, even a rumored product would stir everyone’s imagination and expectation.

I think the biggest contribution from Cupertino is more than its own products. It has created a culture in our society that is highly conscious about both function and form. It forces its competitors to do the same in order to compete. The end result is great for users. It doesn’t matter if they end up buying Apple or something else.

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

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This site is so slow it is unusable.

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The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

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So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

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What an absolute mess.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

From an internal email made public due to the antitrust suits against Microsoft. When I used to use PCs, my experience of using the Microsoft site was pretty much the same as Bill Gates’. I’m sure things have improved since Gates sent this rant in 2003. I wonder, if the guy at the top didn’t throw a tantrum, would anything change? Some companies’ approach towards usability and design are proactive, while others are re-active.

Found via More Design Principles at Microsoft by Luke Wroblewski.

If you’ve got a model where revenue is tied only to web page views, switching to full-content RSS feeds will hurt, at least in the short term. The problem, I say, isn’t with full-content RSS feeds, but rather with a business model that hinges solely on web page views. The precious commodity that we, as publishers, have to offer advertisers is the attention of our readers. Web page views are a terribly inaccurate, if not outright misleading, metric for attention. Subscribers to a full-content RSS feed are among the readers paying the most attention, but generate among the least web page views.

A reader asking for a full-content RSS feed is a reader who wants to pay more attention to what you publish. There have to be ways to thrive financially from that.

I never had to worry about revenue because I don’t have Ads on this site. I don’t ever plan to have Ads because it’s a personal site. I want to focus on the last sentence I quoted. I get very annoyed with blogs that don’t have full-content RSS. They force me to jump out of my RSS reader. This is especially annoying if I’m reading on iPhone with bad signal.

When I designed this blog, I had readability and the overall reading experience in mind. This isn’t just for when people are reading on the site, but also when reading through RSS. Offer people the full feed, because they’re the ones who care.

These days, it seems like just about every start-up founder has a blog, and 99 percent of these bloggers are doing it wrong. The problem? They make the blog about themselves, filling it with posts announcing new hires, touting new products, and sharing pictures from the company picnic. That’s lovely, darling — I’m sure your mom cares. Too bad nobody else does. Most company blogs have almost no readers, no traffic, and no impact on sales. Over time, the updates become few and far between (especially if responsibility for the blog is shared among several staff members), and the whole thing ceases to become an important source of leads or traffic.

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So, what’s the formula for a blog that actually generates leads, sales, and business success? I didn’t even understand it myself until last year at the Business of Software conference, when one of the speakers, a well-known game developer and author named Kathy Sierra, blew me away with an incredibly simple idea that explains why my blog successfully promoted my company while so many other blogging founders foundered.

To really work, Sierra observed, an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. It takes real discipline to not talk about yourself and your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal, and often it is. But when you’re using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you, Sierra said. It has to be about your readers, who will, it’s hoped, become your customers. It has to be about making them awesome.

This really makes sense. I don’t read too many company blogs for the reason Joel stated. I just simply I do not have enough interest. I read only for two reasons: to be entertained or informed.

The few company blogs I do read, match exactly what Kathy described: they blog about something bigger than themselves. See Panic and Mint.