Michael Lopp:

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

(This link is for “Blast from the Past Day”.)

“Does your job happen to you?”

(This link is for “Blast from the Past Day”.)

Hilarious, hilarious story by comedian Dave Barry about getting a colonoscopy.

I yield to nobody in the field of being a pathetic weenie medical coward. I become faint and nauseous during even very minor medical procedures, such as making an appointment by phone.

(This link is for “Blast from the Past Day”.)

Though the point of today’s link-share is to promote and dig up great, older articles, this post from Jeffery Zeldman, which I think about often, has a different take on “blasts from the past”.

If your old work doesn’t shame you, you’re not growing.

It’s nice to look back and feel that you’ve made progress. When you look at old work, it should suck glaringly and you should cringe painfully. But there should also be some germ within it that you’re not ashamed of—some spark of talent or inspiration that connects to what you do now.

(This link is for “Blast from the Past Day”.)

Mike Vardy was kind enough to have me as a guest on the WorkAwesome Podcast. We talk about how I balance work and home life, using digital GTD tools like OmniFocus, and, of course, coffee.

What we didn’t talk about, because I didn’t tell Mike, was that fact that this is the first podcast show I’ve ever appeared on. Fun!

Mark Pilgrim shares about how his latest book, Dive into HTML5, has sold. (a) Congratulations to Mark on a successful launch; and (b) this is fascinating info for anyone else working on a non-fiction book targeted to the designer/developer community.

And speaking of Amazon, I enjoyed reading Roger Ebert’s response to reporter Christopher Heine’s awkward questions about his Amazon affiliate tweets:

Have I made a fortune from Amazon? No. Have I made some? Yes. Am I happy to have it? You bet. Have I been amused? Yes. It’s kind of like fishing.

Ebert’s just a guy trying to make a buck like the rest of us.

Jason Kincaid on TechChrunch:

The biggest departure from the mobile app stores we’ve grown accustomed to involves pricing. Unlike Apple’s App Store and Android Market, where developers can set their price to whatever they’d like, Amazon retains full control over how it wants to price your application. The setup is a bit confusing: upon submitting your application, you can set a ‘List Price’, which is the price you’d normally sell it at. Amazon will use a variety of market factors to determine what price it wants to use, and you get a 70% cut of the proceeds of each sale (which is the industry standard). In the event that Amazon steeply discounts your application, or offers it for free, you’re guaranteed to get 20% of the List Price.

Sounds like centralized, corporate management to me. Obviously Amazon wants their Android App Store to be hugely successful and so they’re acting as if they know what’s best for each developer’s app. And maybe they do.

But perhaps not. As Dan Frommer writes on Business Insider:

In theory, Amazon will be able to use whatever sales algorithms it has to generate the most possible revenue.

So perhaps the price of an app in Amazon’s Android App Store will be dynamic, with app prices fluctuating up or down on a case-by-case basis based on popularity, who it is browsing the store, etc.

And surely Amazon has set some sort of guideline to prohibit a developer from suggesting an outrageous ‘List Price’. I mean, if the developer is guaranteed at least 20% of the price they suggest upon submission of their app, then why not suggest $1,000,000?

Many thanks to Paste for once again sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed to promote their suite of productivity and project management web apps.

Paste is a company with a lot of personality and a huge commitment to excellence. If you build websites, work with a team, or are on the hunt for a better project management software, then check out their suite of apps.

As I mentioned last time, their app Jumpchart is especially worth a look. It’s a web app to help you build, organize, swap, edit, and agree upon the content, design, and information architecture of a new site. Then it’ll export your outline and pages of content to HTML (or even to WordPress). As someone who works with a team building websites, I know just how difficult the building and organizing (and then agreeing upon) of content can be. Jumpchart seeks to solve precisely that issue.

And, speaking of Net neutrality, if you’re a visual learner then this single-serving site created by Michael Ciarlo is another great high-level overview of what it is and why it’s important. (Via Sean Sperte.)