Alan Gutierrez

There is a term out there. Lifehacks. A hack in computer science is an elegant solution to a problem, that comes through minimal effort. A life hack is the same, applied to our day to day. I’m reading through two articles about the Shangra-La diet that are lifehacky, one at Creating Passionate Users and another at Aaron Schwartz. In this example, our brains are programmed to want food when it is abundant, we can hack obesity by tricking our brains into thinking food is scarce. In the prior, Kathy Sierra puts down the essence of Lifehacks by saying that you have a brain and a mind, the brain is concerned about legacy issues such as preditors or hunger, while the mind should be worried about career advancement. (Let’s gloss over the huge percentage of the world population for whom neither preditors, nor hunger has become legacy.) I’m finding that Lifehacks are getting pressed to their limit, however, especially in the culling the unhappy meme. A clever hack does not ignore a problem. It addresses it. Culling the unhappy is a Lifekludge.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » I gotta take more days off

Speaking of fun stuff, yeah, Microsoft did the iPod box design parody video. Yes, we can laugh at ourselves. The marketing team did it to challenge the box designers for our products to do better. We need more of this stuff. Microsoft is a consensus culture and consensus (which means everyone has to sign off on things) does avoid trouble, but it also makes for uninspired products and marketing. That is our internal challenge to figure out, that’s for sure!

Microsoft can laugh at itself now? That’s not the Microsoft we all know and loathe. The iPod packaging parody was one of the funnier things I’ve come across lately. Pleased to hear that it was an internal production. What an excellent way for frustrated creatives to make a point to the company at large, by being creative.

In case you missed it, here’s the iPod box parody video.

Add this to the recent Microsoft blogger invervention to fix Hugh’s Wifi. A Microsoft blogger Kieth Combs caught his rants and troubleshot his hardware. Turned out to be hardware issue, not a Microsoft issue.

Microsoft is uniquely poised to leverage the blogosphere for customer service. They’ve been snapping up talent these many years, and now their setting these folks loose.

It’s customer service mayhem.