Interesting follow ups

If you read one programming blog entry today make it "Lisp is sin" and in a very pleasant read points out why Lisp and more generally functional programming needs to be taught at undergraduate levels in Universities. Whilst I think personas make a great design tool, I'd hate on the other hand to be classified as Mort, Elvis or Einstein. For fun you should read The Apple Product Cycle.

Perhaps the perfect Coffee Machine

Amy Grahan got back to me with a link to a newer article on her concept of search releases. She pointed out that she also meant for the search releases to be applicable to journalists. Her lastest blogging has comments from the UK and at least on this side of the pond its unfortunate but most journalists still need to be drip feed press releases and I do know this from first and many second hand accounts. Her points on leveraging the medium and combining metadata, search optimised stuctures and layouts are all valid. I'll quote somebody I know on her final point about relationships between PR and journalistic people. Some years back a distinguished Irish journalist was bemoaning the fact that his brilliant young daughter had taken to working in the PR industry like a duck to water. “PR people are full of bullshit,” he told her. Her response was swift: “Dad, no matter how far down the ladder PR people are, we will always be at least one rung higher than journalists.” That was written by John Saunders in last weekends Sunday Business Post, John is about the only person I even vaguely know in PR and he's been there and good at it for quite a long while.