MetaFilter posts tagged with success

Sweet Smell of Success

Halloween Jack — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:38:03 -0800

Getting tired of fail, fail, and yet more fail? SUCCEED Blog chronicles that which is made of win. Leave your schadenfreude at the door. (via).

Nails Goes to Wall Street

reenum — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:54:21 -0800

Lenny Dykstra was lauded for his heroics with the Mets and Philles. After his career, Dykstra became well-known as a post-career athlete success story. Then the truth started coming out... Dykstra's post career exploits included making stock picks and starting a high end magazine targeted towards athletes. Then, in April of this year, it all came crashing down. In separate articles from GQ and ESPN, Dykstra's financial empire was revealed to be a house of cards. Dykstra subsequently filed bankruptcy in July. For a copy of Lenny's petition, you can go here (Warning: This link is a PDF). Lenny only sees these events as a minor speedbump, and promises to be back on top in no time.

The Success of Development

kliuless — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:21:43 -0800

Innovation, Ideas and the Global Standard of Living by Charles Kenny: "The Success of Development acts like a sword through many of the Gordian knots plaguing the development community, especially those surrounding the rate of economic growth in many developing countries. Put that question to one side, says Kenny, and suddenly a lot of much more interesting questions, about issues like education and healthcare and clean water and human rights, come into a lot more focus. And if you use those metrics, rather than GDP growth, to judge the success or failure of developing countries, then things look rather more optimistic than you might think." (pdf) Glenn Hubbard's review, cf. Technological Creativity and Economic Progress BONUS - Philip Greenspun on Universities and Economic Growth - Welcoming the Wall Street brain drain - A Lost Decade for Jobs - Productivity and the Internet - How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations

The importance of being a failure

bjrn — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:41:56 -0800

The internet loves it when things go wrong, anything from photoshopping to cakes. And while your personal failure might turn out to provide enjoyment for others, Adam Savage tells about the importance and upsides of colossal failures at Maker Faire. Failure for your enjoyment: photoshopping, cakes, english, craft projects, tattoos, converted storefronts, "quotation" marks, absolutely everything and of course everything tagged fail on Metafilter.

Assume failure

camcgee — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:28:03 -0800

How designers fail — "During college at the University of Arizona in 1992, I learned with other design freshman that revisions were part of the discipline; if you cried at critique you were a wimp, and the computer was just a finishing tool. . . . But something has happened since I was a college student in 1992: students just don’t believe these things."

DIY Portal Gun. Making a note here: huge success.

Greg Nog — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:44:14 -0800

DIY Portal Gun on flickr, with a few other pictures and build notes. You want of your own, you can either contact this guy or just ask Aperture about working at their test facilities.

insert extremely clever title here

infini — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:40:37 -0800

Fortunes are rarely won by playing it safe. On the contrary, the biggest fortunes have been won by those willing to step outside the box and change the way the game is played. Following are twenty-five business innovators of the past, present, and future whose stories are different in many respects, but all point to the same truth: Ingenuity, improvisation, and daring are more important than following the rules (even though you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law once in a while). Via Fortune. Despite its enormous popularity, Craigslist has not received a great deal of respect as a business. Part of the reason is that the world’s premiere classifieds service seems to go out of its way to avoid making a profit. Most of the service is free. (It generates revenue solely through small fees for apartment and job listings in select cities.) There is no advertising. No branding. No attractive user interface. In sum, Craigslist does not actively compete for business. Craigslist’s CEO since 2000, Jim Buckmaster says the key to their success is an anti-commercial value system based on three “ironies”: “the ironies of unbranding, demonetizing, and noncompeting.” Instead of going for the quick profit like other startups, Craigslist survived the dot-com boom and bust by providing a service as simply and straightforwardly as possible. Buckmaster says, “We’re definitely oddballs in the Internet industry, and we always have been. Lots of people made fun of us, especially at the height of the dot-com boom. Most of those people are out of business now.” Those values and that vision is Craig's. If anyone has a clue I'd be curious to know why CL has been represented by Jim instead of Craig?

Your favourite film sucks

chuckdarwin — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 03:13:41 -0800

'In defense of film critics' posits that 'Film critics [unlike food critics, etc] are expected to be cheerleaders.' I guess we're not supposed to think it's odd that the piece was written by paper's resident film critic. He does ask at least one good question, though: why have so many truly awful [and poorly reviewed ] films done so well at the the box office this year?

The 'Acting White' Myth.

Lisa S — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:15:51 -0800

The 'Acting White' Myth. When smart black kids try hard and do well, they are picked on by their less successful peers for 'acting white.' But it isn't true.

A scorecard for the war

brettski — Thu, 27 Mar 2003 06:41:07 -0800

How Will we know America is winning? Thomas Friedman poses six questions against which to judge US success...

jonvaughan — Mon, 28 Oct 2002 05:48:50 -0800

What makes for a successful life? Luc Ferry, French minister for education, recently released a best-seller which aims to work out what is success today and what makes for a successful life. So, what do MeFiers think - what is success? Who today is successful? What makes for a successful life?

BGM — Sat, 03 Mar 2001 23:14:51 -0800

The Secret of W's Success. ....Could it really be this simple to stymie the Dems?

mathowie — Fri, 19 Nov 1999 22:05:50 -0800

Bob Metcalfe on how to be a startup millionaire. I love Bob, ever since he left 3com, he's been a prolific writer on the tech industry. This time he tells how to grow a successful company in 8 easy steps.