I’ve come across a picture of Al Gore in his office. This immediately reminded me a story about Bill Gates – he also uses 3 monitors.

How many monitors do you have on your desktop?

While listening to Department of Defensiveness podcast by Jim and Michele McCarthy I’ve heard about GeekLeaders.com. Among other things you can find transcripts of some Jim’s podcasts. One of the most recent transcripts has very eye-catching title:

billg: Where did you get this date? jimmc: Out of my ass?

In general the most interesting part of this site to me at this moment is Geek Leader Competencies. Good reading for week-end.

Everybody (well, almost everybody) around is talking about Seth Godin’s new book The Dip. It amusing to see that different people from different industries share very similar comments about this book:

• Guy Kawasaki (venture capitalist): The Big Dip: Ten Questions with Seth Godin
• Chris Busse (IT specialist): REVIEW: The Dip by Seth Godin
• Hal Macomber @ Reforming Project Management (project manager): Seth Spreads the Idea of Mastery
• Bob Walsh (micro-ISV developer): Time for a hiatus

Have you ordered a copy of the book at Amazon? I did.

Breaking news from mathematical congress! One of the scientists provided indisputable proof that 101 is the most important number in the Universe. Look yourself: 57+44=101, 188–87=101, 1212/12=101!

Old joke

Today is certainly a day of 101. I happened to spot 2 post related to blogging and the most important number in the Universe:

• 101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger
• 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle

What your the most important number in the Universe today? Can you prove it?

Browsing Reforming Project Management feed I came across the post about the importance of saying “No” when feel you can not say “Yes”. Truth be told I fully agree with the idea that No is equally as good response to a request as Yes. But it requires some courage to say No when are asked to do something because, I believe, somehow we always think that the person who asks wants to hear yes. Especially, if you are kind of subordinated to her. Be it your boss or your customer.

One of the things I try to teach new PMs is to have courage to say “No” when they really want to do so and not to try to finding a way to say “Yes”. In communication with them I try to make them feel comfortable with saying “No”. When I ask something I try to show that what I really need is a decision and not necessarily positive.

So make sure you say “Yes” when you really mean it. And say “No” when you don’t.

New York Post reiterated a year-old rumors that Microsoft wants to acquire Yahoo!. In the light of the “Microsoft is dead” essay by Paul Graham. In the web space Microsoft to my mind was always challenger trying to overtake leadership of innovations by others. It will be interesting to see how this story will end.

By the way, Russian translation of Paul Graham’s essay is available here.

After watching Guy’s Kawasaki presentation video I got sort of interested in stuff related to stratups and venture capital. Not surprisingly I met Guy’s name here and there while exploring the topic.

Everything turned out to be not as simple as it seemed at first. There are several critic articles I came across on Guy’s VC activities: The curse of Guy Kawasaki and COFI v. KOFI. Well, that once again proves that there is no gods among us and everybody can make a mistake.

Bob Walsh has published a book Clear Blogging (at Amazon). Chapter 9 “Successful Blogging” is available for download from Apress.

I’m going to use this book to make my blog kind of more successful.

Just making sure that you did not miss the Recipe for Success from David Anderson.

Recently a friend of mine dropped a link to a video for presentation The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. I was really amazed by the Guy talking about technology start-ups and I suggest you check out this presentation even if you are not going to start your own business in the nearest future.

After watching this presentation I visited Apple’s site to find out what products are offered in Ukraine. Also I went to Amazon to order Guy’s book “The Art of the Start” even the video was over.

Actually, this was the second time I ordered book in such situation. The first one was when I watched Writing Agile Software – interview with David Anderson. At that time I ordered Agile Management for Software Engineering.