Marketing Babylon

I guess it’s my turn on Jeff Pulver’s blog tag meme-train.
Tagged by Yaniv Golan.

Funny, I don’t usually join those things but so many good people have participated, I feel oddly compelled…

So, just before I’m off on my holiday – 5 things my blog readers may not know about me:

1. The reason I was incredibly driven about learning English from a young age was because there were books by E. Nesbit and Roald Dahl that weren’t available in Hebrew at the time.
2. One of my first jobs after high-school was selling Juggling equipment in a professional juggling shop. I’m still not so bad with a Diablo and have a weakness for yo-yos (own about 20 or so…).
3. I grew up in a farm, we were mostly growing fruit and veg until I went to high-school. I liked growing up in a small village until my early teens, when my obsessive curiosity and cultural appetite drove me to Tel Aviv. I absolutely hated all my agriculture related chores – found it devastatingly boring, but never protested.
4. I’m a pro-level tarot reader (have been doing it for about 9 years), but I don’t believe in the mystical aspect. Tarot for me is just another intresting and rich way to explore narratives and converse with the subconscious (mine or other people’s).
5. Until my career “took over”, I thought I was going to be in the academy. I left for my “first round” in London just before starting to work on a thesis about “the narrative mechanisms of comics as a visual storytelling medium” (or somthing along these lines). This area is still a side interest for me, and I speak about it when I get the chance.

It seems most of my roll is tagged already, and it took a while to find “victims” but I’m tagging: Mary Hodder, Danah Boyd, Yael Elish, Daniel Cohen, Andy Baio

I know I’ve been kind of quiet – been working hard on some speaking engagements for my holiday to Israel. Some will hopefully breed posts eventually…

Technorati tags: Mary Hodder, Danah Boyd, Yael Elish, Daniel Cohen, Andy Baio, Yaniv Golan, Jeff Pulver, blog-tag

The launch of version 2.0, is an opportunity to share three tools that help me save
precious time on a daily basis and that I think will be invaluable
to any web user.

The blogosphere is chock-full of lists of favourite extensions, renamed to add-ons in this version.  I published one in Hebrew a while ago myself.

I’ll take a minimalist approach and recommend only three that had very high impact on my browsing life (That doesn’t happen often any more…).

1. Super DragAndGo – Saves time by opening links in a new tab using a short drag gesture with the mouse. Why this has not become a default in firefox yet  – I have no idea.

2. Mouse Gestures – This add-on lets you add “macros” for almost anything based on combination of mouse gestures. I use it mostly for one short-cut that complements Super DragAndGo. (It’s not a default, you have to set it) Right-Click + drag mouse down to close tab. This way I can open and close tags without moving from where my mouse cursor currently is.
3. Roboform - In a web full of forms and logins, this application is a god send, and definitely my favourite and most often used utility of recent years (By far. Snagit is probably next. both highly purchase-worthy). It replaces long winded log-ins into one click processes, saves you from the risky “one password everywhere” habit, and is very powerful in filling forms. The latest version even recognises when you create a new user, remembers the user & password you choose and later updates the short-cut on your first login. Synch it with its mobile version + add firefox mobile and you have a close thing to your machine on a flashdrive. (Yes, I’m an affiliate. Mostly out of curiosity to check the power of my recommendations)

Technorati Tags: firefox, addons, add-ons, extensions, roboform, lifehacks

Doing what I do, and being the kind of guy I am, “How come you don’t have a blog/personal site?” is a question I’ve been hearing more and more since… well since blogs, really.This opening post is to some extent personal. If you’re more interested in what this blog is about, you should probably head to the next post, then come back here to read about me – if you’re still interested.
The final kick in the behind was administered in person, kindly but resolutely, by no other than Seth Godin & Malcolm Gladwell, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the same “executive-VIP lunch” at the “leaders live” conference in New York, June 2005. While I had a thought provoking chat with each one of them separately (both were criminally under-crowded in that event), when it came around to explaining why I wasn’t blogging, I felt truly embarrassed. Read the rest of this entry »