whimsy

7 essential elements to create amazing top 7 lists!

Posted 13 Jul 2012 by Laura Scott
graphic image of title text

7 essential elements to create amazing top 7 lists!

In my years as an interwebs information consumer, I've gleaned great insight into one of the mainstays of online content: The top (n) list.

Here are some essential tips to creating amazing top n lists that will thrill and excite your readers:

Hat brain

Posted 12 Sep 2011 by Laura Scott
illustration of brain processes, by Robert Fludd circa 1619

Do you ever get hat hair? You know, what happens when you've been wearing a hat or visor and you take it off and your hair is all dented and messed up?

I get hat brain. It comes from having to change hats so often during the work day. Designer hat. Project manager hat. CEO hat. Coder hat. Community member hat. Marketer hat. So many hats! And I have to wear many of them each and every day.

And that's hard. It's especially hard when jumping from a designer or coder hat, where I'm deep in flow puzzling out something, experimenting, totally immersed, to a project manager or CEO hat, where I'm stepping back, looking at the big picture, strategy stuff, people interactions. Each hat leaves dents in my brain. It takes a few minutes to let the dents fade, a few minutes before I can realistically and effectively wear a different hat.

Right now I see timeboxing as an answer. I'm tempted to write a quick app to facilitate it, since I haven't seen anything too useful so far. But of course that would require changing hats.

100 Hot Tips to Find 100 Hot Tips on 100 Hot Topics = More Info, Less Insight

Posted 10 Oct 2009 by Laura Scott

If you're making a list, don't go on. Less is more. To say the least. Less.

Seems like everyone makes Top X lists these days. 35 this. 50 that. 100 the other thing. Maybe they're link-bait posts. It must be effective, because they're everywhere. But why is it that nobody seems willing or able to parse through the datamass and recommend a useful number?

Do I really want to trawl through the "Top 50 Tutorials" for doing x or the "Top 100 Twitter Applications"? All I need is the one that works. The "top" one. Your best recommendation. The other 99 aren't all that helpful. There's Google for finding oodles.

To all Top 100 list-makers: If you have taken the time to go through all of these sites/resources and write up a paragraph on each, maybe pulled a screenshot or logo, couldn't you, like, give one or three the nod?

What are the best three Twitter apps? [Tweetdeck (Air), Twittelator Pro (iPhone), Tweetie (Mac OSX)]

What are the best two CSS grid systems? [960, Blueprint]

What are the best four coffee shops in Boulder? [Sidneys, The Cup, The Laughing Goat, Unseen Bean]

War of the Gargantuas! (the animated web 2.0 version)

Posted 15 Feb 2007 by Laura Scott

This is hysterical!

[Hat tip to MacMerc.]

Friday cat blogging

Posted 3 Nov 2006 by Laura Scott

Since everyone's been doing it since like forever, I thought I'd join in, because my little guy is just so adorable!

The best April Fool's prank is one you really don't want to believe

Posted 2 Apr 2006 by Laura Scott

These guys got me really good.

Drup.us.

I can talk about it now, the day after, right? No spoilers? The nail for me was seeing the names supposedly associated with the endeavor. Also, the rumors and whispers of actual new things that may or may not be happening really soon (wink wink nudge nudge say no more) served as the perfect set-up for this spike.

What's really low about this prank, though, is the use of a four-letter word: fork. Now that's really really low.

I think I'm way too trusting.

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