Another great video from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) on how, especially in contemporary American (corporate) culture, there is this extreme demand for positivism. Now, that is not to say we should all start complaining or become extremely depressed, but at the same time we do not have to all continuously bury are heads in the sand and pretend everything is hunky dory all the time. Without a critical (and vigilant) attitude we can never challenge ourselves and our society to improve on things.

Latest Internet trends from Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, dated 7 June 2010. Notice how Apple users are leading the way in Internet Consumption. Is this because the more "connected" people (heave information consumers) prefer Apple devices or is it because Apple device owners turn into more "connected"  people because of the devices they own? Interesting material....

Darn...they deleted the presentation (Copyright infringement). Oh well - too bad.

This is an amazing animated adaption of Dan Pink's talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). The talk in itself is amazing. The accompanying animation beats any PowerPoint slides by a million.

I highly recommend anyone to watch this video completely. For everyone working in a high-skilled profession it is particularly relevant. In my field of work - IT, Internet, creative technology business - there are plenty of examples of companies who manage to motivate their employees in different ways besides monetary rewards.

My short conclusion: to get outstanding results from an individual or group of individuals, you need to:

1. Take money out of the equation ("pay people enough to take the issue of money of the table). If you don't pay people enough, they will not be motivated. So you pay people enough so that they will not be thinking about money but they will be thinking of work.
2. Focus on the three factors that lead to better performance: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

• Autonomy - provide enough space (time, room, budget) and responsibility for someone to find the best solution/provide the best result.
• Mastery - provide enough opportunity for someone to master what he or she is pursuing. I for one am always looking for better ways to use the tools that help me in my work (mainly software) - it is often frustrating that there is little time for this.
• Purpose - we all need purpose in life. The "why am I doing, why am I here"-question might run through the head of an intelligent person more often than a less-intelligent person but in the end, we all need purpose. Remember the huge success of the self-help book "The Purpose Driven Life".

Just as I pressed the "Send" button I realized that I forgot to attach the files that I was supposed to send. I guess Google found a way to read my mind. Gmail still keeps on amazing me. I do not see Outlook doing anything like this anytime soon.

This might not be unobtrusive, it is darn useful!  Thank you "Forgotten Attachment Detector".

Rina Mae and I have finally launched our wedding website at www.rinamaeandbram.com. So far we really enjoyed building this website together and we will continue adding content and updates to the website. I am quite a perfectionist and there are still a lot of things I would like to improve.

At this moment we have the following information and functionality on our website:

• Secure registration (with registration code needed) and login
• News blog (with comments)
• Pages for Wedding information, Our story and Travel information (all with comment option)
• Media pages where we display photos and videos (no videos uploaded yet). The photos are grouped in galleries with a Javascript slideshow playing them and music playing on the background.
• pre-RSVP form through Wufoo.com - for this purpose I decided that opting for the Wufoo form service was the easiest solution even though it is not perfectly styled in our website theme.

Registration is for invited friends and family only but I will share some screenshots with you:

These are some things that caught my attention in the past few days. I am really in a doom and gloom mood about the (economic) situation of the world. People have been referring to all the negative news and comments on the economy as "Recession Porn". Here is some to satisfy your needs:

• Change Of Mindset - Andy Xie - Excellent read on the misconceptions about "stimulus"
• John Mauldin - The Velocity of Money - Mr Mauldin is one of my favorite reads (every week)
• Bubble, Bubble, Toil And Trouble -- TIME - Seems like very expensive real estate in Shanghai to me
• John Lanchester · The Great British Economy Disaster - This sentence struck me the most: "It has been both the deepest and the longest downturn since records began. And yet, to be honest, it hasn’t quite felt like it." I feel a lot of people in the Netherlands share similar sentiments. This is probably the biggest crisis of our lifetime and yet we are still waiting for it to really hit us. Right now, everyone is starting to have this (false) sense of security again. I am in the camp that believes that we are only in the eye of the storm.

To close of, watch this short video on "off balance sheet" accounting. This sort of thing can really get me upset/angry. Especially in light of the recent stream of news events on Lehman Brother's accounting practices.

Frank Partnoy on Off-Balance Sheet Transactions (MMBM) from Roosevelt Institute on Vimeo.

I really enjoyed watching this lecture by Jonah Lehrer - he is a gifted speaker with a very interesting subject. It will give you some insights into how our human brain works and help you in to getting to know yourself a little better.

This video from MSNBC (Dylan Ratigan Show) sums up the true extent of the US Bailout very well. For those who believe that Obama is speaking the entire truth when he says: "We want our money back", this video should open your eyes. Oh, Politics! What a deceitful game they are playing on us (the ignorant public).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Overdose at Christmas
And give it up for lent
My friends are all so cynical
Refuse to keep the faith
We all enjoy the madness cause we know we're gonna fade away
Robbie Williams - Millenium

Early January is the time of New Year resolutions. Yet for some years, I have tried to steer clear of those. Any time is a good time for resolutions, one might say. What me and my fiancée like to every year though, is try and find something that we can give up for Lent - which will start on February 17th this year.

Every year we try to be creative with what we "give up" for a period of 44 days. We do have an unwritten rule that whatever we give up, should not inconvenience our professional life too much and should not deliberately interfere with our day-to-day functioning and general health. We did give up 'alcohol' one year, which some might say would definitely interfere with their "day-to-day" functioning. Giving up meat was quite a challenge as well, but enriched our food experiences by searching for fish alternatives.

This year I am quite early with the 'giving up for Lent' business. The most likely reason for that is that I feel I need to purge my life of some activities that take up too much time. Lent would be a good way of starting that 'purge'.

I am an avid Google Reader user and over the past year my Feed subscriptions have grown in numbers. Keeping track of all these feeds has been taking an increasingly amount of time of my day. Though I like to keep up-to-date with news and technology - having to spent a few hours every day to sort through hundreds of posts has become a little wearisome. So my resolution for Lent (what I am planning to give up) is to clean out most of my Google Reader subscriptions.

As I follow some of these feeds for work, I doubt I will decide to give them all up (and then having to reside to visiting different websites/blogs on a regular basis). But I will promise to give up the most time-consuming ones that I can easily live without for 44 days (and maybe for much longer).

In trying to be more minimalistic about my Google Reader usage (online reading) I am going to have to unsubscribe to the "minimalism" blogs I follow as well. No more "minimalism" blogs in order to pursue minimalism...

At the end of 2009, I found this a good read. The article sums up the lessons that we should have learned from the past year very well. Unfortunately, I share the doubts that the author has about whether these lessons have come through with most people. In 2010 we might have to retake these harsh classes again.

Harsh lessons we may need to learn again - By Joseph E. Stiglitz (China Daily)