I love Twitter. It’s extremely valuable and has become an important part of my daily flow. There’s a ton of value in following a whole bunch (not too many!) of the brightest people I know. It’s amazing. Lately, however, I’ve been noticing a few recurring themes which have not contributed to this value. In an effort to keep Twitter a service that’s suited to my specific needs, I present to you 5 things you should not Twitter.

Clay Shirky video. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Some quotes (from memory)… “Sharing has become a platform for collaboration rather than vice versa” “Every URL is a latent community” “It’s exactly the point that technology gets boring when its social aspects become interesting” Fascinating. I’d read his companion book, but it’s not available on the Kindle.

I’m busy. I have too much to do. I work as much or more than anyone I know much of the time. And it’s all my fault. Having too much to do in too short a time is nothing more than bad planning. I’m convinced that working 12-hour days trying to catch up is not the answer. Not even in the short term. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as I figure it out.

I find myself agreeing (mostly) with Jason Fried’s post, Urgency is poisonous “One thing I’ve come to realize is that urgency is overrated. In fact, I’ve come to believe urgency is poisonous. Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale? Few things burn morale like urgency. Urgency is acidic.” (Via Signal vs. Noise.)

Ryan Tomayko: The Thing About Git The thing about Git is that it’s oddly liberal with how and when you use it. Version control systems have traditionally required a lot of up-front planning followed by constant interaction to get changes to the right place at the right time and in the right order. And woe unto thee if a rule is broken somewhere along the way, or you change your mind about something, or you just want to fix this one thing real quick before having to commit all the other crap in your working copy.

Absolut Vodka ad released in Mexico has me feeling all defensive, for honestly no good reason. (Via strange maps.)

This is just terrific, The Mike Wallace Interview from the late 50s are online. There are 65 interviews in the Ransom Center’s collection. Five are on audio tape, and the others are kinescopes, 16mm recordings of the television programs made by filming the picture from a video monitor. These 16mm films were transferred to video and, along with the audio tapes, were digitized. The interviews were then transcribed and were both embedded in the video files in the form of subtitles and included on the website as text files.

Gotta agree with Mr. Gruber about Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3. Safari 3 just feels better than even the latest Firefox 3 beta. And it’s really damn fast.

The whole idea that a movie should be seen only once is an extension of our traditional conception of the film as an ephemeral entertainment rather than as a visual work of art. We don’t believe that we should hear a great piece of music only once, or see a great painting once, or even read a great book just once. Movie City Indie: Throwing bones in the air as 2001 turns 40:

Gmail is just so damn good that I haven’t used a desktop email client in years. Desktop apps are always better than their web-based counterparts. Gmail is the exception. I can think of no other case where a web-based version of an app is better than a good desktop app. Google Docs and Spreadsheets vs Pages and Numbers? Nope. Mindomo, Mindmeister, etc. vs MindManager. Not even close. Photoshop Express vs Photoshop Elements?

Sean Reid offers up my favorite argument so far in the does-your-camera-matter debate. Its true that the tail shouldn’t wag the dog. It’s true that photographers and pictures are more important than cameras and lenses. It’s true that hours spent studying photographs and paintings themselves will often be far more valuable to a photographer than hours spent worrying over what equipment to buy next. Its true that many have been conned by decades of advertising into believing that becoming a good photographer is mostly a matter of buying the ‘best' cameras and lenses.

FriendFeed has all the social network aggregation momentum right now, and it’s a pretty sweet service. Here’s my quick and dirty opinion on FriendFeed vs Socialthing! Like about FriendFeed: Tons of services are available to connect to. Has an API available. Don’t like about FriendFeed: I have to add each “friend” individually, most of them imaginary. And just look at it… Socialthing! is still in private beta, but works much more to my liking.