Selected Interesting Posts from 2005

While sipping some wine and enjoying a mince pie or two it is customary at this time of year to look back and reflect on the previous year. While as a general principle I do not post link-lists on ThoughtPort, in the spirit of the season I have gathered together a non-comprehensive selection of enjoyable blog posts from the writers that I have found most interesting during 2005. While you probably will not be interested in every single one of these, I think there should be something here that you will enjoy. — Merry Christmas.HughMacleod’s Global Microbrand Rant. Rock on Hugh!
Presentation Zen has a fun comparison between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates presentation techniques. This one taps into my favourite ideas around The New Simplicity.
Seth Godin is on to something with his idea about Small being the new big. As usual, I could have linked to about ten of Seth’s posts, but I still like this one.
Chris Anderson’s essay on The Probalistic Age, is probably not one to tackle if you have been quaffing the Xmas vino, but it is worth the effort. A sample quote: “Google is arguably the first company to be born with the alien intelligence of the Web’s large-N statistics hard-wired into its DNA.” Anderson is the editor of Wired magazine, so you will need your techno-evangelist filters on.

Addendum: One post I forgot when I published this originally was Jason Kottke’s GoogleOS? WebOS? post from August. Some aspects of this have already dated, but as an overview of the key ideas behind the migration towards a browser-centric OS, this is a good place to start.