How to present and sell design: 1) Don't wing it — postpone until you're ready. 2) Really sell your design — the idea that 'good design speaks for itself' is a myth. 3) Don't get subjective or allow your feelings to get hurt — tell them to tell you when it doesn't work. 4) Don't embarrass the client — make them look good, be honest, listen to them.

How to figure out what a client's budget really is. "Don't be smarmy. Don't be curt. Be respectful, be honest, and inform your prospect during the sales process. If you do it right, right from the start, you'll build mutual respect and communication into the entire project."

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

This is beautiful. "Mutsugoto is an intimate communication device intended for a bedroom environment. Mutsugoto allows distant partners to communicate through the language of touch as expressed on the canvas of the human body. A custom computer vision and projection system allows users to draw on each other's bodies while lying in bed. Drawings are transmitted 'live' between the two beds, enabling a different kind of synchronous communication that leverages the emotional quality of physical gesture." Thanks for the link, Ara.

"The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. ... The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links.

For to remember.

A superb guide for anyone proposing ideas to clients who challenge you in potentially frustrating ways.

Some people with too many emails to handle have chosen to give up on the stack entirely.

A blog of a professor of mine from Kansai Gaidai University. This post is particularly useful and enlightening.