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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

January, 2006

NoahBrier.com 2005 in Review

Just a day ago I posted my favorite links of 2005 to much fanfare. Now, it's my chance to be a little more self serving and post my favorite NoahBrier.com entries of 2005. No, they're probably nowhere near as good as the writing found on my other favorite list, but since it's my site I can do what I want. I have tried to pick and choose as carefully as possible so as not to go on forever. I hope you enjoy.

Best of NoahBrier.com 2005

These are in chronological order.

  1. Crunch Fitness: A Story of Terrible Customer Service (1/30/05): As far as the writing and thought behind this entry, I expect it would fall last on the list. However, after I was mistreated by Crunch it was nice to get my story of shortsighted customer service out there. Since then many have left comments both for and against me, a few of whom were Crunch employees.
  2. DLA Should Get You Laid (2/17/05): Digital Lifestyle Aggregator (DLA) is a buzzword that never really took off. Probably because it's such an obtuse term. In this entry I tried to work through just how a digital lifestyle aggregator should do. In the end, I decided it should get them laid. (I have to admit, looking back February was a bleak month for writing around here. Sorry. Thanks for sticking around.)
  3. You Know You're a Geek When . . . (3/13/05): I had a dream about two bloggers. Then I blogged about it. That's pretty sad.
  4. I Used to Think Like Windows Explorer (3/16/05): An explanation of just how technology has shaped my consciousness throughout the years. (In retrospect, this entry was a kind of turning point of this site I think.)
  5. Firefox 101 (3/30/05): A quick rundown on all of Firefox's important features for first-time users.
  6. Annotating Flickr with a Side of Social Networking (4/8/05): Flickr's power as a social networking site lies in the fact that social networking is not the primary objective of it's users. Makes perfect sense.
  7. Idea: Tags as a Way to Add Context to a Search: Another short one, I expect this has a lot to do with why Yahoo! bought del.icio.us (not the entry, but the idea). (Just as a note, it's entirely possible the rest of the world was thinking about this at the time and just not telling me.)
  8. How Do You Use Blogs? (5/13/05): Thought I'm not sure I realized it at the time, what I was doing was figuring out user roles so that I could reflect them in the information architecture of the site. I still thinks it's a fairly accurate assessment of my audience and their navigation needs (though I've since backed off the no-nav approach).
  9. Hot Web Trends (6/13/05): Kind of like a basic primer for what's hot on the web at the moment. Most of them are still 'hot,' leading me to believe that maybe things aren't moving quite as fast as they seem.
  10. The Death of "Browsing" (6/17/05):
January 3, 2006
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.