5 guys do it right

You've heard the expression, to be successful, take one thing and do it right. 5 Guys Burgers do just that.

Great story about a family owned business with smart management and great decisions from the start.

Hats off to them.

50% of households pay no tax is a misleading headline

Recent news reports, including our own News and Observer printed an AP story by Stephen Ohlemacher with the headline:

For half of U.S., tax bill is $0


Ouch, sounds like we need to re-arrange things, pronto. But wait, put the pitch forks down for a minute. Not paying income tax is not the same as a tax bill of "$0".

Why did I say income tax?  They said "tax bill."

There it is, that is how they misled you. With the scary, newspaper-selling, web-site-click-generating, headline. Mr. Ohlemacher got the numbers for his story from the Tax Policy Center which two days earlier published: 5 Myths about your taxes.

The first myth? It is this: "The poorest and the richest Americans pay no taxes." Turns out that, even the poorest of the working poor pay "Social Security and Medicare taxes when they work, sales taxes when they buy things and property taxes on their homes."

Should we get all worked up about our taxes - sure we should. But let's not let the shouting people in the world tell us what to think.

Watch where you put the ejector seat button

Jeff Attwood explains, as only he can, Fitts Law.

What I like about this post is that he uses Google's Gmail and Wordpress.com's post editor as examples. The former as bad and the latter as good. Both of these I use regularly.

While what Jeff says about these interfaces is correct according to Fitts Law, I would ask him - why so clumsy with the mouse? Click what you mean to click... I kid of course.

In defense of gmail, the buttons are all large and clearly marked. Though I can see where having Archive as a button and Report spam as a smaller less easy to click text link would make miss clicks harder. Wordpress.com's counter example of the Publish button vs. Move to trash illustrates this point beautifully.

Having said all that, I'm sure I'll miss click for weeks on end now.

17.99 a month for the WSJ on the iPAD - really?

I don't know, 17.99 a month for Wall Street Journal on the iPAD seems like a lot to me. Of course, what do I know, I pay 12 for CABLE TV.