Over at Brain Based Business, Dr. Ellen Weber talks about why lecturing doesn’t work in most cases - and makes the point that while people receiving the lecture only retain 5% of what’s being told, lecturers themselves spike and retain 90% of what they’re talking about - which pretty much explains why our whole education system still relies on the act of lecturing and talks. (Via Tom Coates’s Plasticbag.org)

Luke, over at Functioning Form delivers some of the notes from Jared Spool’s keynote at UI11, covering the attributes of great user experience teams. Concise but pretty powerful sentences to frame a team’s spirit.

In good old Seth Godin style, Seth tells everyone to “Make something happen“, whatever that thing might be. “Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer.” - No possible way we can disagree.

Over at the Creative Review weblog they posted an article by Rick Poynor (from the current print magazine) on how Benetton hit middle age. It goes from the history of the company, to the reasons for its success and the recent “fading out” of its campaigns. If you’re into design, make sure you give it a read.

Finally, make sure you read Matt Webb’s post on “Editing documents as playing music” over at Pulse Laser (which you should be subscribing, too). He proposes a new metaphor to define the interactions you have with documents on your computer. Even if that seems like weird mumbo-jumbo, it’s a great exercise for you IDs out there (seen our job posting?).

Mike just posted what everyone else was expecting - Google acquired Youtube for 1.6billion. During the last few weeks, many people wondered whether the rumors were true - and many wondered what the strategy behind the deal might be. While I like the fact that Chad and the rest of the YouTube team get the recognition for their work, I think I’d rather see Google expand their offering and functionality instead of acquiring a whole community.

According to the investor conference call, Youtube will remain (at least somewhat) independent - something I believe Chad intended -, and honestly I hope that’s what happens. Communities like those of YouTube aren’t always keen on being associated with big corporations so only time will tell how this acquisition will have an impact on the site’s usage patterns. I guess we’ll wait and see.

Something I’d definitely like to see: a more polished-looking Youtube. Come on, guys, you really can’t deny having the resources now, right? :-)

We are looking to expand our User Experience and Interface Design team with one or two more members. If you think you may be our guy, please email us at jobs@webreakstuff.com with an answer to the question “What do you believe is the role of design?” and some examples of your previous work. People with a sense of IA and Interaction Design are preferred.

You can work remotely, and will be involved with us on a per-project basis. Depending on your work experience, you may be directly integrated into one of our current projects with startups in the Web 2.0 space. Looking forward to your emails.