How does a chef break big and become a household name? One of the best ways is to release a cookbook or have a big cooking show on TV.

Mario Batali, Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, Rick Bayless, etc. You probably know these chefs better than you know the chef of one of your favorite restaurants down the street.

These chefs give away their recipes, their secrets. They say “This is how I do it and you can do it too. Don’t worry, it’s not hard, just follow along.”

The more they give, the better off they are. The more they open up, the better off they are. The more they let you inside their kitchen the better off they are. These chefs have built empires by making their knowledge available to the public. They are astute business people.

If you’re looking for a way to break your business in a big way, follow their lead. How can you give away your formula, your secrets, your recipes? How can you give away what you know to increase your exposure and expertise?

Our cookbook is Getting Real (and Ruby on Rails to a certain extent). What’s your cookbook?

Compass Intelligence is out with a new report called “Exploring the Best Practices of Experience Strategies Targeting Small & Mid-sized Business Customers Online.”

In the report they rank the “top 10 vendors winning the SMB online experience race.” The list is as follows:

1. IBM (Market Cap: $155.85B)
2. Microsoft (Market Cap: $290.45B)
3. Cisco (Market Cap: $163.80B)
4. AT&T (Market Cap: $248.97B)
5. Salesforce.com (Market Cap: $5.41B)
6. HP (Market Cap: $122.39B)
7. Dell (Market Cap: $61.65B)
8. Intuit (Market Cap: $10.06B)
9. 37signals
10. Verizon (Market Cap: $124.38B)

TAKE THAT VERIZON!!!

No, really, it’s a genuine thrill for our little 8-person company to be included on this list. Thanks to whoever noticed us and decided to include us on the list. It really does mean a lot.

You can buy the full report if you are interested.

[Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.]

The latest chat is with three people who visualize data in fascinating ways…

Jonathan Harris (Daylife, We Feel Fine, etc.)
“My work uses the Internet as a means of studying the human world. It’s one part anthropology, one part computer science, and one part visual art.”

Aaron Koblin (The Sheep Market, Flight Patterns, etc.)
“I’m not a scientist, not a statistician, not a graphic designer…I suppose that makes me an Artist.”

Marcos Weskamp (Flickrgraph, Newsmap, etc.)
“I think the reason why infoviz is so interesting for me is because it gives me a little bit of every world…art, visual problem solving and engineering.”

Moderated by Matt from 37signals.

Matt	to get started, why don’t you guys each describe for our readers what you do.
Jonathan	My work uses the Internet as a means of studying the human world. It’s one part anthropology, one part computer science, and one part visual art.
Jonathan	A good example of these ideas is We Feel Fine
Jonathan
Jonathan	It’s a study of human emotion, using large scale blog analysis
Jonathan	It scans blogs to try to understand how different populations of people around the world are feeling
Aaron	Sometimes it’s tricky to describe what I do concisely. Last year I received an award from the National Science Foundation titled first place in “non-interactive media” It surprised me that the category was more well-defined by what it wasn’t than what it was. Sometimes it seems like that method of describing my work is more appropriate. I’m not a scientist, not a statistician, not a graphic designer, ... I suppose that makes me an Artist.
Marcos	well, I’m an Interaction Designer with a really strong interest in information visualization. My background is basically in Graphic Design and Architecture. I think the reason why infoviz is so interesting for me is because it gives me a little bit of every world, art, visual problem solving and engineering.
Jonathan	Yes, I think the nature of this space is that it’s difficult to describe to people, as it blends many disciplines.
Matt	If someone asks what you do, what do you show them?
Marcos	Though a little bit old and rusty, I think Newsmap would be the first thing I’ll throw out.
Marcos
Aaron	I would show my Flight Pattern visualizations
Aaron
Jonathan	Newsmap is a classic. I still hear people reference it all the time.

Every time I pass a store I wonder “How do they stay in business? How do they make money?” With so many businesses so empty so often you just have to wonder how it all works out. What are their keys to profit? How do they make rent? How do they pay their people? How do they cover their bills? How do the owners take something home at the end of the day?

With the help of Edward Glaeser, a pioneering urban economist at Harvard, New York Magazine profiles a diverse range of New York businesses including a private school, a yoga studio, a drug dealer, a sex shop, a cab driver, a copy shop, a 4-star restaurant, and Goldman Sachs.

Best way to make money as a drug dealer: Sell to many users in small quantities. “It’s like taking a pound of coffee and selling one grain at a time,” says Nick. “If you sell by scoops, you’ll make a couple thousand dollars, but if you break it down into quarter grams and work for a few days, you’ll make tens of thousands.”

Most profitable fares for a cab driver: Low-traffic city trips: “Every time somebody gets out, someone gets in, and I get my $2.50.” Midday airport runs: “At 3 p.m., there’s no traffic, and so many planes are coming in that you get $90 plus tips.”

Most profitable for a copy shop: Restaurant flyers. Those annoying restaurant flyers fuel the photocopy industry. Local restaurants order 1,000 new flyers every three days.

Least profitable diner customers: The elderly. They have a tendency to return food.

It’s enlightening. [via kottke]

In Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine, Amit Singhal, master of Google’s ranking algorithm, and other engineers reveal more than they ever have before in the news media about how their search system works.

Here’s a story of how a new formula gets added and why Singhal ignores complaints at first…

In 2005, Bill Brougher, a Google product manager, complained that typing the phrase “teak patio Palo Alto” didn’t return a local store called the Teak Patio.

So Mr. Singhal fired up one of Google’s prized and closely guarded internal programs, called Debug, which shows how its computers evaluate each query and each Web page. He discovered that Theteakpatio.com did not show up because Google’s formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto.

It was also a clue to a bigger problem. Finding local businesses is important to users, but Google often has to rely on only a handful of sites for clues about which businesses are best. Within two months of Mr. Brougher’s complaint, Mr. Singhal’s group had written a new mathematical formula to handle queries for hometown shops.

But Mr. Singhal often doesn’t rush to fix everything he hears about, because each change can affect the rankings of many sites. “You can’t just react on the first complaint,” he says. “You let things simmer.”

This new iPhone ad is one of the best ads I’ve ever seen.

In 30 seconds you learn you can hold this thing in your hand, you control it by touching the screen, it flows, you can watch a movie on it, the screen pivots, it’s fast, you can type on it, it has maps, it knows your location, it makes useful decisions for you, and you can make calls. It’s all so obvious and comfortable and easy in 30 seconds without being rushed.

And you learn all of this in the context of a scenario, not in the context of an explanation. An anonymous hand can be yours, your mother’s, your father’s, your kid’s, your grandparent’s, anyone’s. A friendly voiceover represents your own internal voice. Easy music reinforces an easy product. This is the actual interface, not an interface that is enhanced or embellished so it looks better on TV.

A simple close-up focus on the product and the experience because both are so good. This recipe doesn’t need any additional seasoning. Which other cell phones are advertised on the quality of the experience and interface? When’s the last time you’ve seen any technology product advertised like this?

This is wonderful advertising.

If you haven’t heard, our fellow Chicagoans at Feedburner are now part of Google. The official announcement was made today.

Congrats to the Feedburner crew and Google. Everyone I know at Feedburner is quality. Feedburner’s man in charge, Dick Costolo, is one the sharpest (and funniest) people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet in the past few years.

Great companies are made of great people and Google definitely gets greater with this acquisition.

Well done on both sides.

IDEO designer Jane Fulton Suri figures out unmet consumer needs by watching ordinary people doing ordinary things.

As the leader of the “human factors” group at IDEO, the international design consultancy, she and her colleagues will watch kids brushing their teeth, parents pushing strollers, or patients checking in at the emergency room, trying to find opportunities for design to improve the experience. Yet often that means looking for something less obvious: the ways in which the experience can improve the design.

Their observations have brought rubber grips to Oral-B’s toothbrushes, raised the height of Even-Flo’s strollers, and streamlined DePaul Health Center’s check-in processes. For Fulton Suri it’s as if the world is one big beta test, in which every feature is begging for improvement.

“Thoughtless Acts” is her book that shows random acts of design witnessed in everyday life. Some shots from the book below.

We can get greater quantities of every other resource we need, except time. [Peter] Drucker reports that executives spend their time much differently than they think they do and much differently than they would like to. His solution is to begin by measuring how you spend your time, and compare it with an ideal allocation. Than begin to systematically get rid of the unimportant in favor of the important. His suggestions include stopping some things, delegation, creating policy decisions to replace ad hoc decisions, staying out of things that others should do, and so forth…One of the best points is to give yourself large blocks of uninterrupted time to do more significant tasks…

Drucker argues that we should focus on what will make a difference rather than unimportant questions. Otherwise, we will fill our time with motion rather than proceeding towards results.

From A review of The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Drucker.

XM Packaging process
From: Ed Illig

Over time I’ve noted you guys enjoy works that incorporate handcraft, process and technology. With that in mind I kept thinking this post may interest you for Signal vs. Noise — from our .think blog on an XM package development process:

XM Satellite Radio: A Packaging Process Overview

This article, an insight into the design of a consumer package for satellite radio provider XM, includes many aspects of a typical package development process. In the interest of time, we’ll skip research, diagnostic and technical methodology phases and concentrate on the basic iterative process steps in this article.

Husbandry vs. parenting
From: Mark Barry

Thought this blog post about using lessons from animal husbandry in everyday parenting can in a lot of ways also be applied to software design. Check it.

What I knew about animals was actually quite applicable, and so I began to rethink the adventure as not so much “mentorship of a child” as “husbandry of an animal.” Here’s what I gleaned from my years at the animal hospital that was really useful.

“SANS Top Three Programming Errors”
From: Joseph Mako III

SANS.org, the people who maintain isc.sans.org, the Internet Storm Center, have started an institute for secure code. The .pdf provided at www.sans-ssi.org titled “SANS Top Three Programming Errors” (PDF) is a great read.