The Tremendous 10 link roundup, #239

1. Infographics aren’t magic. | “A good infographic is an accurate, consumable, attractive visual overview of a complex topic—they are not magical solutions to impossible communication challenges. Much more than the sum of its parts (pictures, data, words, and design), a good infographic simply tells a relevant story to the audience that needs it.”
2. How not to do remote collaboration | “Collaborating remotely has historically been a challenge — and now that so many more of us are home and interacting virtually, those challenges are more apparent than ever… But before Miro, there were other ways to collaborate online. Let’s discuss these — and promise never to do them again!”
3. Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, explained | “How design can manipulate and coerce you into doing what websites want.”
4. A Zoom escape button is the holiday gift everyone actually needs | “A faster way to get out of Zoom meetings.”
5. ZipMessage | “Async video conversations with customers & colleagues.”
6. Google’s Stack is a clever, if incomplete, way to digitize and organize documents | “Google’s latest experimental app, Stack, is meant to help make that part of your life easier. A product of Google’s Area 120 incubator, Stack is designed to be the place where you can keep PDF copies of all those documents. As mentioned in our initial article, Stack borrows the technology underlying Google’s powerful DocAI enterprise tool for document analysis so it can organize them into categories — or, in Google-speak, stacks — and allow you to search for words within the text.”
7. Personal Branding Ruins People’s Lives | “Every so often someone pops up on my radar that has a bunch of tips about “building your personal brand,” the idea that you can build a public persona for yourself that does something for you. The idea is that if you hit enough of the right buttons and keep doing stuff in a particular way that you’ll gain a reputation for it, and thus make you more money or gain you more fame. It is, when you fully engage with it, a truly evil way of living…”
8. How Pixar’s Movement Animation Became So Realistic | “Pixar gets its characters to move and emote by building them rigs and filling them with controls that allow animators to give them unique expressions and movements. “Toy Story 2″ gave them the ability to adapt and reuse rigs for multiple characters, allowing a wide array of characters of all shapes and sizes.”
9. Here’s the Only Way a 4-Day Workweek Schedule Will Actually Work | “Shifting to a 4-day workweek isn’t as simple as wishing and hoping for increased employee engagement and productivity.”
10. Survey: Employees Would Rather Quit Than Lose Remote-Work Flexibility | “Some employees say they don’t want to return to the office five days a week. But few want to remain completely remote.”

Image: visual via link #2, Miro.