It is a bit surprising, but it should't be, that someone is targeting the internet as the next place a soulful brand resonance for women could develop. And while it seems at times, when nearly all magazines and the solid majority of books are directed at women, that the female mediaspere is crowded, all it takes is one fresh, sincere and really really opinionated voice to shatter through the clutter and create something new to make something happen.

Atoosa says, she “wasn’t the smartest girl in high school . . . or even in college,” she did have lots of opinions: “I had opinions about life. I had opinions about guys. I had opinions about jobs. I had opinions about everything.” Through magazines, she believed she could “make those opinions heard.” Now she is on the internet and if the traffic on her myspace blog is any indication, there might be a new big momma in town.

Labels: advertising, demographics: women, martha stewart, oprah

Simply put, this is cool. Generate your own "loading" images in a matter of seconds. Specify foreground and background colors, and the type of animation you want. It even allows you to generate transparent gifs.

That's all it does! So simple, it doesn't even need instructions. Wow!

Check it out.

http://ajaxload.info/

Discovering innovative indie music and eclectic underground bands is something I thoroughly enjoy doing online in my very limited spare time. I think that (without too much self-analysis) I somehow find some reassurance that there is still sincerity and originality in this world; a world that is often portrayed as being pre-manufactured and focus-group tested.

Sites like 3hive and elbo.ws are faves of mine to scour for new sounds.

I remember (ahem) "back in ye olde 1981" knowing only one other person who even knew who The Cure were, let alone Depeche Mode. That's right. 1981. Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Devo... MTV was 1 year old, and we stayed up late and watched it all night long. How long has it really been since you have heard someone say the words "New Wave?"

These days, I, and other idfivers enjoy WTMD, a radio station out of Towson University just outside of Baltimore. They really do a fantastic job of balancing groundbreaking new artists with older "nostalgic" music (am I really saying that?) At any point you can hear something brand new, or something you completely forgot that you loved.

A month ago, that was where I first heard the song Again and Again by The Bird and The Bee. I knew I wasn't the only one, but I still thought that at least I was an early adapter. I scraped some sites and managed to pull together a montage of .mp3s to share with some friends and coworkers.

Tonight, I was surfing through the television and stopped on the Tonight Show. The Bird and the Bee were the musical guest. I was instantly happy for them and at the same time saddened.

Then I started to think... Why would I want a talented group of people to remain a secret or undiscovered? It didn't make any sense, and it certainly has nothing to do with me. Was it because they could be considered mainstream by appearing on Leno? Or was it because I use undiscovered bands as a tool to position myself as "in the know," and can't once they are accessible.

Here is what I realized.

That way of thinking in this day and age is antiquated. In the age of information, (almost) everyone has access to (almost) everything. No one at this point can dispute the coolness of iPods. Nor can anyone dispute their ubiquitous presence. I sometimes find myself surprised when someone doesn't have one. Ultimately, the iPod is a delivery mechanism, and no matter what latest and greatest model/version you have in hand, the content is what should matter.

Good music will always be good music, regardless of what device you play it on, or who has access to it.

So go check out Inara George and The Bird and The Bee. I'm happier to be a connector, instead of a concealer.

Labels: culture

“It takes two to speak truth: One to speak, and another to hear.” Henry David Thoreau

“Authenticity”, if you haven’t noticed the hype about social networking and user-generated content like YouTube, is the buzzword du jour. In the world of marketing--which is (come on, admit it!) 100% devoted to creating mediated experiences--it ought to be philosophically jarring to talk about “authenticity”—yet no one even shrugs when you use the word.

I actually like the word “authentic” in its latest business incarnation, because it aspires to something more than cynically manipulating people’s opinions and wallets. I like to think that the people who want to sell me things are true believers who want to communicate good news to people who need it. I know, you’re thinking, what haystack did she crawl out from? But the honesty and conviction with which I hear most businesspeople and nonprofits talk about their goals convinces me that this really is true. And like all good buzzwords, “authentic” manages to describe a whole worldview in a single utterance. Everyone in the room knows what you mean when you say it, because we share a perspective. Of course! We want it to be kind of like THAT (YouTube), and THAT (Facebook), and THAT (Second Life) and yet not, really. But we want to convey the meta-level of those experiences; we want to generate that kind of loyalty and community; we want to generate a feeling that simulates the feeling generated by that which is deemed “authentic”—we too want to be perceived as “authentic” and thereby generate a similar feeling.

But it’s the classic dilemma of nerd kids (not that I’d know!) in high school --you can’t try to be cool. You can kind of mimic it, but you can’t fake its effortless originality and confidence. And (at least when I was in high school) “cool” meant what “authentic” means now—doing or allowing something utterly beyond anyone’s conceptions of what is possible or acceptable, and doing it with grace and ease; and second-comers are, by definition, not cool. Or authentic.

With “authenticity”—unlike the late 90s buzzwords like “portal” and “online community” and “e-Commerce”—we imply more than a business model or a technology. Authenticity, in all its guises, is a social stance. In some ways, the very act of using the term implies a cynicism and critical distance which precludes its own objective: to wit, if you strive to be authentic, then you can never be authentic. There’s an element of naivete to true authenticity that cannot be created, but must exist on its own; and even then, postmodern sensibilities being what they are, that which was originally heartfelt will be quickly transformed into something manufactured, dated, stale.

Yet, however counterintuitive it may seem, authenticity can be manufactured—if only because it must be. The idea that there even exists an “authentic” truth which can be discovered, much less documented, much less packaged and sold, countervails everything we know from the culture. In the 60’s, the situationists and Marshall McLuhan saw this coming miles away—the understanding that, with rapid technology development, we will manufacture, participate in, and ultimately drown in and iteratively discard our own spectacle. No experience, they believed, would be perceived as unmediated. And it’s true: we’re all waiting for the camera, the cell-phone shot, the comment on our MySpace profile.

What couldn’t be foreseen is how rapidly and easily that understanding would be assimilated by the culture, so now everyone assumes all experiences are inherently mediated—and, therefore, only the experiences which take great care to manufacture the exquisite details of their own authenticity are perceived as “real”. The simulacrum has come to pass, and our misgivings (if ever we really had any) are irrelevant.

The lesson for marketers may be the same old one you’ve always known and been taught: you still have to create, frame, and narrate perception in a way that your audience will understand; you still have to tell a story and find the right people to listen. You may tell that story with different production values, to accord with the general perception of reality or aspiration; and it may be more difficult to do than it was before, without the guise of good lighting and with the reality of media fragmentation.

But to imagine that technology has suddenly given us a tighter lock on objective reality or “authenticity” than we had before is absurd; we merely have more access to frame our own narratives. This may or may not be a good thing for democracy; it’s not a good thing for the culture; and it‘s definitely not a good thing for marketers, because the locus of control has shifted from the storyteller to the people who have absolutely no story to tell, but who clog bandwidth with useless content. Most of the content generated by users ranges from depressing to unwatchable. And their additional information streams don’t create a greater understanding of truth, reality, or the human condition--it’s just noise.

So to be successful and honest, your “authenticity” must edit that noise, provide expert information, and structure information in a usable way. If you can, at the same time, add the ideas and voices of other people—and be unafraid to do so—all the better. But to imagine that providing unmediated access to create and distribute content will build authenticity or credibility—forget it. The spectacle is what it is, so participate where you can. Build a three-ring circus; but remember that your (paid) performers are better at what they do than the audience.

Labels: culture

Sometimes it takes a parody like this to remind everyone what life is really about. GetAFirstLife.com is a funny one-page parody of ultra-hot-spot-of-the-moment virtual community SecondLife. It's a one-joke punch in the shoulder that reminds us that even though we might spend a lot of time in the virtual world, there's a heck of a lot that's interesting about the real world.

Oh, and as a funny coda to the whole gag, laywers working for SecondLife owner Linden Labs sent an "un-cease and desist note" to GetAFirstLife.com owner Darren Barefoot. Who wouldda thunk that lawyers could have a sense of humor? Way to go, Linden Labs!

Labels: humor, second life, virtual community

I just thought I would make a - maybe obvious - comment on what google really does.

Google is a time saver. That is all they do. Everyday in everyway a Google person on some Google farm says to another googler, "hey, how can this save people time?"

Lets look at some examples:

Search engines save people time by connecting them more accurately with what they are looking for. I spent 2 hours finding the right site in 1998, now it takes me ten minutes.

Google Adwords saves EVERYONE time by associating adwords advertisments with people who are interested. I can't tell you how stupid and time-wasteful it is to show a young woman who is watching some soap opera a spot for Viagra. Her time is being wasted. That won't happen on google.

Google's reader - which I really enjoy and will tout as a clear breakthrough in organization - is a mini-web viewer, meant to quickly and efficiently give me what I want to read from the sites I like. Its benefits include tracking, organization, etc., but its main benefit is clearly that it saves me a TON of time.

Google's office products appear to be a challenge to MS office and perhaps someday they will be a serious contender. But right now they look to me to be a short cut to sharing. How? Well it takes time to throw together a spreadsheet and then send it to 5 people and ask their opinions and get 5 spreadsheets back with different changes / suggestions. This is also true with the "track changes" feature in word. At work we write these large documents (for proposals) where everyone contributes, isn't it faster for us all just to write them online?

Google Maps are a clear time saver in terms of interface. You know where you are and where you are going more quickly and with more accuracy. But what is often missed is the little things, like the fact that don't need to format your address when you enter it into the map search field - it formats it for you. And you can share the map as easily as you can see it yourself. Both features save time.

Google Financial is an attempt to collect all the tools you might need to make a decision into one place. The idea is to make the decision as quickly and as painless as possible.

Google news collects very disparate news sources and applies its search engine to sorting it all so you can read what you want - not wasting time reading the things you don't.

Blogger allows me to self publish in a jiffy. I woke up at 4:30, sleepless, and had this idea, fired up the computer, wrote it down and published it in about 15 minutes.

Google desktop is a total time saver in tons of ways. I use it as my task list, as a quick way to look at the weather, the local news and of course it is the ONLY way I can search my damn computer. I am connected to a vast client archive of work on a file server, and if what I want isn't immediately associated with a client, then I use google desktop and find it in a jiffy.

The overall point here may be obvious, but I think it is worth emphasizing. Google perhaps does provide more accurate results with its search engine, but I am not going to go around saying google's differentiation is precision or accuracy. Instead, Googles real claim to a definite holistic goal, or point, is that faster better access through an improved interface will save me time.

Time. That's what google offers.

Labels: Business Differentiation, Google

I've been tinkering with Pandora for a while now, over the course of a year at least. For those unfamiliar, it's a smart radio station that takes your initial input, and based on your continued feedback, creates a customized stream of music based on your preferences. While doing this, it also introduces you to new music by similar artists or based on similar traits of the music you've favored. Give the songs a thumbs up or thumbs down and your stream becomes more refined.

It's the result of something called the Music Genome Project which essentially decodes the "musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony."

It's free. From time to time I come back to listen when I am bored with my playlist, or not digging what's on my favorite streams, or when Pandora efficiently reminds me via personalized emails.

Today when I returned I saw something new. The surrounding borders of the main Pandora page were "skinned" by sponsors (Chase, Nike+ and a reality show called Nashville Star). They take over the appearance of the page with the exception of the body, and there is a large format ad as well - a skyscraper or a large box. I don't mind this at all. If intrusive advertising is what keeps a cool thing alive, and free, so be it. Free content surrounded by advertising is not new, but this was the first time I have seen an entire page actually be skinned by a sponsor, let alone done tastefully. If I were there to read content, I would have found it objectionable, but in this case the user experience is to listen, and occasionally react to give the player additional feedback. I thought it was effective.

As I was introducing a co-worker to this, I demonstrated how the player window can be minimized. Once doing that, a large dynamic banner from Amazon appeared over the player featuring products I have either recently purchased or expressed interested in at the Amazon site. This was amazing to me. Perhaps there are few sites I interact with this much on a personal (consumer) level. However, the fact that these two sites are capturing enough data about me to offer up products they know I like, or think I will like, on an ongoing basis is amazing to see happen for real today. The things we talk about and read about the future; highly targeted advertising, highly personalized emails, and dynamic ads generated at such a granular and personal level are happening now.

Oh, did I mention that one of the products Amazon offered me was music that Pandora thought I'd like?

Labels: advertising, Music, Online Advertising, Pandora

I don't get into the whole fight over Mac vs. PC. To me it is like two brothers, one thinks right-brained and the other thinks left-brained. The people that side with one or the other seem to follow that same battle between areas of the mind. The competition is good also, as it helps to refine the product on both ends. Enough with Darwinism and Capitalism, there is one aspect that a Macintosh has that Windows is copying for Vista—Widgets. This is just one more example of an underlying power-shift in the sandbox between the two big boys.

Labels: gadgets, surf charts

As a child growing up in Baltimore, our house admittedly was not sports crazy. But I had enough awareness, living just blocks from Memorial Stadium, that the Colts were us, and that we were the Colts. This is all long before multi-million-dollar contracts, endorsement deals, and the ego associated with modern professional sports. This is when the team of players were blue-collar, working guys who you could bump into anywhere in town. Clearly those days are over, and the recent ubiquitous buildup of the Colts returning to Baltimore for a playoff game Saturday, reopened emotional wounds and prompted flashback visions of Mayflower trucks quietly stealing a sizable chunk of Baltimore's soul under a veil of snowy darkness in 1984.

I should note here that I am not a football fan. I barely follow professional sports at all. I am however, a devout fan of Baltimore.

Baltimore is now "Ravenstown," and last Friday was proclaimed "Purple Friday." After my two young sons were gently hazed at their school for not being dressed head to toe in purple camouflage (which by the way, they never will be), I found myself searching for three Raven's hats the night before Saturday's game. Believe it or not, I was successful.

Saturday afternoon, I sat in my living room with my new Raven's hat, a few beers, snacks, and watched the entire game, participating in what was amounting to be a collective therapy session. It was touted as "Ravenge," and failure wasn't even considered.

Four quarters later, and not a single touchdown. Instead, what transpired were fumbles, mistakes, interceptions and a bunch of field goals. Ultimately though, the opportunity that was missed was bigger than either ball club and bigger than either city... an opportunity for a generation of Baltimorians to put the past behind, and to separate ourselves from the memory of losing something everyone here loved. A memory surfaced by the presence of blue horseshoes in Baltimore, and the pain of watching them win, and then leave... again.

My boys and I have our hats now. Go Baltimore. Go Ravens.

Labels: Baltimore, Colts, Football, Ravens

The topic of this post may sound basic, but every single person I know has a very serious email problem. They can't answer the messgaes coming in, their boxes are clogged, and they feel constantly behind because of the barrage of messages. And this is emphatically without spam--most filters are good enough these days that we're not overwhelmed with Viagra pitches any more.

And yet legitimate business emails alone now leave most of us completely verklempt.

Asynchronous communications is wonderful. I'd much rather receive an email, which I can answer thoughtfully and on my own time, than a voicemail, which beckons to me urgently from my desk phone. Actually, as far as phones go, I'm ready to give them up altogether--the landline at my house is never used; my cell phone has an erratic charging history (I blame it on the charger cord); and my desk phone only betides woe, most of the time. I think most of us under the age of forty feel the same way; and yet we're irresponsible with our email most of the time.

The most important thing to remember about business email--and the point you should keep in mind if you follow this process--is that ALL business email you would ever need to keep or refer back to will fall into one of three caregories:

• Informational/Reference: This includes attachments, data, decisions, copy people have written, etc: anything that will be used later for a purpose or may need to be referred to when trying to trace an historical thread of some kind.
• To-dos for you: Other emails are asking you to decide, attend, or accomplish something now or in the future.
• To-dos for other people: The final set of emails ask someone else (the sender or a third party) to decide or accomplish something now or in the future.

Email that doesn't fall into one of these three categories can be immediately archived or deleted out of hand.

So, in an effort to help everyone get control of their communications, here are my tried and true tips.

BEFORE YOU START: If you have more than 400 emails in your inbox, you need to go through a cleanup, following the rules below. It will probably take you the better part of a day. However, I hope this list will help you avoid *ever* having more than 400 emails in your inbox again.

1. First, ask yourself "Is the folder structure on my computer working for me?" If it is, great, proceed to step 2. If it's not, ask yourself why. For those of us in client service, it's easy: we have client folders by client name and then project name beneath, internal folders, personal folders. For the rest of you, I recommend thinking about your internal contacts or projects as "clients" and setting up individual folders for each endeavor. You can and should archive those folders later, but for anything active, keep it on the top level.
   
2. Set up your inbox to mimic, exactly, the documents folder which is working for you on your hard drive or network--but don't go more than 2 levels down. In other words, if you have a subfolder of documents which is MyClient/Project1/InformationAcrchitecture/Drafts, in your inbox only create the folders MyClient and InformationArchitecture (if that). (However, don't filter things into folders automatically unless you're an extraordinarily motivated person. Out of sight is out of mind.) The taxonomy of inboxes should be far coarser than that of document storage, simply because quite frankly you're only keeping these emails "just in case." This brings me to point 3:
3. Your email boxes are not, should not, and cannot be adequate storage for files or essential communication. Therefore, if anyone ever, ever sends you an attachment or information in text which ought to be kept, SAVE IT RIGHT AWAY. (Of course I do not recommend opening attachments from unknown sources and yadda yadda, but you get the idea.) Look, we all from time to time say "I know you sent me that, let me look at my email" simply because the email search mechanisms are better than file search mechanisms--they date-stamp and all that. But the fact is, you have fewer files than you have emails. It's a one-second operation to save the stupid file, so do it--then you have two places to find it later on. Furthermore, I've noticed that nothing makes other people more impatient than not having a file on hand. It makes you look disorganized, even if you're actually not. (Get an indexing service on your hard drive like Google Desktop. Yes, it slows you down, but if you truly can't commit to good file management, email is *not* the answer. Indexing is better.)
4. If you receive an email which is only valid immediately, delete it. This includes: automated notifications of any kind (you'll get them in your queue later), group or all@ emails (unless you want to look at a link someone sent later, which I will go into more detail about), personal emails, one-second answers you've replied to immediately, vacation notifications, etc.
5. Back to your filing system. Remember the three kinds of emails above? Well, they each have to be dealt with in their own way. Information and reference emails need to be stored for later use. These can go directly into your subfolders once you have replied or the thread of conversation is complete, so put them there now or right when you receive them. You'll be able to find them more easily in the subfolder than in the big mess of an inbox. (You've already dealt with attachments, so much of the information will live in your documents folder.) To-dos for other people can also go directly into your subfolders once you've replied, because you're just waiting for someone to take action and either provide you with information or further tasks and decisions.
   
6. The third kind of email--to dos for YOU--are the ones that trip most of us up. Hopefully by this point, you've cleared out the dreck (or, if you manage your email in an ongoing way in this manner, you won't have much dreck to begin with.) You'll be left with an inbox which is essentially like a tasklist. I recommend using a task list program as well (like the one in Outlook) but even if you scribble your to-do list on post it notes, here is where it gets critical. First of all, use the flagging system in your email client. Anything that you need to address in the next seven days, but cannot get to immediately, flag it. Then every day, sort your email by the flag field and go through them. Move the ones you've dealt with to the subfolders. The ones you haven't dealt with, PUT THE TASK ON YOUR TO DO LIST and move the email to a subfolder. Once the task described in the email lives on your tasklist, it's no longer needed as a reminder in your inbox. The rest of your emails--which should now be all to-dos for you, remember--you can sort easily and address one by one. Some emails may remain in your inbox which are not strictly "tasks for you" because you're having a discussion with a group--but once the thread is complete and a decision has been made, move them. You can also deal with this by reading the emails and putting an item on your tasklist "think about the problem that Mary sent to me and reply" and move the whole previous thread immediately, if the ball is in your court. The goal is to separate, immediately upon receipt, things you need to deal with now, things you need to deal with later, and get those things onto an easily scanned list and out of your inbox.
7. Finally, a note about subject lines. Sometimes sorting by person name is not convenient for moving emails into subfolders. because people are involved with more than one project. So come up with a subject-line system that works for you. Prepend your subject lines with words that match your folder structure: e.g., "Re: Smith Account: Waiting on Jim." Use it consistently. You can't make other people do the same, so occaisionally you'll still be faced with impossible-to-sort subjects like "Re: Huh?" and "Re: Waiting for feedback", but as your system takes hold, people will reply to you with your subject and it will make it a whole lot easier to sort later on.

By following these tips, I have managed to feel in control of my email--and I receive up to 200 business-related emails a day. Once I started thinking about these emails in an abstract way: what does this email represent in terms of my to-do list? I was much better positioned to filter them instantly and keep my inbox clean. I think we all too often rely on our technology to do a job best suited to our brains--there's not a filter in the world intelligent enough to really sort our emails, and furthermore, if we rely on the technology, we will miss important items that we really do need to address. But instituting a few simple policies--rules for oneself that don't require much thought--can generate huge results in terms of organization.

Google’s revenue model is largely tied to the sales of ads. Newspaper’s revenue model is also mainly tied to selling ads.

It works quite simple: the more people either attract, the more money they might make.

The Wall Street Journal printed a very interesting story today, “Google This: U.K. Papers Vie to Buy Search Terms” by Aaron O. Patrick.

This story reveals the tactics followed by some newspapers to get more readers: Google Adwords.

At first, the idea of advertising to increase “circulation” to generate more income from advertising seemed a little silly. But at the end of the day, if their ventures are net positive, then they should keep at it.

More and more I thought about it, the more sense it made. After all, I have seen ads on one TV network for shows in another TV network. How is the newspapers’ strategy any different?

Anyway, the real issue here is Google. It is becoming so large and powerful, that other companies with similar revenue models have to purchase space in order to stay in business.

Google has about 50% of the search market. And most people start their web experiences with a search. Over 90% of the people searching don’t make it past the first page of search results, so it makes good sense for advertisers to purchase space on that first page.

So, it seems, Google has wedged itself between eyeballs and content. I wonder if there is a way to wedge another revenue source between eyeballs and Google. Start thinking!

Labels: advertising, Google, Online Advertising

It's been a long long time since I have seen this much hype surrounding an unknown announcement and this much expectation placed on rumor and speculation. With such a legacy of innovation to live up to, I personally was moved by yesterday's introductions of AppleTV and the iPhone. Keep in mind that this "legacy" is not to just a consumer group, but a cult-like following that has a personal connection to the tools they use, to the point of putting Apple stickers on the backs of their cars as if they (we) are highschool kids projecting and defining personality through association with a band, a surf/skate/snow brand, or a sports team.

I haven't even watched the keynote address yet, but I will. I read a play by play though and found that I too, was sitting on the edge of my seat.

In prepping to write this, I considered including a quote regarding "expectations".

I found the following...

Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

I read it and thought "That'll work." Then I looked at the attribution. Steve Jobs. I don't know if it was just ironic or a sign.

With so much buzz and technews coverage, the excitement heard in consumer response is widespread. However, there were more than a few responses that left me scratching my head...

"I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed with the iPhone. While it does seem crammed with features and is certainly visually attractive, I don't think that the smart phone aspect of it will take off."

He's probably right. Remind me to not include that guy on my team.

And...

"Aside from the somewhat excessive cost (though Jobs does have a point in that we seem to gladly pay as much for two to three separate devices), it does seem like the iPhone is everything hoped for, featurewise."

Excessive cost? I guess this guy doesn't remember the $800 Newton that although first of its kind, was widely panned for just not working. Or dropping $2500 on a Centris with a 500mb hard drive and "speech recognition."

Someone has to have vision. Someone has to be first. Someone has to have the nerve to innovate. There will also always be someone to doubt, find fault, or criticize and then take pleasure in failure. I'd bet too that if those same people read Steve's quote, they just really couldn't relate.

p.s. Just to be fair, upon additional reading and review during the day after, the New York Time's David Pogue did ask relevant and insightful questions while still giving it up to "the class, the looks and the effortlessness of [the] iPod"

"Note, too, that the software is still unfinished, and many questions are still unanswered. Will you be able to turn your own songs into ring tones? Will there be a voice recorder? Will the camera record video? Can you use Skype to make free Internet calls? Will the battery really last for five hours of talking, video and Web browsing (or 16 hours of audio playback)? Will you someday be able to buy songs and videos from the iTunes Store right on the phone?"

Labels: Apple, David Pogue, iPhone, New York Times, Steve Jobs

I recently came across an article about how user interfaces matter that was written 11 years ago. “The Importance of Designing Usable Systems” by Susan M. Dray.

The article’s content is still relevant and insightful. Many of the points covered are relatively obvious to us now – but they are presented in a way that is easy to understand, drawing palpable benefits for non-UI-heads.

It is a nice, short and powerful piece. Read it and share it with people who still don’t value or believe in the benefit of good UI. Tell these non believers that this not a “new thing” or “trend.”

This stuff matters and they better pay attention or they will be left behind.

Labels: Design

iTalian: Colander that includes scroll wheel for easy pasta size selection.

iAndi: iPod that only plays reggae.

iRoc: Apple brings back classic redneck car! Includes scroll wheel.

iBall: Basketball with wifi connection that can also play MP3s- Cool!

iScream: Handheld device that throws tantrums at the press of a button.

iPatch: Portable GPS system allowing pirates to find victims on the high seas. Also plays MP3's and includes scroll wheel.

iYaiYai / iVey: Hispanic and Jewish portable complaint recorders.

iCarumba: speaks for itself.

iLoveYou: PDA reminds you of important birthdays and anniversaries with electroshock module. Also includes phone.

iPeedMyself: Alert mechanism inserted into adult diapers and used in nursing homes. Daycare version plays endless Barney loops, too!

iTarzan: Translating device used by primitive cultures to communicate with anthropologists.

iConfess: Portable voice recorder with Vatican-compatible Internet connection (utilizing IMAP: Internet Multipurpose Absolution Protocol).

iKissYou: Device for lonely Turks to locate willing women. Mahir in a box!

iDidIt: A one-button device equipped with GPS to instantly summon the police to the scene of the crime you just committed.

iDol: Pocket multi-deity worship device.

iSurrender: Electronic device that displays white flag and plays French national anthem.

We were chatting today about Apple's amazing (and amazingly beautiful) new phone, and someone mentioned that it takes serious cojones to remake yourself from a computer company into an electronics company.

But it isn't as difficult a decision for Apple as some may think.

Sure you can look at it from the perspective of declining margins in the computer business, and you should also probably consider Job's eternal focus on hardware design as a main selling point for Apple, but there is a stronger argument for why Apple might shift its focus towards electronics.

Because the electronics out there on the shelves SUCKS. This is a total opportunity for Apple, every single Sony Sanyo Panasonic Motorola Palm Rim Casio Canon company out there should realize that Apple can really screw up their gravy-train with a release like the iphone in their market segment.

I can just see Rim and Palm shaking in their boots (as I write this at 5:00 on the 9th apple's stock has climbed 8% and RIM and PALM have plummeted an equal amount). We are looking at an array of electronics out there that is truly so horrible, that people will spend any amount for a device that just does what they want and isn't embarrassing when they pull it out of their pocket. The iPod has proven that.

So I though that while everyone is "ooohhhing" and "aaahhhing" over the iphone, I would show you the REAL reason why the iphone will do so well: because it has no competition. Because if you walk around best buy it is just depressing: nothing is exciting and nothing makes you WANT to have it.

Here are some electronics devices that are ugly and sick.


The new skype phone. Some have made fun of it, calling it the iClunk.




Designed by Boucheron, the Signature Cobra is made from a pear-cut diamond, a round white diamond, two emerald eyes and all of 439 horrifying rubies. Count 'em yourself if you are a glutton. The price tag is about what you would expect for class-A prime insanity: US $310,000. Well they do have a discounted diamond-only version running for $115,000, if you are trying to cut down on flamboyant frivolity.



Venmill industries has a cd dvd repair unit worth mentioning. It is by all accounts a terrifically useful wondrous device that restores scratched dvds and make life grand again. It should win the "totally spewingly ugly" award. It comes in other ugly colors too: http://www.venmill.com/products/skipaway.asp




Bushnell and XM radio team up to make this radio/gps/portable weather-center combo which is ugly as sin. Part of what I am reacting to here is the gaudy icons, but I am also in a state of deep existential WHY. Why was this built? Who is it for? What am I missing?


From industrial designer Jacob Jenson, a new smoke detector that isn't completely ugly and grimly functional like every other white plastic-grilled model out there - but it is TERRIFYING and reminds me of a Cylon from Battlestar Gallactica. Imagine this in the hallway outside of my little girl's room - I could tell her if she isn't good the smoke alarm will get her. Couldn't Apple release some sort of iHub that is WiFi AND checks the air for pollutants?




Citizen has released the uniquely stupid i:VIRT, a watch equipped with Bluetooth that DOES NOTHING except enabling you to connect to your mobile phone and reject or accept calls, and see who called you. You can't actually talk to anyone a la Dick Tracy, you understand, but at least you can see who you're about to talk to! Wow, all this and unappealing too! Apple should have a field day with watches!



These noise-canceling headphones from Koss are vaguely industrial-Matrix chic, but just totally fails the "but will my girlfriend wear them" test. The wonderful "rko" look they have does have a place, don't get me wrong, but it isn't on my head.




Wii Classic Controller vs. classic SNES controller
We all love the Wii, but the normal controller sure hasn’t gotten much prettier over the years. Wouldn't you love to see a seriously beautiful gaming machine that evokes the object lust everyone felt for the first imacs?

Some additional reading:

Apple products over the years:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/01/30-years-in-apple-products-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Seemingly stupid apple moves that have since been validated: http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/2006/10/26/seemingly-stupid-apple-moves-that-were-actually-brilliant/

Labels: Apple, Design, Industrial Design

Ok, we are not Google, but we do have fun. Maybe not this much fun!

It’s amazing how a little flexibility, respect and a commitment to letting people be people can have such an amazing impact on the office culture.

I haven’t read any of these tactics in any business organizational behavior book (disclaimer: I have only read a handful of them, so it might be out there… somewhere), but I can tell you this much: it works. Happy = Good Work.

Several years back, we used to play Unreal Tournament after work once or twice a week. This game engaged designers, project managers, programmers and even management in a free for all on-line shoot-em-up tournament.

The experience allowed us to get to know each other in different ways, and it provided an additional layer of shared sub-context.

I highly recommend people in the position to steer their company’s culture to explore some of these techniques to improve things around the workplace.

In the mean time, Hoby is working hard to perfect the “Sweet Idfive” re-mix rendition of “Sweet Child O’Mine.”

Like I said, we are no Google, but we are fun. Darnit!

Microsoft’s homepage underwent serious changes recently (December 14^th). And these changes are good!

In short: simple design and good architecture makes all the difference.

I am generally very pleased when I come across good usability design. And saying that Microsoft has good usability design seems silly and unnatural. But it is true – at least as far as their website is concerned.

So, I stumbled across their site last week while I was looking for a security update. At first sight, I noticed the site looked different – and immediately, I thought to myself… “Crap, now I will never be able to find what I am looking for!” Two seconds later, I was where I needed to be and I was delighted, to say the least.

Below, I am surfacing 5 reasons why I like the new design.

1. Where are we? The designers have made that much abundantly clear. The Microsoft mark is given plenty to space to breathe. Additionally, there is high contrast between the mark and the background color – all rolling up into a cool, relaxed, and clear presentation of the mark.
2. Happy humans help. Again, the idea of relaxed and cool is reinforced by their choice of photography – which makes their offer easier to swallow. They are putting a high emphasis on Vista, Zune, Xbox, and Windows Marketplace.
3. Portal with a preview? Click on the “Download and Trials” link. You will notice that the page grows opaque, the links get disabled, and a new window (layer/div) opens over the main content area. This new window contains a list and preview screenshots of the different destinations categorized under that parent link. We have seen screen previews before (ask.com) and we like them… Microsoft implemented three views for the list: icons and list, larger icons and just a list – much the way Windows Explorer works. I am not sure about bringing that metaphor to the web. I think there might be a better way to handle this.
4. News. Black band with white text. Super contrast and subtle way to sneak in content. The black bar is also used as a visual divider to separate promotions from content. Nicely done.
5. Preloaded vertical tabs. These bad boys are becoming more and more popular. I designed something like this over a year ago for a client of ours and it took a lot of convincing before it was accepted. I bet convincing people that vertical tabs are a good thing now after Google and Microsoft’s successful implementation wouldn’t be that difficult to do. Microsoft has about 80 links tucked away behind these tabs, but only 10-18 links are displayed at any given time. The categorization is quite nice and useful. The vertical tabs follow a hybrid information architecture model of audience and task - which I think works rather well here. I’d be willing to bet designing this IA is where they spent the bulk of their time.

All in all, I am very pleased and surprised by all this great work.

Here are a couple of Q&A’s about their new home page.

Labels: Design