frivolous motion

On the Nature of Progress

2015-04-27T21:44:00.000-04:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about change recently. About how we all move through time — how time passes seemingly without end. How progress is inevitable, inescapable, incontrovertible. And yet the word progress is not quite right for what’s happening and that’s been bugging me. In one sense, sure, it’s pretty indisputable that we are moving forward, for there is no alternative. But progress implies moving upward as well, and, well, that’s where things get sticky.

Is it really progress that we are increasingly filling every single spare moment of our lives with micro-activities: tweets, shares, snaps, glances, notifications, likes, favs, follows, retweets, reblogs, comments, replies, in-app purchases, taps, force-touches, deep presses, pinches, swipes, clicks, scrolls, zooms, plays, skips-forward, skips-backward, pauses, unpauses, replays, replays, CMD+Ts, CMD+Ns, copies, cuts, pastes, saves, opens, closes, backups, restores, CMD+Qs?

I’m not saying it isn’t progress, just that we should — especially those of us in charge of designing these micro-activities (and the products that are powered by them) — think deeply about whether it actually is. And beyond that, can we agree on whether or not this so-called progress is good?

Seriously:

How to browse the mobile web: Navigate to site Close modal popup (if you can) Decline native app offer Close top banner Close bottom banner
— Justin Palmer (@Caged) April 21, 2015

Nine years ago, Anil Dash implored us to make something meaningful, quoting a talk Linda Stone gave at Gel Conference:

Does this product, service, feature, or message enhance and improve our quality of life? Does it help us protect, filter, create a meaningful connection?

This was before the Facebook News Feed (if you can imagine back that far), before Twitter and Instagram, before the iPhone (and before “apps”), before Snapchat, before push notifications — way before Apple Watch. Dash was talking about blogging tools, specifically, but also generally about the “Web 2.0 malaise” many of us felt back then. Countless times a day, it seemed, TechCrunch or Mashable or somebody else introduced a “social network for ______” that was little more than a clone of yesterday’s “innovative new service” for a specific vertical. The so-called “progress” back then had become such a parody of itself that Michael Sippey wrote a Web 2.0 Checklist. Remember any of this stuff?

Public beta alpha
Give us your email address, we’ll let you know when it’s ready
Tags
Feeds for everything
Built with Rails
Sprinkled with Ajax
Yellow fade
Blue gradients
Embarrassing, but accurate.

For all the strides we’ve made in tools and services and speed and connectivity, can we really say we’re solving more meaningful problems or empowering people to have more meaningful interactions than we were back then? Is it possible we’re all too caught up in keeping up to do anything else?

When household appliances appeared en masse back in the 50s, promising (women) to make things easier, faster, better, cheaper, we instead ended up turning these devices into must-haves, filling our free time with additional work, responsibilities, and “needs.” More work led to more disposable income which led to more purchases which led to more free time which led to more work. And the cycle continues today on a curve that maps roughly with Moore’s Law.

The number of verbs we’ve added to our lexicon under the guise of “features” is growing at a staggering rate (see paragraph 2 above for just a few) and verbs are expensive. It sounds obvious, but I think it’s important: verbs are things we do. Which means each new verb replaces time spent doing other verbs.

I’m as fascinated by the potential of wearables and the Internet of Things as the next guy, but as technology gets faster, more invisible and more personal, the duration of every interaction shrinks. We measure desktop usage in hours, smartphone usage in minutes, watch usage in seconds. And so we invent more verbs to fill these increasingly short periods of time. “To watch” has been replaced by “to look” which has been replaced by “to glance.”

What do we miss out on when our focus narrows? What verbs disappear entirely when our attention operates in seconds and milliseconds? What interactions become irrelevant, what meaning becomes meaningless?

Here’s a verb: to love. How long does that take?

The New York Times says 36 questions and 4 minutes of sustained eye contact. Can that be made more efficient? Is it within reason that we’ll reach a point in human evolution in which love becomes no longer possible, no longer essential? Could our actions be accelerating the timeline for the extinction of love as surely as they are the warming of our climate?

I know this all could be reading as overwhelmingly curmudgeonly, but I’m not at all saying designers and developers and inventors should just close up shop, go home, and accept the world as it is.

I’m saying that maybe we need more of this:

It's cool that Facebook is doing disaster assessment using current and past cities of residence. pic.twitter.com/bzRMlJ28Zh
— Sam Kottler (@samkottler) April 25, 2015

And less of this:

"Targeted" native advertising can be the absolute worst sometimes. +More! @facebook pic.twitter.com/jaH6BCS7pC
— Kevin M. Keating (@frivmo) April 16, 2015

I’m saying that it is our responsibility to design the future we want to have. That very little is truly inevitable unless we allow it to be. That the sun still shines, people still smile, and better is still possible. That we have a duty to ourselves and our fellow humans to ask a single question about every new feature, every new interaction, every new product:

Is this meaningful?

And if not, how can I make it so?

Can You Feel The Nostalgia Tonight?

2009-03-27T08:44:00.003-04:00

Elton John’s “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” played in my iTunes library last night.

I haven’t heard this song in years.

It’s been nearly 15 years since Disney’s “The Lion King” was released.

And what I want to say about it is probably the reverse of what you’re thinking.

Most people yearn for what they say was the simpler, gentler, safer, time of “X years ago.” They say the world is getting worse, America is getting worse, that it’s harder and harder to get up in the morning and push through the day, harder to see why it matters.

But for some reason I don’t see this. I hear the lyrics of the song and it still resonates:

Can you feel the love tonight?

The peace the evening brings

The world, for once, in perfect harmony

With all its living things

Times are tough, I know, but there's so much to be thankful for. So many incredible things - even just in the world of technology - that are bringing people closer together in a way never before possible.

Facebook lets you connect with old next door neighbors (people your parents' age!) and your middle school best friend's Mom (you know, the awesome one who made you Taquitos and Pizza Pockets?)
Twitter connects people 24 hours a day over trivia, thoughts, feelings, opinions - everything uncensored, unfiltered, in real time. The Beat Poets would have killed for something like this.
The next version of iPhone software has the real potential to save lives (think the diabetes software/peripherals demoed a couple weeks ago) and connect people around common interests. You can play games together, collaborate on a finger painting masterpiece, share photos, videos, voice notes.
You can read books on portable devices. Start reading on your Kindle in bed, pick up where you left off on your iPhone during lunch, and if you lose interest or finish, a new book is a couple taps or clicks away. You no longer have to drive to the bookstore or wait a few days for something to arrive in the mail. New universes are seconds from being born.
Five years ago, you taught your mom how to use email. Now you're showing her how to manage a site using a custom installation of Wordpress, and set up a Facebook Page to connect with her church congregation and share news, events, and thoughts for the day. For goodness sake, your grandparents even have email and Blackberries now.
The President of the United States communicates with regular people, has a video podcast, takes questions from website visitors, and doesn't let the only message we hear be something filtered through a partisan media.

There's so much more than just that, but essentially what I'm saying is that things are oftentimes more awesome than they seem on the surface. Even in an age of economic and social turmoil, there are amazing innovations, and people and companies are doing amazing things that are bringing us closer and closer together.

There's peace and stillness to be found amidst all the noise and distractions.

"There's a calm surrender to the rush of day" lurking beneath the surface, if you're willing to scratch it.

You’re Thinking Like A Marketer, Not A Customer

2008-06-05T22:49:00.010-04:00

If you’re running a site to promote something (a product, an event, a way-of-life), and you’re doing so not simply out of the goodness of your heart,* but for financial gain, chances are you’re doing it totally wrong.

And if you are doing it wrong (and you probably are, trust me), then you’re losing money, losing audience, and losing sight of what makes your product/event/philosophy remarkable.

Nine times out of ten, the big problem is that you’re thinking from the point of view of a Marketer rather than as a customer. It’s nothing new to say this, of course, but I wonder if you could recognize it when you see it.

This is one of the biggest signs, and it turns people away before they’ve even had time to figure out where they are:

A homepage that screams “Buy This Now!,” instead of posing a polite, quiet, “How can I help you find what you’re looking for?” or even, “Hi! How are you today? Please feel free to take a look around and let me know if you have any questions.”

There’s a reason that brick-and-mortar salespeople** and cashiers and waitstaff and receptionists and pretty much everyone else use polite language like that above. They are there to serve you and assist you in paying for what you want to buy, not shove the Bison Burger Special down your throat.

Consider this bit of analogy:

It is raining. Hard. You don’t have an umbrella, but need to walk another twenty blocks down Fifth Avenue to get to your job interview. Crossing 36th Street, you glimpse a rack of umbrellas inside a store you’ve never shopped in before, a place called Jerry’s Stuff On Fifth. Sweet. Salvation. You open the door. *Ringaling!* You step inside, casually scanning the room from side to side to locate the rack of umbrellas you had noticed through the window, as you shake off a little of the rainwater and try to calm your breath. Without warning, you are ambushed by sales associates on either side, yelling and arm-waving and shoving Plastic Thermoses in front of your face.

“$9.95! Two for $15!!! Tell A Friend!!! Buy Now! Buy Now! $9.95! Two for $15! Only today! Special Special!”

You try to speak: “But...but...I just want an um—”

“Thermos Special! Buy Today! $9.95! Two for $15!”

If you don’t go running back out into the thunderstorm after enduring that, then I’ll eat my shorts. (Oh wait, I already did that.)

Make sense yet?

Here’s a translation of my little allegory:

Rain = Google

Umbrella = Search Query

Jerry’s Stuff On Fifth = Your Website

Plastic Thermoses Salespeople Of Doom = Bullshit Links and Flashing Banners and Fancy Rollovers and Embedded Commercials and BUY NOW MOTHERFUCKER Buttons that have absolutely, positively, NOTHING to do with what your customers want because you haven’t even bothered to ask them.

Any questions?

----
*Of course, even people doing stuff out of the goodness of their hearts routinely make the same mistakes. But the stakes are frequently higher when money gets involved, and for some reason, folks working for-profit tend to approach things with a much higher dose of ego, self-deception, and propensity for outright lying and other unethical behaviors that basically define “Marketers.” (Sub-note: marketers are not intrinsically evil. Marketers (capital M) are.) Go Back Up

**I am aware that a lot of salespeople are assholes. These are not the ones I am referring to. Have you stopped to think that your site acts like the very worst of the worst Timeshare salespeople? Go Back Up

Election 2008: Racism Still Exists

2008-02-06T09:11:00.000-05:00

This morning, two of my coworkers asked me who I voted for in last night’s primary. Upon hearing that my support went to Barack Obama, they responded with absolute horror. No, not just incredulity. Horror. Shock. Disgust. I’m serious.

“What do you think is going to happen to America if that guy...you know he’s black...you kids don’t know...you don’t know what it was like...when that black guy was Mayor of New York - Dinkins - do you think that was good...I’m telling you right now, white people are going to have a hard time...I would never vote for him...” and on and on.

Effectively what they were saying was that electing Barack Obama as President would turn the United States of America into the United States of African-America, a place where blacks hold uncompromising power over whites and other minorities.

To which I say, quite frankly, “What the fuck?!”

These women - one is from Russia and the other from Peru - both U.S. Citizens now (interesting, perhaps, though I’m sure that has less than nothing to do with their feelings) - just shook my faith in the American electorate. Not because they want someone other than Obama to win (one of them didn’t even vote, and hundreds of thousands of other people want someone else, too), but their (lack of) reasoning for it. I mean, I’m not asking other people to carefully consider the policies and qualifications of the candidates. I guess all I’m looking for is a shred of rationality - even merely a little excitement about one candidate in particular - a sense that the motivation is rooted in something other than being strongly against (and especially for racist, sexist, or related reasons) the others.

I tried to argue that just because they didn’t like New York City under Mayor Dinkins (and here my other coworker piped up to say that he liked Dinkins), that didn’t mean that America under Obama would be remotely similar. The assertion that not all black people are exactly the same, just as not all white people are exactly the same (duh) fell on deaf ears.

One of these women actually indicated that if Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic race, she would, without a doubt, vote for “that other guy” - a politician on the “other side” whose name she didn’t even know.

I have never - never, not once, ever, in my entire life - personally experienced the expression of sentiments like those to which I was a witness this morning. Never.

How naive of me to think that we had somehow moved past this kind of hateful, hurtful stuff. The way they said to me, “You want a black man to be President?” with such disregard for the possibility that I might have black relatives or close friends - just an assumption that I was somehow betraying my “race” - really hurt. And it was really disappointing. I really hurt for them, too.

One thing I agreed with: “You kids don’t know what it’s like.”

Nothing could be more true.

And, given the taste I got this morning, nothing could be more welcome.

Copyright Morality: The Kids Don’t Care

2007-12-21T09:40:00.000-05:00

David Pogue, NYTimes Technology-writer extraordinare, writes a common-sense, but thought-provoking and foreboding (if you’re Old Media) account of the coming shift in perception about what is and isn’t regarded as moral and ethical (perhaps eventually legal) regarding copyright infringement and piracy.

It’s one of those, “Well, duh” articles that seems like anything but to the record and movie and TV industries, who are (a “scant” 10 years after Napster shook everything up) finally (barely) beginning to realize that things might be different than they used to be.

But while I (and you, most likely) certainly have a pretty strong grasp of the moral grey areas of copyright and know that things are changing fast, many folks (espec apparently don’t, and Pogue’s article does more to illustrate the coming shift than anything else I’ve read.

Pogue describes a presentation he often gives, in which he asks the audience for a show of hands regarding whether or not the copyright-related behavior he describes is OK.

‘I borrow a CD from the library. Who thinks that's wrong?’ (No hands go up.)
‘I own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the same CD from the library and rip it to my computer.’ (A couple of hands.)
‘I have 2,000 vinyl records. So I borrow some of the same albums on CD from the library and rip those.’
‘I buy a DVD. But I'm worried about its longevity; I have a three-year-old. So I make a safety copy.’

He goes on, and with each successive question, more and more hands go up, indicating a perception that the behavior described is not cool, not right, not allowed.

The exercise is intended, of course, to illustrate how many shades of wrongness there are, and how many different opinions. Almost always, there's a lot of murmuring, raised eyebrows and chuckling.

But then, something remarkable happened. Pogue gave this exact presentation at a college - the first time he’s spoken to a crowd consisting only of “young people” - and it totally “bombed,” as he puts it.

Of the 500 people present, Pogue could get no more than 2 hands to raise for any of his questions.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, ‘O.K., let's try one that's a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don't want to pay for it. So you download it.’

There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.

‘Who thinks that might be wrong?’

Two hands out of 500.

College kids. The very same 18-24 demographic so prized by the content industries. I shudder (can one shudder with joy?) to think what the high school kids would have to say about this. The next several years will be interesting.

Read Pogue’s article here.

Online Shopping And Painful Shipping

2007-12-20T09:04:00.000-05:00

It’s definitely crunch time for holiday shopping, and if you haven’t finished yet, well, get to it!

What I’m interested in knowing, though, is how much of your Christmas/Hanukkah/etc. shopping is done online, and how much is done by getting in a car (or by subway or bike or foot) and walking inside a store. What about for the rest of the year?

Marion Jensen, writing for TechConsumer, has a nice story about the convenience offered by shopping online.

Access to research. Access to a community. No lines. No paper coupons. No parking. No driving...What’s not to like?

I agree, and in fact, this Christmas - with the exception of an awesome winter coat for my girlfriend that she picked out - every single gift I’m giving was purchased online. Most through Amazon, of course, but I found a couple other great shops. Heck, even my Christmas cards were ordered online (yes, I actually bought stamps to mail these - all the while feeling like a freakin’ caveman, to be honest).

As I mentioned in a comment on the TechConsumer post, my biggest issue with ordering online has very little to do with the e-tailers themselves, and almost everything to do with deficiencies in the various delivery services (USPS, UPS, FedEx - they all have their issues). Ordering stuff is a snap. Click - done. But actually getting what you ordered is frequently almost impossible - especially if you live in a apartment building.

UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturday, for example, and after three attempts, they’ll return your package - even if you call them to reschedule. They also rarely read or listen to any instructions you try to give them. A couple months ago I ordered a nice dresser set from Target, and by some stroke of complete idiocy, they decided to ship this piece of furniture using a service that only delivers during business hours. As a result, the dresser was returned to Target, my order automatically cancelled, and I refused to place it again. Both Target and UPS lost money because of this lack of judgment.

The United States Postal Service is even worse. They won’t ever leave a package at my door - and of course they only deliver during the day - which means I have to go to the post office to pick it up. Fine, I can deal with that, I have a branch that’s a 10-minute walk away. But wait - it is only open until 5 p.m. during the week, and for only three hours in the morning on Saturdays. How often do I get home before 5, and how frequently am I around on Saturday? Never, and not so frequently. USPS also has a terribly antiquated tracking system that hardly qualifies to be called such, and their phone service is unbearable.

Of course, there are those who recommend having packages shipped to your workplace, and sure, this is usually a better option. But sometimes this is impossible - furniture, large boxes full of Christmas presents: this stuff can’t be carried on the subway.

Is this an argument for buying a car and moving into the suburbs? Some might try to turn it into that, but I’m convinced it is less a deficiency of my lifestyle choice (which I share with millions), than a case of delivery services failing to keep up with the times, and focused far too much on their corporate customers than little people like you and me. Come on guys, surely there’s a better way. Maybe making the shipment tracking better would help? Some communication, even?

I don’t think I’m asking too much. All I want is a fast, reliable way to get my Christmas presents.

What has your online shopping experience been like?

ReadWriteWeb Redesign Analysis And Critique

2007-12-18T09:06:00.000-05:00

ReadWriteWeb, a popular technology blog started by Richard MacManus launched a redesign yesterday (by San Francisco-based Ideacodes). The new look was greeted with a reaction ranging from “it’s awesome” to “Worst. Look. Ever.” with a lot of stuff in-between.

Before I get into my opinion on the design, let me just say that ReadWriteWeb is one of my top-read blogs. MacManus is a smart guy, and his team of writers are pretty high-quality, too. It’s good stuff. I wouldn’t be so picky if I didn’t care.

And this is precisely why the new design is so unfortunate. I won’t pretend to remember what the old design looked like (and the WayBack Machine is down at the moment, so I can’t check), but what was always important to me about ReadWriteWeb was its content. Well-written, well-researched articles offering an interesting and original point of view. The site made sense. And now it’s all over the place. Navigation is redundant, inconsistent, and lacks hierarchy. I don’t want to click anything at all. There are all sorts of little issues with the redesign, and I’ll touch on some of them below, but the biggest issue is this lack of hierarchy - fueled, at least in part, by the tendency of successful blogs to become “content networks.” GigaOM recently relaunched version 2.0 with a similar focus (and a redesign by the same company - coincidence?) and TechCrunch has long been a poster child for this type of “community” of related sites linking to one another. But it just convolutes things and it’s impossible to know what content you should actually care about. What’s important here, and how are these elements connected?

Another huge issue for me (and a quite unexpected one, to be honest) is Richard MacManus’ response to the criticism in the comments. He posted two very long and detailed comments of his own addressing the negative reactions, which, on the surface, might sound like the right thing to do. Isn’t that part of the Web 2.0 ethos, after all?

Yeah, it is, but not the way MacManus handled it on this occasion. I won’t spend too much time talking about this, because you should just read his responses for yourself, but among other things, he even goes so far as to state that he doesn’t respect certain commenters - not their comments - but as people. His justification for this is that they didn’t show respect for himself or the designers, and I don’t see this at all. Two of the three commenters he singled out actually had positive things to say about the design, and I fail to recall a rule somewhere that specifies that all opinions on the subject of design have to be justified by technical know-how.

Not everyone is a designer. Not everyone knows how to explain what they don’t like about a design. You can’t ask readers for feedback and then say that only qualified, properly-educated professionals are allowed to have an opinion.

Here’s another thing that really got to me. In his response, MacManus writes:

Winston said: "Guessing that this may be the result of attempting to appease conflicting opinions through out the design process. Save opinions till the comp is fully fleshed out, then select one.. no mixing and matching."

RM: This is an extraordinary assumption to make. "Conflicting opinions"? There were none. Winston, up to this point your critique was valid. I didn't agree with a lot of it, but at least it didn't jump to conclusions like this.

He claims Winston made an absurd jump to the idea of conflicting opinions leading to issues in the design process (all too typical, gotta say). But in the article announcing the design, MacManus actually says pretty much exactly that.

Personally I love the new logo and header, but I am certain they will provoke different opinions. Why? Because that was the case with the ReadWriteWeb authors during the design process!

I’m not saying that MacManus was wrong to respond, nor that he is wrong about everything he defends. Some of the commenters were indeed disrespectful - it’s the internet, after all - but when MacManus says, “Anyway, enough of me on my high horse,” that’s a clue that he took the wrong approach in his response, and failed to attempt to understand why the reaction was so negative and why “much of the critique here did not mention how clean, modern and fresh the design is.” Could it be because it’s not? Is that even a possibility?

Let’s take a look at the design itself, now, starting with the new logo.

(ReadWriteWeb logo: Before and after)

Comments on the original logo:

The slash is a little awkward and has too light of a stroke.
The color is a little unbalanced - too much red on the left.
The flat yin/yang is just fine.
Interesting typeface.
Clear separation between the Read/Write part of the name and the Web.
Perhaps too thin to be reproduced at small sizes.

The new logo, however, takes these problems and expands on them.

Univers is a poor choice as the typeface. The condensed version here, with multiple point sizes being mixed together in CamelCapsStyle and with a hierarchy of blackness makes it pretty unreadable, even if the focus should be on the initials. (sidenote: are they trying to purchase the rww.com domain?)
Why the subtle gradient on the Yin/Yang? The rest of the site and the logo use flat colors.
I actually like the deep red color, why is the logo just black and grey?
Why did they flip the Yin/Yang over?
I know MacManus likes the Yin/Yang but it doesn’t work with the new slash-less branding. It’s also an extremely overused graphic symbol, and can’t stand on its own.
The logo is really horizontal and has to be reproduced at a relatively large size to be readable.
It really does just look awkward and unprofessional.
Why the rounded rectangle enclosure for the YinYang? It it supposed to be the same as the GigaOm branding?
Kerning (space between letters) is bad. Looks like the default, and makes it seem like there is an actual space between Read and Write, while Write and Web are more snug. Look closely at the dWr and eWe groupings to see this imbalance.

Moving on. My least favorite part of the redesign is the header. Here’s the first piece.

Logo aside, what are the issues? Well, as I mentioned earlier in the post, there is no clear hierarchy to the navigation. Some links on top of the (admittedly odd) rounded rectangle, and some underneath, separated by little shims. Everything gets a decent white rectangle on hover, but the sharp angles don’t quite fit with the rounded corners of the larger box. I actually tried to click the “RWW Network” text several times before realizing it is not a link. The light grey doesn’t do nearly enough to communicate “I am not a link, even though I’m in a really prominent position on the page.”

What is Last100? AltSearchEngine? How are these related? Is the CamelCaps supposed to be enough of a clue that these are sites in the RWW Network?

EverybodyUsesCamelCapsNowadays.

The right half of the header actually irks me more than anything else on the site. First, more links. How many links can you fit in one header with absolutely no hierarchy? RWW has 16. Seventeen if you count the logo, which takes you back to the homepage (sigh, even when you’re on the homepage!). Seventeen links and not a single one is remotely more important than the others.

But that’s not the bad part. The bad - awful - painful part is this collection of subscription forms and Feedburner chiclets. So many boxes, offering so little functionality to a regular reader. It clutters things up and isn’t even clear that the Feedburner chiclets are linked to entirely different feeds than the forms beside them. RWW looks too much like RSS. The custom “Go” buttons looks odd, and what does that mean anyway? Where are you going to go when you click it?!

Why not a single text area with a check box or radio buttons that let potential subscribers select daily or weekly email feeds? Make daily the default and only require someone to do something if they want a non-default setting, rather than forcing every potential subscriber to look at all these boxes and buttons and image links (and don’t forget the “Subscribe” text link, which points to the XML file) and decide between them.

And then there’s another text box underneath, making the header a veritable forest of forms. Can I submit my CV there, too?

I hope you’re not browsing with a font size larger than the default. If you are, you’ll notice that the header navigation is completely broken from an accessibility standpoint. Links disappear, everything overlaps (including forms, which I had no idea was even possible!).

OK, that’s the big stuff. Now to some littler comments on other aspects of the redesign:

This I don’t understand. Why does the footer look like this on the home page:

And like this on another page?

The “Earlier This Week” section is just fine.

And I like these post boxes on the home page, with the related images and preview of the post.

Featured Posts is also nice, but too far down the page to actually be “featured.”

Decent main content on the home page. Latest post and popular posts are featured. My beefs with the design are a lot less with the way the content is presented than with how it is structured and the navigation.

Look, more links! Lots more links in the footer. All the links in the header are down there, too. Why not put a : after RWW Network to separate it more, rather than a | which again makes it look like a visited link

OK, what’s going on here with the formatting for the comment form? Look at that (lack of) alignment! I don’t love it, and it takes away from the cleanliness of the design and the occasionally nice light grey horizontal rules.

And finally, we get two sections in the sidebar with tag clouds. One labeled “Popular Tags” that contains at least 50, and then a totally gratuitous Swicki widget, of which there are two in the sidebar (one with tags, and one that is just a Search form). Tags are cool, but this is overkill and totally non-functional.

What do you think?

The Case Against Undo

2007-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Paul Buchheit (via Google Blogoscoped) is calling for more use of “Undo” in software - particularly for GMail to add it to the “Send” command. He says, “this will require adding a short delivery delay, like 10 sec, but it's worth it.” Philip Lessen of GB basically supports this assertion, though he adds:

...there’s still the problem that we’re not used to an Undo option suddenly disappearing, which would be what happens after the 10 seconds... maybe there needs to be a countdown ticker as well, or is all this just shifting the same problem around?

I get where they’re coming from. We have, in many ways, been trained that you can always take back your actions on computers - at least when it comes to word processing, browsing websites (though not Flash-based ones!) and using other applications like Photoshop (though only a specified number of steps - so take snapshots!). But one action that there has never (to my knowledge) been an undo associated with is email, and adding it now overcomplicates a commonly understood action.

If implemented in the manner Paul advocates, an “Undo” action adds time to a medium already slower than other forms of messaging that are becoming widely used (IM, SMS, etc.). 10 seconds is a long time on the web. I, for one, do not want to have my email queued for any amount of time to compensate for others acting without thinking and sending messages unintentionally.

And why 10 seconds, anyway? Why not 5 minutes, while we’re at it? You know, just in case you click send, go make a cup of coffee, and while waiting for the water to boil realize that you actually just sent that angry email about your boss as “Reply All” instead of just “Reply to your secret girlfriend in Accounting.”

Just because it’s possible to take something back on the web doesn’t mean that it is a good interaction model, and online communication is one place where I’d argue that it would actually be a negative presence - reinforcing problematic behaviors like carelessness and lack-of-attention. You can’t take back what you say on the phone or in person. Why should we expect to be able to do so online?

That said, I think a feature checking for an attachment whenever you write “attached” or similar (like this Greasemonkey script does) could be a welcome addition.

Ultimately, technology can’t make up for human error - nor should it be expected to. If you screw up and mis-send a message, or forget the attachment, there is always a solution:

Apologize, re-send, and, if necessary, deal with the consequences of your recklessness and haste.

You know, just like in the “Real World.”

50 Critical Questions About Your Website:

2007-12-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

Can you tell someone how to get to your site without having to spell anything?
Are the URLs human-readable or are they full of special characters and dynamically-generated gobbledygook?
Do you have an About page?
Can visitors tell what your site is about without visiting your About page?
Is your contact information readily available on every page - or at least from every page?
If not, what are you hiding from? Your customers?
Is your home page doing you any favors or is it merely an “Enter Site” gateway?
Do you have an RSS Feed?
Did you decorate for the holidays?
When is the last time you added new content?
Why has it been so long?
Is your site ranking highly in search engines for relevant keywords?
What about for your name? Or your business name?
What are your relevant keywords, anyway?
Is anyone linking to you these days?
If not, what can you do to make this happen?
Who are you linking to these days?
How long does it take your site to load at your mother’s house?
Do you need to download anything on her computer to even see your site?
What is the single most important thing you want a visitor to do?
Is that clear from looking at your site?
Does your site look professional, or does it look like a teenager’s MySpace page?
Do you link out to your other web presences (social network profiles, Twitter account, YouTube page, Flickr photostream)?
Is it clear what content is protected by Copyright and what is free to take and re-use?
What one thing can you do to your site today to increase visitors?
Are you commenting on blogs and building relationships with other site-owners in your industry or niche?
How does your site look on a mobile device?
An iPhone?
Blackberry?
Cheapo-plastic-freebie phone?
Amazon Kindle?
Is your site usable with images turned off?
On a computer with no Flash or Javascript?
In every web browser?
How many clicks does it take for a visitor to give you money?
Is your site “fine for the moment” or is it flexible enough to be fine for the next 5 years?
Are your ads annoying?
How easy is it for a visitor to leave a comment or write a review?
Can your site run without you?
Is the entire site backed up?
Is the important stuff backed up multiple times in multiple formats in multiple physical locations?
How long would it take to turn your entire site navy blue with white text?
Is this time measured in seconds (awesome), minutes (good), or hours (you’re doing things wrong)?
Is your branding consistent between your site, your printed material, your storefront, and you as a person?
Do your product descriptions sound like they were written by a person or by a mentally-ill robot programmed with the vocabulary of an out-of-work Madison Avenue ad guy whose last account was for one of those food processors they sell on TV at 2am?
Do you care about your website?
Is it important to you?
Are your readers and customers important to you as people, not just as eyeballs with wallets?
Would you be sad - actually sad - if your site disappeared tomorrow?
What would you do if it did?

Letterpress And The Death Of Print Design

2007-12-10T08:55:00.000-05:00

I’ve lately been really into letterpress prints, and just received a set of Christmas cards in the mail that I ordered from Etsy.

The cards I bought don’t seem to be in stock any longer, but they’re absolutely fantastic, and I can’t wait to address and send them to some of my relatives. There’s something really awesome about the human touch evident in letterpress work, and these cards are no exception. Each one is individual, and deserves one of those stickers they put on t-shirts at Target that lets you know that any inconsistencies in the coloring are totally intentional and critical to the design.

What’s odd to me about this latest obsession of mine, though, is that it comes at the same time I’m contemplating phasing out designing for print as a primary service that I offer through Frivmo Design. With the web there is just so much more than can be done - and for considerably less money. The best part, though, is that by designing sites using modern and standards-compliant markup, you are creating something future-proof, something sustainable, and something that is flexible in a way that print could never be. I find this openness and adaptability to be a thing of beauty, and I marvel at the possibilities offered by the medium. Every day brings the announcement of a new technology, a new approach, a new way of creating something incredible that allows people to connect in new and different ways.

This is not to say that I find print uninteresting. Far from it, in fact. I have always - always will, I imagine - been deeply moved by printed materials. From baseball cards, to comic books, to novels and books of philosophy and art - I have taken great joy in collecting and owning work on paper. I share a love for the tactility of the printed page with all true-blue book aficionados, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

But what bugs me about print, I guess, is that it is becoming less and less like the handmade letterpress Christmas cards I just bought, or the books and cards and papers I’ve collected over the years. Technology has made designing for print so much more efficient, so much more predictable, and by and large, it has lost the very uniqueness that makes it so special. It has become, in many ways, little more than a printed version of the Web, with less functionality - in a reversal of the “websites as digital versions of newspapers and magazines” trend evident early in the Web’s life, and still somewhat widespread. Just look at Wired Magazine for a glaring example of this reversal.

Print has lost its soul.

Yes, there are exceptions. Thank goodness for them. But I find myself less interested in the industry as a whole because new, exciting, and soulful work is so rare and so expensive. Mass production may have made print a viable and important art form, but the ultra-mass-production of today’s world is commoditizing it towards obsolescence.

All that said, I would love to learn the art of letterpress. If anyone has information about how to get started (and how to find an inexpensive and small, but still functional, letterpress machine), I would really appreciate your input.

Free Desktop Wallpaper: Putin Is Hot

2007-12-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

OK, so I made this desktop wallpaper last night to celebrate two of the best things in the world: Putin and Helvetica. Well, the Putin part is certainly debatable, but not Helvetica. And even if you, like many, have issues with the current Russian leadership, perhaps you’ll appreciate this wallpaper for its tongue-in-cheekness, or its judicious use of the best font ever, beautifully combining both Cyrillic and Latin letterforms. It says “Путин is hot,” which means Putin is hot.

The only version I have right now is 1024x768, but there will be larger sizes in the next day or so (up to 1920x1200). Edit: Added a gigantic 1920x1200 version. See below.

1024x768 PNG (151 KB)

1920x1200 PNG (308 KB)

5 Reasons Your Business Should Blog

2007-12-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

You should blog. Yes, you should. Especially if you have a business. There really aren’t any reasons not to, but here are some less-common reasons why it’s an absolute must.

Everybody else is doing it.
Sometimes the common wisdom is, in fact, wise. What do you think will happen if your competitor has a strong, personable web presence and your company has only a static site that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the great Bubble-popping of 1999? Well, nothing. And that’s exactly what you should be afraid of. Businesses without a big footprint on the web aren’t likely to hang around much longer, in this world where phonebooks and Chambers of Commerce and even brick & mortar storefronts are but artifacts of an age long gone.

Your product or service will improve.
Blogging actively is a great way to get better at what you do because it forces you to think laterally about what your company has to offer. You’ll find yourself doing research on topics related to your field, reading the websites and blogs of your competitors and learning from their mistakes (as well as their successes), and approaching your offerings with new insight gained from communicating with your customers on a regular basis.

You’ll like work more.
Every single time you post on your blog you’ll renew your commitment to the company, strengthening your investment in the business by approaching it from a deeply personal level. Meeting and debating with others in the industry, and sustaining relationships with your company’s biggest fans and evangelists, makes doing work less about the nitty-gritty businessy stuff, and much more about people and fostering connections.

Blogging is (practically) free.
Blogging is a wonderfully cheap and easy way to “keep your website updated” without having to call up your web designer every time you want to announce a special holiday promotion. If you’ve ever hired someone to design your site, you probably know that asking the designer to make your site easy to update alone adds a lot of development time and cost to the project. For most small business and individuals, paying for a custom Content Management System is totally unnecessary. Even using a simple, “free,” alternative CMS like Drupal or Wordpress adds substantially to the initial cost, and offers more functionality than most first-time site owners are likely to use.

If you’re at all like most small business folks, you have your plate full-to-overflowing without needing to learn the ins and outs of how to update your webpage, and certainly don’t have the time for it. Quite often, for folks with new businesses, all that’s necessary and practical is a set of static content pages outlining your product and your company and a frequently-updated blog where you can announce deals and new products, create some keyword-filled (but always relevant and helpful!) articles, and connect with your customers. And if you opt for just a blog, you don’t even have to pay monthly web hosting costs. Just be sure you hire a designer (Shameless plug: I’m available.) to get things looking professional. Few things will dampen your impact more than using a default template. Even better, if you get a good designer who cares about web standards, he or she will make it super easy to extend the scope of your website with little effort as your business grows and the money starts flowing in.

Blogging will keep you honest.
It’s all too easy to slip into the evil syntax of marketing-speak on your website and in your printed materials and this is precisely the wrong thing to do if you’re operating a small business. Nothing turns away customers faster than not-so-well-placed, and likely dishonest, “Number One In America Blue Ribbon Ultra Edition Highest ROI Billions Served Daily Bigger Than Amazon.” Having a blog helps you avoid these demons, because your customers and competitors and friends in the industry will no doubt call you out in the comments or on their own sites anytime you resort to such puffery. After a bit of time and effort and honesty, you’ll find the perfect blend of personality, approachability, and authority in your blogging voice.

Email And The Fight For Standards

2007-11-29T09:13:00.000-05:00

As a young web designer who cares about standards and accessibility, but also about paying the rent and having enough left over to buy some slick gadgets, I often find myself stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place when it comes to designing HTML emails for a client.

You see, on one hand there’s a strong part of me saying, “No! Don’t do it! It’s not worth it to revert to web practices straight out of 1999. Tables are bad! Inline styling is bad! People hate HTML email! Your code is ugly! Fish are friends, not food!”

But then the devil on my right shoulder (wearing a blue dress, not a blue beanie) speaks up to say, “Dude, you need money if you want that [insert latest Apple product here]. Clients will not settle for text-only emails, or at least they won’t pay you for them. And besides, studies show that HTML emails are actually much more cost-effective for businesses. Suck it up a code a table, you sissy. Everybody used to do it, why do you think you’re exempt?”

To some of you, this whole discussion might seem to be flying 50,000 feet up, but here I’ll try to summarize:

In web design, it is now widely accepted that using Tables (grids of rows and columns, just like one you’d create in MS Word) for the structure of a website is a bad practice because it doesn’t allow for the separation of content (the text and pictures and videos) from presentation, and requires a ton of maintenance, among (many) other things. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) emerged years ago as the solution to this problem, allowing designers to change the look of an entire site simply by editing a couple lines in a single external file (instead of every line on every page), and after a lot of activism in those early days, is now widely accepted as the proper way to code a site. Standards-compliant pages tend to load faster, have shorter development times, and are readable by every device now and in the future that has support for these standards.

The trouble is, most email clients don’t have this support, and some (like Outlook 2007) have even less support than their predecessors. Worse still, every single email client has vastly different support for various CSS/HTML elements, and will render your code in disgustingly problematic ways. So, by and large, many web design companies have abandoned email design, or if not, done it begrudgingly, ashamedly.

I’ve done my share, and it’s not glamorous work. Looking at what I’ve just written sometimes makes me want to cry (in pretty much the same manner that coding all-Flash sites does, but that’s a post for another day).

Finally, some of the big guns in web design and standards-advocacy are taking a stand and beginning to fight for standards support in all the major email clients, rather than ignoring the practicalities and pretending that HTML emails don’t or shouldn’t exist. That kind of denial sounds nice in theory, but in practice it’s totally flawed. Today, the default in nearly every email program is to send an HTML-formatted email. Any time you change the colors, or the fonts, or add some underlining or embed a picture - that’s HTML. So, if it has to exist anyway, shouldn’t it be done right?

These reasons (and others) are why the announcement of the Email Standards Project is such a big deal, and why I can hardly wait for the day when I’ll have coded my final bit of inline styling.

If you’re in the business, please join me in supporting this initiative. Here’s how you can help.

Never Buy Toilet Paper Again!

2007-11-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

The Problem
Why make a shopping trip once a month to buy toilet paper? (Or once a week if you live in New York and can only buy as much as you can carry on the subway.) Why should you have to remember to replace your toothbrush, or to buy more vitamins, or a fresh box of tampons, or those energy bars you eat every morning and buy in enormous quantities? Why, if you have a small business, do you pay one of your employees run to the store every week to buy more instant coffee? What about diapers? Babies poop a lot, and carrying huge packages of Pampers home from Costco every week is a major chore.

Constantly procuring all these everyday items, these necessities of living, uses up a lot of what might otherwise be free (or more productive) hours.

The Solution
What if you didn’t have to shop for these anymore? What if they just showed up on your doorstep every 1, 2, 3, or 6 months? What if shipping was free? What if everything was automated, yet you had the flexibility to change shipment frequencies with a click? What if there were a way to get toothbrushes every three months, vitamins and cereal and shampoo every month, and laundry detergent twice a year? What if it were possible to have coffee delivered to your office, tampons delivered to your apartment, and soap delivered to your ex-boyfriend’s place? What if there were no commitment, no minimum order, no fees whatsoever?

And then you save an additional 15% off your order. Off all your orders. Forever.

So About That Flying Car...
This awesome scenario is no George Jetson Pipe Dream, it’s a reality called Subscribe & Save, a new offering by - you probably guessed it - Amazon.

Sounds great to me.

The only slight problem I see is that most items are sold in bulk, which means having to clear out some space for storage. It’d also be great to have a weekly delivery option, but I understand the financial and logistical issues with this at the moment. However, a program like this is a wonderful step into the future, and will no doubt become even more flexible, and capable, as volume increases, and Amazon finds more cost- and time-efficient shipping methods.

What do you think? Useful?

What everyday items would you like to never have to worry about again?

Amazon to Re-“Kindle” Book Sales?

2007-11-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

Run, don’t walk to read this article on Newsweek announcing Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. Though more official details will be announced later today, Steven Levy’s cover story, “Reinventing the Book,” is more than worth a read.

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of electronic book readers, which some might find odd considering my near-fetishistic love of books-as-objects. What strikes me in the gut as an absolute truth, however, is this line by Jeff Bezos:

The key feature of a book is that it disappears.

He goes on to say this, in explanation:

I've actually asked myself, 'Why do I love these physical objects?' says Bezos. 'Why do I love the smell of glue and ink?' The answer is that I associate that smell with all those worlds I have been transported to. What we love is the words and ideas.

If I were to be asked why I thought that the Amazon Kindle would succeed where many others (like the Sony Reader) have failed, my answer would be, “Because Jeff gets it.”

By all accounts, Amazon has thought long and hard about what it means to be a book (they should know!), and what it means to improve upon this centuries-old form factor.

Here are some other reasons:

The Kindle is constantly connected to the Web via Sprint’s EVDO network, and this connectivity is free, allowing ubiquitous one-click downloads across the U.S. Talk about an easy impulse buy before a plane flight.
Book prices are standardized, taking a cue from iTunes.
You can subscribe to newspapers and blogs (and search Google/Wikipedia) on the device.
Millions of people already trust Amazon when it comes to books.
Amazon, better than pretty much anyone, understands how to make low-margin, high-volume profitable.

All of these are good reasons. But for me, the important thing is a gut feeling that they will get this right. It’s been nearly time for ebooks to take off for years now. Today, with Amazon’s announcement, the floodgates have been opened and the future is nigh.

This will be going on my Amazon Wishlist for sure.

“Do Not Track” Stupidity

2007-11-01T08:30:00.000-04:00

A do-not-track list has been proposed by some privacy and consumer advocacy groups, to allow web surfers to opt out of behavior-tracking online as it relates to advertising. This list, unsurprisingly, is modeled after the popular “Do-Not-Call” list that takes your number off telemarketing directories, but there are some important distinctions that make this a really stupid idea.

First, it’s important to clarify what happens in behavioral advertising and why privacy groups are concerned.

Watch this video:

Now, the video is made by Google, so it’s got some spin on it, but the basics are spot on. Behavioral advertising keeps track of your search queries and clicks to serve up more relevant ads. Using your IP address to get a rough idea of your location (only your Internet Service Provider knows precisely who you are), and any other information you explicitly choose to provide (like if you opt in to Google’s Personalized Search and tell them your address and browsing history, for example), the company serving ads is able to bring you more targeted and relevant ads. The benefits to this are obvious: if you search for the word “bass,” for example, keeping logs of previous queries you’ve made will help Google decide whether you’re looking for something related to fish or something related to music.

And so the privacy concerns come in mostly in regard to a company like Google being able to “remember you” as you surf the web and encounter AdSense ads on sites in its content network, but also (inexplicably) for individuals who explicitly agree to share their personal information.

I’ll be the first to say that I have always been confused by the focus on things like this for the simple fact that, unless you give Google explicit permission to know who you are, all it can possibly know (or assume, rather), is that you are the same person who initiated the browsing session and that you live somewhere in New York City. Also, I’m baffled by the concept of a machine being able to invade your privacy by feeding random bits of data through some algorithm and automatically returning some response. Last I checked, a machine is not a person and can’t know anything about me unless I give it information. This is a deep philosophical question that I don’t believe we’re fully ready to grasp at this point in time, but is important to keep in mind as artificial intelligence inches closer to becoming a reality.

Anyway, I digress. Skepticism about privacy concerns aside, what about the proposed Do-Not-Track list is idiotic?

Well, unlike the Do-Not-Call list, being on this new list doesn’t mean you’ll be able to avoid ads. Actually, a quite negative side-effect of being on such a list is that you’ll encounter far more completely irrelevant ads while you browse from site to site. You can’t avoid them altogether (unless you’re willing to pay cash to view websites, and unless you’re crazy you aren’t going to want to do that), so it strikes me as counterproductive to opt in to being more annoyed by ads than you are likely to be if they have something to do with what you’re looking for or interested in. Seems dumb.

Additionally, it’s hard not to appreciate this irony: in order to be on this list, you have to tell these companies who you are. You are basically consenting to be tracked to the end of not being tracked. Yes, there’s a difference, I guess. But it works exactly the same way. As a matter of fact, it seems like being on the list works more like signing up for Personalized Search than the default cookie-storing and session-based behavior of search engines and ad networks. Of course, the people overseeing the list would never ever use it for evil. Right? Right?

In the end, comparing the Do Not Track list to the Do Not Call list is unfair and misleading. Unlike the DNC list, you’re not getting rid of anything by signing up for this one. The only way you benefit is if you have an irrational fear of companies like Google and a lack of understanding about how they operate and what information they collect. You’ll feel some peace of mind, I guess, but little else will change.

As I’ve said before, if you’re truly concerned about privacy, you should be looking at your Internet Service Provider, who knows far more about you and your online history than companies like Google ever could. These companies have your real name, address, phone number, credit card information, browsing and search and email history, p2p and BitTorrent activity, often also all incoming and outgoing phone calls, and your television-watching habits. Unlike Google, this information is stored in a far less transparent way. Google at least lets you see precisely what information it has about you and tries its hardest to resist handing over this information to the courts. Comcast and Optimum and Verizon and these folks keep everything to themselves, except when they feel like selling it to marketers and freely sharing it with the government.

In any event, watch this space. The ~~FCC~~ FTC is having a town hall meeting today about these very issues. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of it.

Related Articles:

25 Skills Every Man Should Have

2007-10-26T08:35:00.000-04:00

My title is the more correct version of Popular Mechanics’ recently published list of 25 Skills Every Man Should Know. Last time I checked, you don’t know skills, you possess them. Another, perhaps more accurate rewording of the title would be 25 Pretty Stupid And Altogether Caveman-like Things You Should Know So You Can Avoid Doing Them At All Costs.

Here’s what I think about these Skills I should Know, taken one at a time. Follow along and keep score. And read the original article only if you want to wade through 25 worthless and banner-ad-riddled pages with hundreds of comments from guys saying, “Yeah, I can totally do number fourteen! Aren’t I super macho?”

Patch a radiator hose: Which one’s the radiator hose? And how do I know it needs patching? And now that I think about it, I’m not sure if this is a car part or has something to do with heating your home.
Protect your computer: Yes, it’s called “Getting a Mac.” But seriously, get some free virus software (don’t waste your money on Norton), some anti-spyware stuff, and stop visiting beast-porn websites and clicking on funny-looking links in emails from banks you don’t even use.
Rescue a boater who has capsized: My question here is, was I in another boat? Or did I capsize, too? Because I know how to rescue myself. Swimming. And wearing a lifejacket. And not tipping the boat in the first place.
Frame a wall: I actually do know how to do this. I can also put shingles on a roof. Both of these skills will come in handy exactly zero more times in my life. As far as I know, apartments in New York City don’t have shingles, nor would you ever want to make a room any smaller than it already is by dividing it in two.
Retouch digital photos: Oh yeah. I have this one covered. My fully-legal copy of Photoshop is put to great use. You can, as a matter of fact, hire me to do this very thing.
Back up a trailer: No way. Never. No how. Nope.
Build a campfire: I was an Eagle Scout, which basically means that I’m in the top 1% of the American population when it comes to campfire-building.
Fix a dead outlet: In theory, yes. In practice, not likely.
Navigate with a map and compass: See number 7. Eagle Scouts are awesome.
Use a torque wrench: What in God’s name is a torque wrench, and why would I need one?
Sharpen a knife: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Perform CPR: Yeah, sure. Just don’t be mad at me if I can’t save you. It’s harder than it looks.
Fillet a fish: Why?
Maneuver a car out of a skid: This would come in handy if I had any desire to drive whatsoever. Also, if I decided to risk my life by driving like a fucking dipshit.
Get a car unstuck: I laugh at my friends.
Back up data: Yes. While I don’t have a super-awesome network backup with RAID and stuff, I do regular bootable backups of my MacBook Pro, maintain two more external drives with important files, and back up some of the most critical stuff (design projects, etc.) to my various web hosting accounts.
Paint a room: Simple. Buy paint. Open paint. Dip brush. Paint on wall. Repeat.
Mix concrete: Another critical life skill I have in fact learned to do. Comes in handy when I’m considering guerrilla public art projects like attaching a three-foot high concrete phallus to a sidewalk.
Clean a bolt-action rifle: Nah. I like my firearms dirty and dangerous.
Change oil and filter: If there’s one more freaking thing about driving...
Hook up an HDTV: Pie. Easy as pie. Even easier if you know how to read.
Bleed brakes: The people who wrote this list would be the ones bleeding if I had anything to say about it.
Paddle a canoe: Oh yes. I can paddle a canoe. And I can yak a kayak. And pee on a fire. Thanks, Boy Scouts of America!
Fix a bike flat: Sure. Seems easy enough.
Extend your wireless network: Is this Viagra spam? I don’t know wtf Popular Mechanics is talking about here. Their tip? Buy better equipment. Well, no shit Sherlock. Isn’t that the answer to the mystery of life itself? Buy stuff. I’m sure they must’ve had some advertisement stuck in there, too.

In all, it looks like I got 100% (at least of the ones that are actually useful or important). I must say that it’s pretty obvious this list was put out by Popular Mechanics, not GQ or Wired or Maxim, otherwise we’d see more “buy stuff”, “torrent movies and buy stuff”, “objectify your neighbor and buy stuff” on the list, respectively.

How’d you fare? Ladies, how mannish are you according to this list (in other words, how sexist was it)?

Comments: Go!

Great Artists Steal, Right?

2007-10-25T08:45:00.000-04:00

Too funny. Engadget brings us this classic case of marketing “me-too.” Sony’s ad for the new CyberShot DSC-T2 camera looks, uh, just a little bit familiar...

What’s next? Maybe this:

Blogging Tip: Use Real Quotes

2007-10-24T08:34:00.000-04:00

What’s one thing that separates a great site from merely good sites?

Great sites use real quotes.

No, I’m not saying that other sites make things up (though I’m sure some do). This article is about the other kind of quotes.

Quotation Marks.

Okay, so what the heck am I talking about? Quotation marks are quotation marks are quotation marks, right? Just press Shift+apostrophe and you’ll get some.

Well, no, not exactly.

If you’re typing anywhere but in Microsoft Word (or another word processing program with Smart Quotes turned on), what you’ll get is not a set of quotation marks. Instead, you’ll be greeted with some of what I like to call Stupid Quotes (more commonly known as Dumb Quotes, straight quotes, or - somewhat incorrectly - a double prime, though this is another mark altogether, used for measurements and usually slanted).

What separates Stupid Quotes from Smart Quotes?

Here’s a comparison in some well-known typefaces:

The easy way to tell the two apart is that Stupid Quotes look like a Dunce Cap turned upside-down, and Smart Quotes look, well, nice. Like they were designed by a font-designer, not some grunt with a hammer and chisel.

Now you know the difference. How do you start rocking the intelligent use of this rather basic but supremely important typographical concept? Easy. Well, it takes a bit more effort than what you’re used to, but it’s worth it.

You can specify Smart Quotes by typing special codes known as HTML entities (don’t worry what this means, just go with me) where the quotes are supposed to go.

Here’s a handy table for reference:

How To Make A Smart Quote
Name	Secret Code	Voila
Left Double Quote	“ or “	“
Right Double Quote	” or ”	”
Left Single Quote	‘ or ‘	‘
Right Single Quote	’ or ’	’

Now, it takes some getting used to, but when you get the hang of it and start seeing the difference, there’s no turning back.

Don’t be a dummy. Do what the pros do and use Real Quotes. Real Smart Quotes.

It’s the cool thing to do.

Information/Revolution

2007-10-22T08:44:00.000-04:00

A new video by the great Mike Wesch of The Machine is Us/ing Us. This one is a great primer on the concept of tagging, and shares a good deal with (and even credits) David Weinberger’s latest book, Everything Is Miscellaneous.

Worth a watch.

Keeping The Change

2007-10-19T09:04:00.000-04:00

Wow. I just found that I’ve collected over $17 in change in my desk at work, from the rare occasions on which I spend cash. Sounds like a nice chunk of change. But it isn’t really.

This is saved over the last two years.

Contrast that with the over $500 I’ve accumulated using Bank of America’s “Keep The Change” program in the same time period.

Big difference, eh?

When I think about the weight that all those coins would’ve added to my life, and the incredible inconvenience of storing/collecting them and redeeming them for more easily-spendable forms of currency, I appreciate the magic of this program. In all likelihood, I would’ve lost or thrown out most of this money.

It does add up, I guess - all those pennies and nickels and dimes.

Using a check card to make all of your small (even large) purchases makes very good sense. Even if you don’t have a program like Keep The Change at your bank, where the virtual spare change from a purchase is automatically transfered to your savings account, you still completely eliminate the possibility of losing quarters here and there and having it add up to hundreds of dollars in losses by the end of the year.

I know that not every place is equipped with card-readers, but when a place is, there is no good reason not to use a check card to make the purchase - even if it’s something as small as a toothbrush.

P.S. Toothbrushes are freakin’ pricy these days. $3-something for a piece of plastic and some bristles? Where can I buy Oral-B in bulk?

How To Organize Your Music: Part 3

2007-10-18T09:30:00.000-04:00

Here’s a quick addition to the How To Organize Your Music series. It’s a bit of a departure from the method the past posts have taken, but stay with me.

What if the best way to organize your music is to not organize it at all?

In many ways, search is becoming the new organization. It’s becoming less and less important to know where something is than to be able to access it when you want it. This is how Google works, and this seems to be the direction Apple is heading with Spotlight, which in Leopard will add the great feature of being able to search across a network. Simply type a couple letters and the results come flying into place. iTunes has Spotlight functionality built in, too, so it’s easy to find what you want when you want it.

This is obviously an entirely different philosophy than the one put forth by previous articles in this series, which focused on corralling, controlling, and compartmentalizing your music library. But there’s certainly a benefit to this model as well. It’s less time-consuming, for one, not using smart playlists and ratings and genres lets you focus on constructing playlists of songs, not of the more general sounds. Give it a try - focus on enjoying music, not on devising a system which will hopefully allow you to enjoy music in the future. There is only now. Getting Things Done (GTD) might work great for some parts of life, but when the framework stands in the way of your ability to enjoy and appreciate things, it defeats the purpose.

Resist the tendency to analyze and quantify. Let the computer do the work for you.

And just sit back and enjoy the tunes. After all, that’s the point, right?

More in How To Organize Your Music

New NYC Taxi Logo Design Sucks

2007-10-17T08:42:00.000-04:00

The New York Times City Room blog has invited eight designers to critique the new look for NYC Taxis (and offer alternatives). The overwhelming opinion is that the logo chosen for the cabs totally sucks, and there are dozens of comments on each post to this effect. I strongly agree with the majority.

While the logo may (or may not) be an improvement over the original look (more of a non-look, I suppose), it still sucks from a lot of different perspectives.

Among the valid criticisms:

The T inside a circle is confusing and stupid. It is extremely similar to the T symbol used by Massachusetts’ transportation agency. It will also conflict with the symbol used for the Second Avenue subway line (which will be the T) when that finally gets built.

The new NYC logo (introduced semi-recently) looks bad on its own, and even worse on the side of a taxi. Designing the rest of the taxi logo to match this is unfortunate. There’s no compelling reason that it must be on the cars - I think we know this is New York - and it just makes the whole thing look rather clunky and unwieldy.

It’s impossible to read this when the cab is moving. I refuse to believe that a single person in the process ever asked the question, “What is the reason for this logo?” Had they done that, I think we would’ve seen something more legible, or at the very least - if they decided that the point wasn’t to make it legible, but rather simply for branding - far bolder and more risk-taking. Besides, when people look for cabs in traffic, they’re usually looking for a) the light box on the roof of the car or b) a yellow car. No one I know is standing at an intersection waiting for cars to stop so they can read whatever sign might be on the side. I won’t get into the inanity of including super-small-type fares on the doors, but that’s stupid, too.

The letter-spacing is just atrocious. It’s easy to mistakenly read the logo as “NYC T AXI,” or even miss the T altogether.

Clearly, this is a design that suffered (as all are wont to do) from the involvement of a committee (in this case, probably several). City Room takes a nice look at the various “Bumps” in the life of the design. To me, the concept was flawed from the beginning, but each iteration brought more issues, until what was at last decided-upon is just awful, has no personality, and is a gratuitous addition to the already-iconic NYC Yellow Taxis that will likely end up having a short shelf-life. If there is a God, that is.

Some pictures for comparison:

The Old

The New

Oooh. So awesome. Love the checkers! Not.

via the inestimable Kottke, by the way.

Everything You Do Matters

2007-10-15T08:57:00.000-04:00

This post is part of Blog Action Day, and is my contribution to the event, for which over 15,000 blogs have signed up to participate.

Everything You Do Matters

I can’t rattle off facts about the environment like I could in elementary school. I can’t quote data about climate change (or even lines from An Inconvenient Truth, for that matter). I can’t say for sure how much of a climate crisis our world is facing, and in what ways (if at all) our actions have contributed to an acceleration of global warming and its brethren. Will the polar ice caps melt? Will lower Manhattan become submerged? Will hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis and acid rain and fires cause irreparable damage to our precious planet, leading to conditions that are unlivable?

Or are we making a big fuss about nothing? Are the crises we’re observing part of a cycle? Is it possible that humans have an altogether insignificant effect on the health of the planet?

I can’t answer these questions.

And a lot of smarter people than me can’t agree on the answers either (though there are a lot of them who do agree). But what I want to say is that the answers to those questions are more or less irrelevant. What I want to say is that these questions are merely a way to frame the issue of individual and corporate and societal responsibility to life and health and livelihood and humanity as a political one. What I want to say is that taking care of the earth - and, as a consequence, ourselves - is and should not be a question. What I want to say is that politicizing the issue of global climate change leads to far too much fruitless debate, and far too little action.

What I want to say is that everything you do matters.

The world is connected, and each individual action is a world-changing one. In living our lives, we are not merely influencing things on a global scale. We are - in each moment, each choice, each gesture - creating a new world. Every moment life begins again, and in our hands is the ability to shape reality, to make things, and make things beautiful.

God or evolution or something we can’t even imagine has given us the ability to do magic with our hands and minds and hearts. By recognizing our responsibility to act, and, indeed, the impossibility of inaction, we can begin to see the importance of making deliberate, considered, aware decisions in everyday life. Not because you can “save the world,” but because you can increase your quality of life, and the quality of life for those around you and those who inhabit the earth after you.

What does this all mean practically?

It means that even if humans have little to do with climate change (indeed, even if it doesn’t exist), you should choose to live better.
It means that there is no excuse not the make more environmentally-aware decisions, because the benefits far outweigh the costs, even for large corporations, for whom the danger of failing to innovate and increase efficiency by adopting more stringent environmental standards is real.
It means that the littlest change in your everyday routine can make a major difference in your life and the lives of those around you.
It means that taking sides in a political debate on climate change is a waste of time, and serves only to increase spending on lobbyists to little end, and strengthen the partisan divide over an issue that intrinsically has nothing to do with the differences in philosophy between Republicans and Democrats.

I’m saying you should be selfish.
Not in the lazy manner to which most people are accustomed. Not selfishness created by lack of interest and motivation. But selfishness in the most proactive sense of the word.

I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like life to be longer, better, easier - for themselves and for their children. Well, it’s time we started acting like it. Buying compact fluorescent light bulbs, reducing carbon emissions, investing in renewable sources of energy, driving less, walking more, eating better, replacing old stuff with more energy-efficient models - there are countless things you can do that are both unquestionably better for the environment, and unquestionably better for you, with benefits ranging from the financial to the time-saving, as well as increased health and well-being for you and your family and your community and your country and the world.

Be selfish. Not lazy. Choose to recognize the impact of every decision you make.

Everything you do matters. Don’t underestimate the power of one person.

Believe. Make. Imagine. Build. Create. Connect. Inspire. Embrace. Dream.

Life is too short not to care. Really. It’s far too short.

More on the environment:

Al Gore Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
Poor People Don’t Drive In Manhattan (on Congestion Pricing)
A Greener Apple
The Future Of Transit

The Music Revolution Is Definitely Televised (And Radiohead Are Jerks)

2007-10-12T09:20:00.001-04:00

So Radiohead did a really cool thing by releasing their latest album In Rainbows on their own website with a “pay as much as you think it’s worth” model. Very cool. Major labels are dead! Woo! And then Trent Reznor announced that Nine Inch Nails are now officially label-free. Jamiroquai and Oasis (ick - Blur is better!) also came out with promises to do similarly. Then Madonna signed a huge contract with Live Nation (not a real record company) to release some albums. The tide is shifting. Amazon and iTunes and EMusic all sell DRM-free music, and more and more people are starting to learn what that actually means. Good things, yeah. The record industry is in shambles! But where am I going with this?

Well, where I’m going is into the irony in the perception that Radiohead is leading this artist revolt. Why is this ironic? Because they also just announced that they will be releasing In Rainbows on CD with a major label. But of course they said this after they already got money from their most loyal fans (and other DRM-free advocates) for a low-bitrate version of an album with no packaging.

Die-hard fans may argue that they’d have purchased the online version (and paid the same for it) even if they knew of its forthcoming release on disc, but to the casual observer (and the hardcore DRM-free, labels-must-die revolutionaries), this looks like little more than a (brilliant, yes) marketing stunt.

“Let’s pretend like we’re changing the business so that people talk about us on blogs and television and newspapers and the anarchist torrent leechers actually pay for our record on principle and then people everywhere will love us and worship us as the band who changed the world even though everyone knows that U2 is the coolest because Bono is the MAN and isn’t sad what’s happening in Africa then we’ll sell lots of records because our bestest fans will buy it twice or three times at least and we’ll sell concert tickets to kids who weren’t even alive when “Creep” was on the radio which oh god was so long ago and why doesn’t anyone care about us anymore please please care hey look at me look at me we have a new album...”

I mean, Radiohead is cool and all, but this move is pretty lame.

Who knows, maybe I’m just bitter than Radiohead refuses to sell their music on the iTunes Store because they are against selling single tracks (on artistic grounds). Of course, they, like everybody, do this anyway when they release “singles.” More hypocrisy? I guess we’ll see if they’ve changed their ways if they refuse to let their record company release a single from In Rainbows.

What do you think?