January 2008
23 posts
Snapped at La Jolla Cove this past weekend.
“I knew you were going to ask that, but I’m weird about being associated with what I do. We all label people based on that, so what i do is, I’m a human living life, just like you are.” [Chad Curry via NYMag Look Book]
Six Steps for a Beginning Stock Investor [via The Simple Dollar]
Does anyone use MyBlogLog anymore? Apparently not:
It’s one of those services that I never bothered to join because the idea of hanging out with a bunch of people who read TechCrunch and spam it with their blog visits sounded awful. I do admit, though, that there’s a genius idea in MyBlogLog’s concept — combining MySpace and website bookmarks and leaving cookie crumb trails of your visits for...
Matt Cutts and his commenters have rounded up some excellent feature suggestions for the Gmail engineers. Most of the ideas involve email scheduling with either send-to-the-future or delay-this-message functions.
Great video essay from Edward Tufte in which you get to hear him declare the iPhone’s interface “elegant” and all other cellphones “clunky.” So good to hear him commenting on a current technology and not constantly finding fault with its “resolution.”
Anyway, I love his simple walkthrough of the iPhone’s interface successes and failures. The review is mostly admiring as he applauds the...
When you shop at online retailer BlueFly, your purchase is shipped to you in a bland cardboard box. Inside, however, is a smooth, elegant paper shopping bag with ribbon handles. Just as if you had trotted home from the boutique, how delightful!
Preserving that physical evidence of buying something in the real world really completes the shopping experience for me in the online world.
Related:...
While paging through this book at Border’s the other day, I started thinking about the phenomenon that happens when a brand’s followers are unusually familiar with and emotional about the brand’s product range. That is, some brands manage to curate, market, or evangelize their products in such a way that loyal customers always know exactly what is “on the menu.” These shoppers become fans of the...
At the Apple store last week, buying my iPhone, fumbling with a stylus to enter my info into one of the clunky “hiptop” checkout devices the store clerks use.
Me: “Wow, this thing sure isn’t an iPhone!”
Apple Guy: “Heh. Don’t tell anyone, but, it’s Windows actually.”
Me: “Oh, right. Yeah, makes sense that Microsoft would power it since it’s enterprise.”
Apple Guy: “It’s what?”
Me: “It’s...
This suggestion that Google should buy the NY Times and that NY Times should long for Google to buy it? Idiocy.
Every month, the Yale Alumni Magazine arrives in my mailbox. It is about as thick as a standard weekly, but with square binding, a page luminosity that’s knowingly noncommittal to either glossy or matte, and a few too many advertisements for elite matchmakers, privileged children’s summer camps, and corporate jets ridden by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (yes they endorse these things). Its purpose...
Seth Godin says the culture of tech startups has produced jobs that workers perform not out of fear, but out of passion. It’s a new culture of workaphoria that’s edging out the workaphobia of old.
And how true that is! Since I’m in the midst of digital change and innovation every day, I am blessed with workaphoria. It’s a bit bizarre to describe it this way, but I can literally feel the...
I am constantly impressed by Compete’s blog. The analysis grants relevance and intrigue to their traditionally dull service of providing comparative site analytics. Their bloggers also do a great job with crafting insights from traffic shifts by sites in major content verticals. The result? Really interesting content about really interesting sites from smart people. Nice! (And a great example of...
Steve Jobs on Kindle and other e-readers: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore… The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” [via Gizmodo]
Some people took this as a misguided jab at literacy, but the the larger point about the decline of the traditional book publishing industry as an entertainment medium...
Leading the way in marketing through the incredibly opaque apparel sourcing industry facade, Style Source has a decent website (prices! FAQ!) and a rather helpful blog. It’s nice to see a company from an industry, which seems kind of dead and person-less, rise up and claim life and character. Just one complaint, though: please add images of your garments to continue to prove your existence!
Our lovely Consumerist has an unsavory but powerful reputation for being a “brand-killer.” Here’s why that’s shortsighted.
AdAge recently discussed sites that serve as meeting grounds between consumers and marketers and highlighted Consumerist as an invaluable platform for coaxing critical consumers into brand fans:
The Consumerist is a corporate-watchdog site with more than 620,000 visitors per...
Recap of the past 10 days: always moving, never stopping, inspiration growing. It’s been a wonderfully busy start to the New Year so far. I spent a week in New York for work and 2 days in Lexington for the 50th anniversary of the Kentucky Junior Miss scholarship program (which I won in 2001).
Some highlights in chronological order: fortuitous cross-country flights with no seat neighbors;...
How amazing would it be if Colorware would lacquer the keys on the new MacBook Air to a nice aluminum finish that matches the casing? The black on silver looks really dated (and if it doesn’t to you yet, it will soon).
“Google is filling, but it does not necessarily offer nutritional content” [via The Times]
Our new site io9 did just about 500k views on its first day. Sure, there’s an introductory spike in there, but the number is still pretty impressive. Scrolling down the site shows why it garnered so much fascination with its launch — realized virtual worlds, stem cells, maniacal subway cars, and fake time machines, all provocatively illustrated and edited — this stuff is truly geek porn.
“Generation Y (aged 18-30) biggest users of libraries!”
Huh, so how is this groundbreaking? That’s the same (educated, tech-savvy) age group that is most likely to be writing term papers, studying for finals, and crafting theses — all major activities requiring libraries. That group is also more likely to live in cramped quarters with roommates and to seek out places for quiet work and studying....
“Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word producer or professional with the word consumer.” [via Wikipedia]