One of the things that briefly entertained me during my week off last week was this TED Talk by 37signals co-founder Jason Fried.
Fried lays out reasons why people tend not to be productive in the office and what companies can do about it. Hits close to home, or work, I suppose.
In 1993, NPR’s Science Friday broadcast over the Internet a show about the future of the Internet. It’s interesting how things have changed (people saying “work stations”), but it’s fascinating how things haven’t (people asking how they can trust what they read online).
An open letter to the purveyors of instant messaging software —
Sirs,
For years I’ve been an avid user of your products. I’ve sent and received thousands of messages. Often these messages have contained emoticons — your clever portmanteau of emotions and icons.
There’s the sad face for when I’m feeling sad, the furled eyebrow for when I’m confused and the straight face for when I’m shocked but don’t want to comment.
And then there’s the cowboy emoticon; oh how I love the cowboy emoticon.
But, dear people, there is a whole group of IM users who have heretofore gone unrepresented by your emoticons: mustachioed Americans. I am afraid I cannot be silent on this subject any longer.
Did you know 18 percent of Americans wear mustaches?* Are they not people too? If you shave their upper lips, do they not get cold in the winter?
My dear IM software developers, I call upon you today to correct this injustice. Come together and agree to adding mustachioed emoticons to your fine products. I humbly suggest you standardize on a colon followed by a left curly bracket to trigger the digital representation of these fine, manly pieces of Americana.
Make haste, my good people. Let not this injustice stand any longer.
:{
*Made-up statistic
Update: My friend and colleague Gerardo Obieta has lent his considerable design skills to the cause with the poster below. Please show your support for mustachioed emoticons today.
I’m still reading about how it was produced, but “TimeScapes” from photographer Tom Lowe looks absolutely amazing.
Looks like he shot everything with RED. I surely can’t imagine this film being shot a few years ago. Goes to show the advances that are being made in videography technology.
I can’t tell if this is being released in theaters or what, but some of the behind the scenes stuff is just as stunning as the resulting footage. Just wow.
A tweet last week from a fellow hungry marketer spurred me to spend an hour of my Saturday morning looking for Ecuadorian restaurants in Minneapolis. Sadly, I only found four (and I already knew of three of them). I learned along the way that Ecuadorian restaurants in Minneapolis must feel obliged to also serve Mexican food to keep the gringos happy; what else explains this City Pages taco challenge?
As far as I know, none of these places serve the most stereotypical Ecuadorian dish, so your best bet is still to call ahead to Chino Latino if you’re craving guinea pig. (Though I only found a single restaurant outside Quito that had guinea pig on the menu when I was in Ecuador.)
The choices (and reviews):
Have I missed any?
View Minneapolis Ecuadorian Restaurants in a larger map
I’m not sure what this says about the state of industrial design for mobile devices, but two of the coolest phones I’ve seen lately are mere concepts that will likely never see the light of day. It’s too bad because Apple needs some competition when it comes to creating pocket size art that isn’t only technologically impressive, but beautiful to behold.
First up on the roster of imaginary phones is the HTC 1 designed by Andrew Kim. Outside the Google Nexus One, I can’t think of too many HTC-made phones that don’t look like they were designed by an engineer. This thing is sleek with it’s single hard button, dual cameras and minimal UI, and its base swivels to act as a stand for watching videos.
And just today a new Nokia concept was making the blog rounds. Designed by Jeremy Innes-Hopkins, the Nokia Kinetic is supposed to stand on end to notify the user of important info.
Acting as a notification might be a little far-fetched, but actually, the self-standing (sans notification feature) should be fairly easy to accomplish. Proper weighting in the bottom portion of the phone should make the Kinetic stand upright, and that thicker portion also acts as a great grip for taking photos (notice the shutter button), not to mention ample room for a battery. My only quibble here is the call and end buttons which are anachronistic thinking to me. Those could easily be replaced with context-sensitive soft buttons on the touch screen.
I’ve been to my fair share of auto shows, and concept cars are always something to look at. It’s time mobile device makers get in that mindset.
My favorite of these phones is the Nokia, but I hope we see plenty more concept phones and that handset makers start taking risks and turning these things into reality.
Ween’s “Where’d the Cheese Go” was in my head all day yesterday thanks to @erichauge.
Today I thank @tmoore13 for this little earwig: “I Like Cheese A Lot” to the tune of “Drop it like it’s Hot.”
The Interstate Highway System is 54 years old today. Urban neighborhoods would never be the same.
“When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.” —John Steinbeck
I finally hit the button in WordPress to upgrade to 3.0 and nothing broke. Yay. Now that I’m running 3.0, I plan on setting up various content types (a new feature in 3.0) to make this blog more Tumblr-like and finally make my own theme (I make them for others, why not myself?). In the meantime I’m rocking the default WordPress 3.0 theme called Twenty Ten, which is actually pretty pleasant to look at.
Earlier, well wondering whether The New York Times would add a local section for the Twin Cities, MinnPost’s David Brauer posted a chart of the top 17 New York Times markets outside its home market. Minnesota ranked 17th by number of subscriptions. But knowing our perennial status as one of the most-literate states, I wondered where we ranked per capita. So I grabbed some quick populations numbers from the Wikipedia, and now here’s David’s graph rejiggered to show that.
We’re 12th. (Note that this is incomplete data since I’m just working with the 16 states and the District of Columbia that David listed.)
| State | New York Times Subscribers | Population | Subscriptions per Capita (as %) |
|---|---|---|---|
| D.C. | 19,300 | 599,657 | 3.22% |
| Massachusetts | 41,600 | 6,593,587 | 0.63% |
| Florida | 68,400 | 18,537,969 | 0.37% |
| Pennsylvania | 38,300 | 12,604,767 | 0.30% |
| Maryland | 16,900 | 5,699,478 | 0.30% |
| Washington | 18,500 | 6,664,195 | 0.28% |
| California | 94,800 | 36,961,664 | 0.26% |
| Colorado | 12,100 | 5,024,748 | 0.24% |
| Illinois | 29,300 | 12,910,409 | 0.23% |
| Arizona | 14,700 | 6,595,778 | 0.22% |
| Virginia | 16,000 | 7,882,590 | 0.20% |
| Minnesota | 10,400 | 5,266,214 | 0.20% |
| Michigan | 17,100 | 9,969,727 | 0.17% |
| Ohio | 19,700 | 11,542,645 | 0.17% |
| Georgia | 15,700 | 9,829,211 | 0.16% |
| North Carolina | 11,500 | 9,380,884 | 0.12% |
| Texas | 29,800 | 24,782,302 | 0.12% |