Things of interest
December 2010
Dark Fantasy, Power, All of the Lights, Monster, Runaway, Hell of a Life, Lost in the World and Who Will Survive in America; those are all 5/5 stars. The rest are nearly as impressive. For me, this is easily the best album of the year. [photo is from Runaway]
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
December 2010
Seth Godin:
Economics tells us that the right thing to do is run the factory until the last item produced is being sold at marginal cost. In other words, keep adding until it doesn't work any more.
In fact, human behavior tells us that this is a more permanent effect than we realize. Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention. More clutter isn't free. In fact, more clutter is a permanent shift, a desensitization to all the information, not just the last bit.
Yes.
The cost of clutter
Economics tells us that the right thing to do is run the factory until the last item produced is being sold at marginal cost. In other words, keep adding until it doesn't work any more.
In fact, human behavior tells us that this is a more permanent effect than we realize. Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention. More clutter isn't free. In fact, more clutter is a permanent shift, a desensitization to all the information, not just the last bit.
Yes.
November 2010
I was recently searching for Hello Poetry (did I forget the url or was it vanity?) and have taken note of it's position in the suggestions. As of this writing, Hello Poetry shows above the suggestion "fold" once you've typed 6 letters. For the benefit of those struggling to type more than 6 characters to get to the search result, here is a summary of the competitive landscape for Hello Poetry's ascent to the top of Google suggestions.
hello p / 6 letters
To beat: Paris, pandas and pretty ladies, in that order.
Analysis: Not an easy task, but possible.
hello / 5 letters
To beat: Hello Kitty, Hello world, "hello in italian" (ciao!), and a humorously misspelled version of "halloween". Analysis: Getting harder.
hell / 4 letters
To beat: The phrase "Hella", Hell and the slightly more popular Hell's Kitchen. Strange, but true.
Analysis: One helluva task.
h - hel / less than 3 letters
Plenty more of Hell, plus helicopters.
Analysis: Don't mess with Hades.
A difficult climb
hello p / 6 letters
To beat: Paris, pandas and pretty ladies, in that order.
Analysis: Not an easy task, but possible.
hello / 5 letters
To beat: Hello Kitty, Hello world, "hello in italian" (ciao!), and a humorously misspelled version of "halloween". Analysis: Getting harder.
hell / 4 letters
To beat: The phrase "Hella", Hell and the slightly more popular Hell's Kitchen. Strange, but true.
Analysis: One helluva task.
h - hel / less than 3 letters
Plenty more of Hell, plus helicopters.
Analysis: Don't mess with Hades.
October 2010
Judging by the London 2012 Lisa Simpson logo or the new Helvetica Gap logo, a great way to make your brand talked-about and 'relevant' is to make a 'dreadfully ugly' logo.
Update [a few hours later] Gap is now attempting to crowdsource a new logo design. Oh dear.
Update [a few days later] The old logo is back. Updated with photo.
Any publicity is good publicity?
Update [a few hours later] Gap is now attempting to crowdsource a new logo design. Oh dear.
Update [a few days later] The old logo is back. Updated with photo.
October 2010
I took a photo of myself using Google Goggles, and this is what it calls a 'similar image'.
Google Goggles