White Whale friend, client, and Berkeley Law CMS-wrangler Dino dropped his iPhone while on a safari. Watch:
The phone survived intact!
Jason is fond of pointing out a nationwide billboard campaign that had an image similar to this:
Likewise, Gruber points to this promo image for Microsoft’s new Zune HD:
Notice anything?
Guys, I have a secret for you: you control both the software and the hardware. It kills me that someone would take the time to take lovingly-staged product photos or actually lay out ads with this on the screen. If the designers who put together the billboard had written, “Now Available: BlackBerry Stor…” they’d be fired on the spot. Is there any excuse for this?
Hashing out some icons
We’re heading out on the Great White Whale Road Trip 2009— from here to Boston to Providence to three days of meetings at Wheaton College, then across New England in a rented Dodge Charger to Middlebury College, three days there, then back to Boston and home. Five Whales, one Gothic Guesthouse, some cameras, a few baseball gloves, etc. It should be a wicked good time.
Anyway, in the process of checking the weather at Middlebury I visited the Weather Underground site— I understand it’s one of the leading sites out there, for this sort of thing, right? — and was confronted with the following site design, whose ghastly, horrifying awfulness may haunt my dreams tonight:
This should serve as a reminder to you UI folks: Keep fighting the good fight, but remember: people are willing to swim through some pretty scary and shark-infested user interfaces to find a bit of information.
Twitter is changing my life, kind of.
I was a late adopter compared to most people— it’s only in the last month or so that I’ve been taking an active interest in it. (The day I started to get into using it, they mentioned it on the Daily Show.) Now I use it to communicate with clients, friends, or students at the schools we’re working with; to shoot the breeze with my co-workers, some of whom work in distant cities; and sometimes simply to spout off about whatever, just like everyone else. I used to Twitter a lot about Twitter.
Mostly I think of Twitter as a way to reinforce White Whale’s fundamental message: that five people can run and grow a moderately successful business, and in the process change nothing about the way we express ourselves: in a nutshell, that the people we are online are the same people we are in person. (I think the same goes for my four co-workers Tonya, Alex, Donald and Janie.) We don’t practice much message control because we don’t really have much to hide. (Whatever I do have to say that’s worth hiding, I express on symmetrical networks only.)
Although the 140-character short form initially seemed too restrictive, I’m now finding it a great source of inspiration. Here is what I think is perhaps the most perfect tweet ever written, by my old friend @johnpavelkehlen:
I don’t know about you, and maybe it’s just because I miss my old friend’s company, but I can imagine myself dining with John and his friend in his little garret pretty easily reading that, and he didn’t need a single extra character to express it. As John himself reminded me, brevity is the soul of wit, and never has that felt more technologically true.
Having said all that, I worry a little about the effect Twitter is having on me.
For one thing, I’m on much more than usual these days. I move through the world with an active and engaged brain. I see things as I’m walking to work (today it was an odd misspelling on a sign) and think, should I Twitter this? (I’m convinced that the verb is “to Twitter,” not “to tweet.”) A thought occurs to me. It feels sorta profound. Is it profound enough to become a tweet? And if so, will it affect my follow cost?
I like to think that when I’m working at my best, I have a fairly sharp eye for detail and nuance; thanks to Twitter, I carry this eye around with me much more than I used to, and these details and nuances hang around. I’m worried LOST is going over the top with this “judging Ben” thing. I enjoy Bonterra’s organic Zinfandel. I really love my bank. Which of these things should I broadcast? (answer) In a nutshell, I never thought I’d spend so much time qualitatively evaluating my own thoughts.
So after a day spent out in the world this way, I sit down to dinner with my wife. Am I going to Twitter about how great dinner was? Or what a wonderful evening I’m having?
Of course not. Because that’s my time, not yours. But the temptation is very strong! And I don’t always resist it.
I am learning to control the impulse to chronicle my leisure time; this is largely because White Whale is my company, Twitter is partially a work thing, and if I let work bleed into every corner of my life it would destroy me. But I can tell that it’s changing people, and I’m not sure it’s always for the better.
I see people, friends of mine, twittering about how they just woke up, or they’re happy, or it’s a beautiful day. Is the chronicling of that experience (and the cognitive and physical processes required to make it happen) interfering with the plain appreciation of the fact? I can’t see how it doesn’t. Here’s a guy who Twitters a hundred times per day. (Don’t ask about his follow cost.) People like that used to be considered wackos or oddballs (like 2004 presidential candidate Bob Graham, a compulsive diarist)— now they’re just high-tech, plugged-in people.
But does anyone worry about the long term effects of this way of relating to the world? It seems like the opposite of ADD— Attention Surplus Disorder. I wonder if the most active Twitterers among us ever will ever enjoy the pleasure of a blank mind, an hour spent staring into space, etc. What we now think of as “vegging out” is what they used to call “relaxation.” Actions that now might be considered downright yogic— like simply not speaking for a couple of hours— used to be the norm, I’m sure, at a less frantic time in human history.
For now, it’s fun. I like keeping tabs on what my friends are eating, reading, listening to, or coding. It’s an enjoyably odd feeling to know what very casual business acquaintances think about certain TV shows.
But in the long term, will the people who engage most deeply with technology lose the ability to exist quietly in the world it’s brought us?
Note: 140 characters exactly in that last paragraph. Bam!
I’ll make this the last in what’s become a string of posts by me on content and messaging, but I’ve been meaning for some time to highlight the only email newsletter I actually read. This week:
Yelp’s Just Not That Into You
You know what they say… the best way to get over someone is to get under someone. But what if you just want to be by your lonesome? Yelpers get very creative when it comes to finding those spots in the city to avoid the ex.
First, you need to get off the beaten path. Flora Grubb is a nursery and café that masquerades as an urban garden, and Rob B is just thrilled to be able to enjoy his “Ritual coffee without dealing with the herds of Valencia Street hipsters.” The Dogpatch Saloon is good for crying into your beer with the rest of the regulars: “2 hipster dates, 1 lesbian date, 2 drunks and Miss Lonely Hearts, a middle-aged redhead with a mountain of curls and a lifetime of trouble.” Beth S assures us, “These are my people.” [...]
Or, a few weeks back:
Pho in Love with Yelp
So you think you’ve found the most pho-nomenal pho in town? Yelpers can tell you just where to plunk down that hard-earned $6 for the most slurp-worthy meal in the city, pho realz.
New to the pho scene? Valeria R lost her pho-ginity at Golden Star, but was lucky to have a friend give her a lesson on, amongst other things, “how to dress the bowl with basil, sprouts and lemon juice.” And while said friend failed to inform her that “it’s not a good idea for a beginner to wear a white shirt while eating pho, the collateral damage was completely worth it.” You might say Ryan V is more of a pho hoochie; he prefers it hot, cheap and easy at Pho Tan Hoa, where the steaming dish comes with plenty of “large, tender, slightly bloody tendons.” Yum!? [...]
Yes, a bit cutesy, but I love it. The bloggy, gossipy style is a perfect way to reward engaged users while drawing unengaged subscribers deep into the site.
If you live in or near a big American city, I totally recommend subscribing — even if you aren’t into Yelp itself, it’s a great overview of what people are talking about in your city. (And fellow White Whalers, you’re all covered: the East Bay, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, and New York.)
We’re deep into the design phase of the University of San Francisco site; our heads are full of the words and images we’ve been looking at with our committee and a larger, unofficial group of students and staff.
One of the parts of the job that’s been really fulfilling for us is following the work being done in David Silver’s Digital Media Production class— it’s great to see all the exciting stuff they’re doing with Flickr, Google Maps, Twitter, blogs, and the intersections among all those media.
Something I’ve been working on for a while— ever since hearing about the class’s Google Maps assignment— is a map that would incorporate all the individual students’ Google Maps of San Francisco. If done right, this will result in a USF-driven map of the city, with students’ words and pictures populating a dynamic map that would give prospects a true students’ eye view of what’s happening.
So today I have a proof of concept! I’m using a Web app called MapChannels to integrate Google Map feeds; it’s a little unsatisfying to rely on a third party for this, as I’m sure it’s something Donald could code in a few hours, but he’s doing more important stuff, so it’s MapChannels for now.
I’ve used Twitter to locate the students’ maps, and one by one I’m adding them to this master map. This definitely feels like a beta, but it’s still pretty cool:
In an attempt to read a PDF related to my student loan repayment plan, I logged into the Sallie Mae website for the first time in a long time.
I generally have a sense of what my passwords are, but couldn’t remember it this time, so I went through the forgotten password process. Given that LiveWhale has functionality for forgotten passwords, I’m always interested to see what people do. I had to submit an SSN, date of birth, and answer one security question. Pretty straightforward. They let me set a new password, and I logged in with it.
Immediately after login I was asked to set FIVE new security questions. Five!
Here they are:
OK, listen up, Sallie Mae.
Really?
Are you really asking me to give you answers to five security questions so I can read a PDF? And what if, when I come back in another two years to read another PDF, I have a different favorite vacation spot?
Do you really want me to tell you my greatest fear, Sallie Mae? So I can read your PDF?
Frankly, I already know what the PDF says. I changed my bank account, and they need the new number. Fine— I’ll call them on the phone and give it to them.