link to a presentation on the hypothetical rebranding of the DOE website
http://www.slideshare.net/dridgewa/nrg-presentation
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Blog Brother thinks I'm not human!
What happens when technology is used to appraise the daily interactions people have with each other? We have SPAM blocker, Email rules based on specific criteria, Speed checker with cameras to shoot your license plate number, Automatic Thermostates, EasyPass, and Mobile Gas Speedpass. We should soon have a refrigerator which throws expired food away automatically.
How much do we loose of ourselves when we stop interacting with the minor aspects of daily life? Who writes letters any more? Who strolls up 5th Avenue any more? Who sits on the porch any more?
None of this was conceived yet when Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock. A book about the future as seen from the 1970s. It was not a book about a utopia. It was a book about us. Although we still think we have our humanity, while, if I remember correctly, Toffler thought we would loose it.
At Pantopicon, there is a link to the Future Shock documentary from 1972, narrated by Orson Welles. Oooh, how dramatic!
Three Yes' for Susan Boyle
Being that I like to keep my head in the sand when sensationalism occurs in the media, I had not seen the show Britain's Got Talent. I'm sure just as many American's saw that show. The YouTube video of it has 7.7 million views, 14 thousand 5-star ratings, 16.5 thousand COMMENTS! And that's just one video.
Bruce Nessbaum sees the possibility that she is an icon for what he is calling the "New Normal" era.
I wonder how the New Normal correlates with the No-Product mentality?
From a post by Bruce Nussbaum on April 22
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2009/04/susan_boyle_is.html
Sticky Conversations (Tag, you're it)
The web makes things sticky.
I get on the web, I become sticky. I go to person-A's site and they stick to me. Like a synapse in the brain being solidified. Person-B sees Person-A's post and all three of us stick together. Now, Person-C comes along and can travel along the connected synapses to read the Global Conversation being created.
For example.
Seth Godin wrote about the $100 million dollars (pinky to the crease of the mouth)... that Micsoft is throwing at Bing. He also mentioned the Wave Keynote Presentation and put a link to Andy Wibbles' blog. Andy Wibbels wrote about the Google Wave presentation after he found it on the YouTube site. But Andy embedded the video into his blog and talked about how incredible the presentation is.
Because I liked what Andy was saying, I looked at some other things he's written about.
Such as his "5 Things to Do Everyday to be Successful". Andy is part of a network of people who are telling everyone 5 simple things that they do each day or week in order to be a better person in some way. The connections range from random bloggers who have never put these ideas into words, to people who have created whole blog sites about personal development.
On his blog people comment with their own 5 things to do, or give links which further the sticky conversation.
http://andywibbels.com/2007/04/5-things-to-do-everyday-to-be-successful/
Andy was tagged by Ellen Britt on her blog Marketing Qi
http://www.marketingqiblog.com/2007/04/simply_successf.html
And she was tagged by Hueina Su at Intensive Care for the Nurturer's Soul
http://blog.beyondhorizoncoaching.com/2007/04/my-simply-successful-secrets.html
While working on a experiment started by Aaron Potts called Simply Successful Secrets
http://todayisthatday.com/blog/simply-successful-secrets/
Ellen writes about the whole process of tagging back:
In this way, we can share our secrets of success with our readers as well as with the readers of all the other bloggers who participated. In addition, we are supposed to *tag* as many bloggers as we like to participate in this experiment.
I get on the web, I become sticky. I go to person-A's site and they stick to me. Like a synapse in the brain being solidified. Person-B sees Person-A's post and all three of us stick together. Now, Person-C comes along and can travel along the connected synapses to read the Global Conversation being created.
For example.
Seth Godin wrote about the $100 million dollars (pinky to the crease of the mouth)... that Micsoft is throwing at Bing. He also mentioned the Wave Keynote Presentation and put a link to Andy Wibbles' blog. Andy Wibbels wrote about the Google Wave presentation after he found it on the YouTube site. But Andy embedded the video into his blog and talked about how incredible the presentation is.
Because I liked what Andy was saying, I looked at some other things he's written about.
Such as his "5 Things to Do Everyday to be Successful". Andy is part of a network of people who are telling everyone 5 simple things that they do each day or week in order to be a better person in some way. The connections range from random bloggers who have never put these ideas into words, to people who have created whole blog sites about personal development.
On his blog people comment with their own 5 things to do, or give links which further the sticky conversation.
http://andywibbels.com/2007/04/5-things-to-do-everyday-to-be-successful/
Andy was tagged by Ellen Britt on her blog Marketing Qi
http://www.marketingqiblog.com/2007/04/simply_successf.html
And she was tagged by Hueina Su at Intensive Care for the Nurturer's Soul
http://blog.beyondhorizoncoaching.com/2007/04/my-simply-successful-secrets.html
While working on a experiment started by Aaron Potts called Simply Successful Secrets
http://todayisthatday.com/blog/simply-successful-secrets/
Ellen writes about the whole process of tagging back:
In this way, we can share our secrets of success with our readers as well as with the readers of all the other bloggers who participated. In addition, we are supposed to *tag* as many bloggers as we like to participate in this experiment.
What's the Opposition?
Going up against Google? How big is the Giant?
The Giant is a Surfer-dude riding the wave of polysyllabic conceptualizations.
Andy Webbel has a link to the YouTube video for a Keynote presentation on Google Wave.
Take 12 minutes of your day to see what this is all about. If you're still interested, you can watch the rest of the 2 hour presentation.
Marketing with Opposition
Question: How does another company compete with The Giant (David and Goliath)?
Google is the King of Search Engines and Microsopht thinks it can eek out a little of that market for itself by spending $100 million dollars (pinky to the crease of the mouth)...
What do they name the new search engine? the acronym of
"But It's Not Google..." Bing.
Not Bling. Not Bing Crosby. Not Bing Surfboards.
Setting up an apparent opposition is to create a market from the dissatisfaction of consumers. But what happens if you oppose a company which does not have a lot of dissatisfied customers?
Their marketing campaign, naming convention, and their $100 million dollars (pinky to the crease of the mouth)... are revolving around a concept which has already named Mocrisoft the looser. The Mac/PC wars are old now, but the model remains: If you are in opposition to Microsoft then you are probably the Better Company!
Collecting Collections
In praise of Alice Rawsthorn
Posted by Mark Vanderbeeken
Cognitive Self Awareness is what sets us apart from the spiders, dogs, and (probably) the dolphins (though current research is being done on this here). Being self aware, the Here-link quickly became in bad taste. "Here" is the catchword of the day. Like calling to a dog, "Here, Spot, here." As opposed to Hear, although that's just as possible when talking about the web, v-blogging and electronic social interaction.
And the internet blogging system, though truly too dense to consume it all, augments this self awareness through connecting like-things to like-things. "If you like what I write about you might like what I read too."
Mark Vanderbeeken writes about some pretty neat things. He is a Hub. A Central Station where you go forth from to different new locations, strengthening the connections within the web-iverse. (*as opposed to uni-verse).
Mark has given us a LIST of works to read from the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, Alice Rawsthorn. He has also given us the link to her personal website Here which has links to articles which the New York Times seems to have "disappeared altogether" for some reason.
Posted by Mark Vanderbeeken
Cognitive Self Awareness is what sets us apart from the spiders, dogs, and (probably) the dolphins (though current research is being done on this here). Being self aware, the Here-link quickly became in bad taste. "Here" is the catchword of the day. Like calling to a dog, "Here, Spot, here." As opposed to Hear, although that's just as possible when talking about the web, v-blogging and electronic social interaction.
And the internet blogging system, though truly too dense to consume it all, augments this self awareness through connecting like-things to like-things. "If you like what I write about you might like what I read too."
Mark Vanderbeeken writes about some pretty neat things. He is a Hub. A Central Station where you go forth from to different new locations, strengthening the connections within the web-iverse. (*as opposed to uni-verse).
Mark has given us a LIST of works to read from the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, Alice Rawsthorn. He has also given us the link to her personal website Here which has links to articles which the New York Times seems to have "disappeared altogether" for some reason.
Alice is a goldmine. Go. Read.
A link to the Mark Vanderbeeken post is (t)here:
To Sell No-Product
John Hockenberry's essay begins with the question:
What are the implications for industrial designers if the strongest consumer impulse becomes not buying?
This is an exploration of ideas more than an exploration of answers. It is a mix of economic understanding, timeline extrapolation, future speculation, market trends, and marketing trends.
He jump starts many ideas for further exploration, but essentially is tunneling through to explore the ideas of the designers' place and the consumers' place in an society where less or no products are being bought and sold.
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20090318/within-the-product-of-no-product
Monday, May 25, 2009
Ellen...
What more can I say, but what a wonderful person this Ellen Lupton is! She is like the Redhat of design. DIY advocate. A prolific and interactive Teacher. And she gives things away. Words. Ideas. Digital books. Typefaces, too. She talks to students and tries to get them to have a little more authorship in their designs; for them to create content. I heard her talk about how designers should create art because artists are creating design. She is one of the pivotal graphic designers today and to know her is to be part of contemporary design.
Below is the cover of a typographic 2008 calendar which can be downloaded from lulu.com
Cover design by Ben Levy.
http://elupton.com/
Below is the cover of a typographic 2008 calendar which can be downloaded from lulu.com
Cover design by Ben Levy.
http://elupton.com/
The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes
This is my introduction to Seth Godin. I enjoy his writing because he leads you to his main point through incremental steps from a general understanding or perspective and layers over it multiple perspectives. But then he aims his telescopic eyesight towards the future to give you an insight into what it all means.
In this blog entry he begins with identifying a trend where printers, such as Ben Franklin, who was a printer, came to write his own content. He goes on to describe the reversal of this trend with the computer, where writers are printing their own material.
He then talks about the potential solutions not yet found, for a job in the new economy where someone collates and leverages these DIY and Desktop publishers into a public demand.
In this blog entry he begins with identifying a trend where printers, such as Ben Franklin, who was a printer, came to write his own content. He goes on to describe the reversal of this trend with the computer, where writers are printing their own material.
He then talks about the potential solutions not yet found, for a job in the new economy where someone collates and leverages these DIY and Desktop publishers into a public demand.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/when-the-writer-becomes-the-publisher.html
Kumo
Kumo:
I find it interesting that Microsoft is struggling to eek out a bit of the search engine market, when it has usually been the target of Antitrust lawsuits for being a monopoly.
But as nascent technology becomes more sophisticated, especially with semantic search technology, it is still a race to see who lands on top… at least for a while.
But as nascent technology becomes more sophisticated, especially with semantic search technology, it is still a race to see who lands on top… at least for a while.
Personal Connection
Part of what makes blogs such a powerful and important tool is the Speed of Information has been exponentially increased through a network of connected Gatherers and feeders, each referring link back to the Original Source is spiced with a little preparatory opinion. It is not merely an unbiased hyper-text connection, but a personalized connection of what is important within the Network community.
Nussbaum is just making a simple comment about the impact made with data visualization, as any Wired subscriber knows. And re-filtering people back to something which made an impact on himself. Which I find hides a secondary layer of meaning because the original source is the NYTimes Online. He makes a comment about the "decline of the New York Times" while simultaneously helping to reinforcing their position as an online entity...
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2009/05/great_data_visu.html
What Elephant? An interview with Frank Luntz
Frank Luntz is a Communications Specialist.
He takes phrases used in the public arena and—through a complex procedure—figures out a new phraseology to communicate a specific attitude towards the phrase in question, hence, hopefully, changing people’s behavior.
The current phrase he has been charged with investigating is about Obama’s “healthcare reform.” A 28 page memo was sent to the Republicans in Congress, suggesting they refer to the healthcare reform as “a Washington Takeover.”
The rest of the article questions Luntz about who he is and how he works.
To me, it seems that Frank Luntz is probably a difficult person to talk to if you are not on his side. He is a man who works with language and how it affects the listener (or reader) and does not couch his words with vagueness or subtlety crafted platitudes unless he is completely avoiding the question. When asked questions in this interview, I got the distinct sense that he was a hostile interviewee. I will also say that I believe the Interviewer was a bit hostile also.
When Luntz talked about Dick Cheney’s answer to a question about 70% of Americans disagreeing with the war, where Cheney answered “So,” Luntz stated that this monosyllabic answer was a slap in the American face. But Luntz answered a few questions of his own with “Who cares?” and “It’s not relevant.” They weren’t monosyllabic, but certainly, for a man who understands words, he would understand the intention of those answers were to force a new question.
It is important to follow a person like Frank Luntz, because he influences how words are used publicly. He is very knowledgeable and ingenious at times with the phrases he creates to change people’s perceptions of certain issues or policies. He is a staunch Republican. So. If you agree with his politics then you might see the benefits of changing the “estate tax” to be called the “death tax.” And if you disagree with his politics, then you might see deception created when “eavesdropping” is referred to as “electronic intercepts.”
The current phrase he has been charged with investigating is about Obama’s “healthcare reform.” A 28 page memo was sent to the Republicans in Congress, suggesting they refer to the healthcare reform as “a Washington Takeover.”
The rest of the article questions Luntz about who he is and how he works.
To me, it seems that Frank Luntz is probably a difficult person to talk to if you are not on his side. He is a man who works with language and how it affects the listener (or reader) and does not couch his words with vagueness or subtlety crafted platitudes unless he is completely avoiding the question. When asked questions in this interview, I got the distinct sense that he was a hostile interviewee. I will also say that I believe the Interviewer was a bit hostile also.
When Luntz talked about Dick Cheney’s answer to a question about 70% of Americans disagreeing with the war, where Cheney answered “So,” Luntz stated that this monosyllabic answer was a slap in the American face. But Luntz answered a few questions of his own with “Who cares?” and “It’s not relevant.” They weren’t monosyllabic, but certainly, for a man who understands words, he would understand the intention of those answers were to force a new question.
It is important to follow a person like Frank Luntz, because he influences how words are used publicly. He is very knowledgeable and ingenious at times with the phrases he creates to change people’s perceptions of certain issues or policies. He is a staunch Republican. So. If you agree with his politics then you might see the benefits of changing the “estate tax” to be called the “death tax.” And if you disagree with his politics, then you might see deception created when “eavesdropping” is referred to as “electronic intercepts.”
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON with FRANK LUNTZ
Published: May 21, 2009
Form Deconstructed
I found this a very interesting article. The author is basically trying to apply a rationalistic and scientific analysis to the aesthetic impression of a surface's curvature and/or flatness.
His arguments do not consider the dividing factor of individualistic Opinion, without which we would not have such fierce debates on such topics as the quality of the Comic Sans typeface.
I commend Gray Holland's efforts for I have felt the impulse to document the empirical aspects of what remains within an elusive realm. A tremendous uphill effort.
As a designer in a commercialistic world, it is reassuring to have a qualified answer to a client’s question of: Why?
Link
Saturday, May 23, 2009
What kids today are looking at...
TeenSpot.com - offers teen chat rooms, message boards, profiles ...
My Future. Military Opportunities. Money Matters. Beyond High School. ...
Magazine style site which features chat, message boards, and news..
54% of the following site's customers are under 18
"Hottest bands, sexiest celebs and fresh new videos
Your one-stop-shop for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Delicious, Twitter, AIM, AOL Mail, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail updates.
Keep track of friends on other social sites from one place
Keep track of friends on other social sites from one place
Find friends and buddies.
Invite your network to join."
Invite your network to join."
Current Website
US Department of Energy.
Youth Area
Their splashpage on Nuclear Energy with three age groups
Youth Area
Their splashpage on Nuclear Energy with three age groups
"Just Right Details" page
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