Social Web Hits The Election Cycle
January 26, 2007 | Governance | People & Society | Software
Great post over at Bokardo Social Web Design, altering us that Hillary Clinton is using Yahoo answers to gather the prol's thoughts on health-care reform.
One, Clinton is actually asking the American people what they think, rather than assuming or generalizing from the party she’s a part of. (this doesn’t mean she’ll listen, but it’s a start)
Two, Clinton is using Yahoo Answers, a publicly-accessible social software app to ask the question. In the past year Yahoo Answers has been a runaway success for Yahoo, racking up millions of users.
Three, in just two days there are over 35,000 answers!.
Sure, it could be a publicity stunt, but that will be self-limiting in the long-run.
Then again, here's Kos' take on Hillary and her netroots support in general:
Here's what I think -- Hillary has no interest in truly making up ground in the netroots. Rather, she sees it as a place to make a good show, and then sell that to the traditional media. It's her campaign's version of "Shock and Awe". Lots of noise. Lots of flashing lights. Lots of smoke. But it's all for show.
In a straw poll taken after Hillary's announcement, she got 4% of the vote, with Obama at 28% and Edwards at 35%. For my money, it's an Edwards/Obama ticket, and they will kick some serious butt.
Okay, enough with the trivial politics.
Results of Thinking Systemically
January 11, 2007 | Business & Commerce
Finally found the quote I've been looking for:
"He's the only guy who has applied systems thinking to media," said Paul Saffo, a consumer electronics industry consultant who is a director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif.
Paul is referring to Steve Jobs. Bonus: This is an interesting Google search.
True Stories
January 11, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Sometimes, you can't make this stuff up.
The Speech
January 11, 2007 | Governance | People & Society
For my money, Andrew Sullivan sums it up perfectly.
What we will discover in the next few months, therefore, is simply whether the entire premise of this strategy is actually true. The president is asking us to find this out one more time. He seems to disbelieve the overwhelming evidence on the ground - that the dynamic has changed beyond recognition. His intellectual rubric - democracy versus terror - has not changed to deal with fast-changing events, or to take account of the sectarian dynamic that his appallingly managed occupation has spawned.
Andrew Sullivan is an interesting writer. He's conservative, supported the Iraq war, and Bush in 2000 (but not in 2004). He is disappointed with conservatives, the conduct of the war, and the intellectual dishonesty of political discourse. He's written what appears to be an interesting book (among others). He was one of the first bloggers to figure out how to earn ~$80K a year blogging, and parlayed that into a gig writing (daily) for Time online. He's smart, reasonable, and thoughtful, even when I disagree with his positions. If you're of the left-wing persuasion, he is a good addition to your input mix.
Ryu at Dartmouth
January 11, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
Wow, I had no idea this was a local person. Excerpt from PaidContent.org:
And then Pogue introduced us to an 18-year-old Dartmouth student named Phillip Ryu. The kid ran a competition called Mydreamapp.com, where amateurs competed to design their fantasy Mac application. The winner, a product Atmosphere ("an ambient way to see your weather") is now being built. Ryu and friends also produced something called MacHeist where they bundled shareware applications and sold them for $49, donating 25% of proceeds to the buyer’s charity of choice. MacHeist raised $200,000. Pogue got it right when he said the future of the tech looks good if it is in the hands of kids like Phillip Ryu.
The story is not quite that simple. Yes, they raised money for charity, but many people are upset that the developers got a fixed price, while MacHeist sold far more than expected and made a killing. The cooperative model would have been to share a percentage of the profits with the developers. For a summary, see this Wired story. For the details, read Jon Gruber's always-amusing posts (1, and 2) at Daring Fireball.
There's no doubt this project was a marketing masterpiece. Ryu and team probably made north of $400,000 in one week. [Yeah, four hundred, not forty.] But that doesn't mean I'm excited to put the future in their hands.
Completely Redefining What You Can Do
January 9, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
I will be one of approximately 143,215,697 people to mention this today or tomorrow, but this is as close as it gets to product-orgasm. Cell phones have sucked forever, and this is a whole new game.
iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.
The picture is so good you are nearly drooling. [Note switch to second-person voice for a bit of self-revealing distance.] This product is far, far better than I expected, even with all the pre-hype. It's a big year for Apple. See also, no slouch either: AppleTV.
David Pogue comments on it all. Better, this Time magazine article on the culture and attitude that produces an object like this. And, Joshua Allen on some of the potential problems with Apple's approach.
Black Tie Optional
January 8, 2007 | People & Society
Current students at Hannah and Sherry's alma mater are getting awfully hip....
The Pundits, founded in 1884 as a society of “campus wits,” have a history of rebelling against Yale tradition, often through elaborate pranks. They organize six to eight covert naked parties a year, which attract anywhere from 30 to 300 people to off-campus houses, neglected rooms in classroom buildings and even small libraries on campus.
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
January 7, 2007 | Arts & Culture
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Mouse over each cell to get an example.
Design Is Good For Business
January 3, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
DETROIT, Jan. 3 — The Chrysler Group was the only Detroit carmaker to report a sales increase for December, while the Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda both saw their sales grow last month, figures from the auto companies showed today.
I assert Chrysler gained sales because of design, with a capital-D. Of the US automakers, they are the only one with cars that spark the imagination. Anyone who is practical has done the math and found that Toyota or Honda will be the most reliable. If you are going to buy a car that falls apart it may as well look nice, since it will appear dated soon and you'll want to replace it.
This is the reason why design is good for business. (c.f. iPod.)
Mattresses
January 2, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
How to cut through the marketing gimmicks.
The secret to mattress shopping is that the product is basically a commodity. The mattress biz is 99-percent marketing. So just buy the cheapest thing you can stand and be done with it, because they're pretty much all the same. And that's all you need to know.
Not sure I agree entirely, but it is a confusing market, with lots of re-branding, and essentially the major differences are firmness and price.
Billionaire Divorce
January 2, 2007 | People & Society
A couple in their '50s, worth about $2 billion, settled their divorce in a few hours over a bottle of wine.
When they decided to divorce, they spent a single afternoon in the Beverly Hills Hotel, dividing it all up. With just two notebooks and a bottle of wine, the Blixseths -- California real-estate tycoons and founders of the famed Yellowstone Club -- finished the job in a matter of hours.
Typographic Pinups
January 2, 2007 | Arts & Culture
Taking the cake, so to speak, in the 'adult weird' category, is a calendar of (female) pinups, created entirely with typographic characters.
Happy New Year
January 2, 2007 | Life
2006 was a forest fire. 2007 is the re-seeding. Welcome to the future.
