i had to.

i don't know where american culture would be without photoshop.

thanks, Guy.

things i want but will never need, #3

The Reveal Light is only cool because I grew up in Ohio -- you really learn to appreciate the sunlight in the winter when you spent 22 years in the cloudy, midwest suburbs.

The light is probably over-priced at $450, but to have a realistic, blowing in the wind effect projected onto your wall year-round [read: even when it's rainy and crappy] is quite a luxury.

bk

ethics and such.

I watched entirely too many episodes of Weeds this weekend. I also just got an email from my mother that may or may not have read that tomorrow they'll be putting down my childhood dog, Brandy. These two situation are largely unrelated except that in one of the episodes the grandmother is suffering from a terminal disease and the family argues over pulling the ventilator plug and ending her life -- not unlike euthanizing a pet.

Although there are obvious differences between a pet and a human being, I'm slightly confused as to why putting a pet out of its misery is widely accepted and doing the same for a human is punishable in a court of law. I would argue that a human is much more cognizant of his / her state of suffering than a dog. I'm not solidly for or against the long-fought issues of assisted suicide, but the standards seem a little off and I certainly don't think that a healthy, pain free judge has any right to decide whether or not my conditions are bearable.

Eh, just ranting. Not too happy that the dog I had since I was 8 suffered two torn ACLs in one week.


bk

you're kidding, right?

Yahoo featured an article about a woman who was recently jailed for killing her husband; the unreal part is that the husband was virtual, a relationship created on an online video game called Maple Story.

The woman was reportedly upset that her virtual husband had divorced her, so she accessed his game account and terminated the character. Wow. And she's facing up to five years in prison or a $5,000 fine.

Insane.


bk

Seth Godin on who you work for...

Seth posted an awesome note about being careful who you work for; not just your boss, but your clients as well:

Years ago, when I had ten people working for me at my book packaging company, one client accounted for about half our revenue. They were difficult, constantly threatening litigation, sending lawyers to otherwise productive meetings, questioning our ethics and more. It was clearly the culture of their organization to be at war. So I fired them. I gave them the rights and walked away, even though it meant a huge hit to our organization. Why do it? Because if we had stuck with them, it would have changed who we were, who we hired and how we marketed ourselves going forward. We would have had a lifetime of this.

Of course it matters who you work for, but I think it matters even more that you're aware of the potential influence they have. You can't always work in Pleasantville, and I think I'd kill myself if I did, but self-awareness and the aspects of your business that you allow to seep in are key to not only enjoying your job but to progressively growing your role. We aren't all lucky enough to be best friends with our coworkers (okay, I am) but recognizing the positive and the negative of each person, filtering out the bad and aggregating the good into one mold that you're always striving to fill can be a great way to deal with all of the personality types in your office.

Or, you can just keep jumping ship; let me know how that goes.


bk

twitter annoys me.

or

?

Twitter annoys me. Now, obviously, to annoy me I must have an account, which is voluntary, but the practice of posting isn't what irritates me. The attention and credit that the site gets for being the innovative, addictive form of dispersing small bits of info is what annoys me, not because I'm jealous that I didn't come up with it, but because it's not really all that original.

Anyone 25 years of age or younger can likely attest to the immediate addiction to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) ten or more years ago. For me, it began in 1994 when I got my first computer and discovered the messaging system. By the time I was in high school, AIM was commonly used for beginning, maintaining, and ending relationships; at this point, away messages took on a whole new purpose. I can remember a sad number of times when I put up away message content strictly for the response I knew I'd get. After breaking up with a boyfriend, it wasn't uncommon for my away message to read, "out with Joe!" or "fun with the crew!" -- just to prove the point that I was over it.

I was far from being the leader in this practice, which is the entire point. Facebook groups were created with titles like "obsessive away message checkers" and variations with the same purpose. The practice of leaving small blurbs of information that often amount to completely loaded comments is not new. The shift in focus from being primarily a form of real time communication and secondarily a status message to primarily a status message and secondarily a form of [not real time] communication is significant, but in the end the purpose is nearly identical.

Maybe pissing off exes isn't the best example of the similarities. In Seth Godin's recent book, Tribes, he talks about a man who, sick of waiting in line for a Google party, walked to a nearby bar instead of waiting. Upon arrival, the man posted a Twitter update giving the short, sweet details of the bar and his seats in the back, whereupon 8 friends joined him immediately. Original? Maybe to Seth and to the man waiting at the bar, but not to college kids all over the country. Many of our parties began as an away message -- in particular, the second snow day in the history of The Ohio State University during the 2006-2007 winter led my roommates and I to gather our favorite bottles of wine and throw a snow day party at the house. Some text messages were sent out and our away messages on AIM stated something like, "snow day = party at the house...text if you'd like to join!" I believe we went through something like 20 bottles of wine that night due strictly to the reaction to our messages. And sure, some of those were a result of the texting, but an SMS-enabled Twitter account serves much the same purpose as a personal text -- an update by someone you follow translates into a text message; same idea, different outlet.

And most annoying of all is that Twitter is largely successful among the upper 20s and 30s crowd; the same crowd that was a couple of years before the height of the AIM popularity and that incessantly criticized the practice of constantly checking away messages and the concept of AIM in general.

Welcome to the addiction. And Twitter still annoys me.

things i want but will never need, #2

Loser or not, I want this robot. The Erector Spykee comes out November 15 and, for a $300 price tag, seems incredibly functional. No, I could never justify owning a robot, but there's no way I'd ever get bored with this thing.

The three configurations feature the following capabilities:

• built-in Wi-fi for controlling it wirelessly
• camera and mic for real time audio and video
• motion sensors for security options
• built-in Skype software for VoIP phone / camera
• self-charging (parked)

The fun seems endless.

bk

Verizon is on top of poor customer service.

Truly reminiscent of the Verizon Wireless lackluster customer service trend, I visited a store today -- my Blackberry decided to stop accepting email -- and was once again met by their misguided efforts. When I walked into the Lone Tree, Colorado store, I was immediately greeted by a woman who wanted to "sign me in." I hadn't made an appointment so I thought signing in was odd; it seemed like a spoof of the Apple Store appointment policy.

Once I got signed in, I waited for 35 minutes while the woman who was already being helped when I arrived solved her phone issues. While waiting, I noticed the ridiculously obvious and numbers-driven setup of the personnel: 4 salespeople, one person to tend to displays, and one tech. Despite the fact that not a single person was in to shop and 4 or more were there to maintain, the responsibilities don't change. There are quite a few ways to solve this, two of which are obvious: A) even out your number of techs and salespeople, or B) train your staff to be more flexibly positioned.

Verizon has a lot to learn and it's unfortunate that so many mobile users stick with their account out of immediate convenience and familiarity.

Chase: ATM Check Scanners

While some banks are struggling to keep their heads above water, Chase is becoming increasingly efficient. By 2010, the bank plans to deploy 5,000 internal scanners at its ATM sites, allowing members to simply insert their checks and cash for deposit. I've used the machine in Lakewood, Colorado and can personally verify their convenience.

"Customers can insert a stack of up to 30 checks or 50 bills of U.S. currency in the new ATMs without an envelope or deposit slip. The ATMs rapidly calculate the deposit and display images of the checks on both the screen and printed receipt - typically in less than 60 seconds.

The screen and receipt images make consumers more confident in making deposits at ATMs. In fact, deposit volume has increased by more than 50 percent at some of the 50 no-envelope ATMs Chase has been piloting. " -ALL BUSINESS

Duh.

bk

Mail Goggles

It's sort of sad that this is necessary, but f'n hilarious that it exists. Be sure to utilize on your smart phone if your happy hours even slightly resemble mine: with your crazy / fun coworkers and before everyone else has left the office.

Mail Goggles

SharedEgg

Photo: SharedEgg / Flickr

SharedEgg put together some fairly standard research and turned it into a phenomenal display of relevant information:

Sharedegg is a diagram of subcultures based on data collected from the people who make up those cultures. People categorize themselves using their objects and through their categorization are linked to the other people participating in the project. What has resulted is a deeply complex image showing social trends and unknown bonds between people through those trends.

The maps [pictured above is "trendy" only] point out the incredible overlap in cultural stereotypes. The faulty part is that nowhere on the site are the optional stereotypes defined, which leads me to believe the same was true for data collection; if the categories are open to interpretation then data become flimsy and likely inaccurate. It doesn't appear that SharedEgg was looking to take its findings anywhere beyond interested nerds, so I suppose a little wiggle room in accuracy isn't hurting anyone. Although with a little more structure I'm sure many national brands would be willing to pay for segmenting a relevant demographic.