November 2009
2 posts
July 2009
4 posts
June 2009
21 posts
Confessions of an Unremarkable Knuckle-Dragger: A...
This blog post by David Alston at Radian6 has been enthusiastically retweeted. Once you read on, you find a highly useful cataloging of the advantages of social media.
What I dissent from is the insistence that either you are completely onboard with social media or you are a mouth-breather who is willfully cheating his clients.
You would have me reject “old school marketing” and...
May 2009
11 posts
WatchiPhoning It In: Technology, Ideas, and the “Finger Painting” cover
It’s interesting that, while strikingly beautiful, the much talked about iPhone cover is one of the least conceptually interesting New Yorker covers to appear since Tina Brown took over and insisted on wit and relevance. (Or am I missing something?) The story seems to be how the cover was created, not what the...
“urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention...”
– The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature
It’s the parenthetical “to avoid being hit by a car” that I love especially.
April 2009
13 posts
“visit other London-area schools and resources, and journey around London...”
– Type Camp 2009
I may be one of the few non designers who think this would be awesome. Type? Camp? Are there merit badges? Do we sleep outside?
“Much of the barrier to charging online is the transaction friction, as opposed...”
– I’d never encountered the phrase “transaction friction” but it’s perfect. I so hope we can figure something out so that journalists can pay their mortgages.
Thanks to nmallin for drawing my attention to the article.
Media Executives Plan Online Service for Publications...
The 10 followers approach worked for Christianity....
The part of me that hates all all-or-nothing thinking prickles at the theory that all marketing should consist of creating ten champions who then pass their enthusiasm on to ten champions-in-law who then further spread news of your product.
1. So Apple got it wrong? The iphone launch was message-controlled, high production, high budget, unilateral mass media. Apple’s enthusiasts are truly...
“Web users tend to scan information rather than reading it closely. One reason is...”
– How the Web Made Me a Better Copywriter — AIGA | the professional association for design
It’s good to have confirmed what web practice suggests. It is dispiriting that reading, the basis of so much democracy and culture, has become an uncomfortable act.
Confessions of a Twitter Moderate
Being a moderate means you find a broader spectrum of people annoying.
I am bothered by:
a) Curmudgeonly critiques: you crazy kids stop telling total strangers what you had for breakfast!
This is a critique of twitter as parodied rather than twitter as practiced.
Anyone can sit out trends and claim prescience, because most trends fizzle or evolve. But you also miss opportunities. Cynicism is...
“Recall, please, the national mood in the mid-’70s: after the 1960s party,...”
– The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America? - TIME