November 30, 2001
freeter
Word of the day: freeter.
You saw it here before you saw it on FastCompany
or from Dan Pink.
November 27, 2001
red rock eater jargon
| Phil Agre could write a book, How to Argue When Facts and Logic are against You, but I don't think he would choose such a title. He has written about the methods public figures use to argue about politics and background in public relations. |
Bust a move
 |
Decades of marketing have attuned us to watch advertising for signs of any shift in what is and isn’t. -- Kalle Lasn |  |
November 26, 2001
all you credit card numbers are belong to Google
Google has indexed and cached credit card numbers.
Naive webmasters make 'hidden' pages, those that are only accessible
to users who click on a very tiny area of an image map, or perhaps
find that 'secret' link at the bottom of the page}}. Visually, these
elements seem 'hidden' to a user who doesn't really understand web
pages and source code, and who uses a graphical browser with image
display enabled. However, these 'hidden' pages look like giant Click
Here buttons to search engines.
November 24, 2001
taliban man
 | Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, co-equal on America's most-wanted list with Osama bin Laden, is partial to Chevrolet Suburbans with darkened windows. Mr. bin Laden, like many of the sheiks and princes of Saudi Arabia among whom he grew up, likes Toyota Land Cruisers, as did his military commander, Muhammad Atef, a former Egyptian policeman who is believed to have been killed by American bombing last week. | |
There is a hierarchy of vehicles among the more important lieutenants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's terrorist organization. Not for them anything discreet and durable, to go with the austerity of their faith: nothing but a Land Cruiser will serve. For ordinary fighters, men with long beards and longer barrels on their ubiquitous Kalashnikovs, the vehicle of choice is the Toyota Hilux, a compact pickup truck popular throughout the developing world. The presence of these vehicles raises questions, given that the Taliban have Wade Hoyt, Toyota's spokesman in New York, who put the best corporate spin on Trucks of the Taliban: Durable, Not Discreet, By JOHN F. BURNS from AUTOS ON FRIDAY, NYTimes, 2001 November 23. | ||
November 23, 2001
Sprawl
Density Continuity Concentration Compactness
Centrality Nuclearity Diversity Proximity
There are a number of ways to define and measure sprawl. There are a
number of ways to quantify the costs of some settlement patterns,
including sprawl. However, there is almost no way to calculate the
benefits of sprawl, though this does not suggest there aren't
benefits, only that it is very hard to calculate.
You might try the following:
1. William Fischel at Dartmouth on the political measures.
2. George Galster at Wayne State on the econometrics of settlement.
Some reports published by Fannie Mae's Housing Policy Debate.
3. Helen Ladd at Duke on the the taxation measures.
4. Anthony Downs on the costs of sprawl.
Thanks to Charles Buki for this list.
November 22, 2001
site of the week
Sitepoint has a nice newsletter from Moreover of pointers
to what's new in web development, and their own list of tips.
From this week's edition:
The rule of five (plus or minus two) does apply on the web.
Too many choices and users become confused. Want proof? Check out
Overstock.com, a perfect example of what not to do. It tries to
offer everything and because of it users will be hard-pressed to
find anything.
An information architecture with several layers would have suited
Overstock.com much better. Just imagine, Amazon.com listing all
book or music categories on their frontpage.
A combination of both task and goal oriented navigation may work
well for some sites. A goal is when you want to get to a specific
page (the portfolio, for example), while task oriented navigation
is about doing something (such as finding out who to send a
resume to).
Just remember to visually separate the two types of navigation,
either visually on each page or via a hierarchy. Offering both
types of navigation links from the same navigation bar on the
same page can cause more problems than it solves.
Both types can co-exist on the same site, or even the same page,
but not in the same navigation menu.
Word of the day
eine Verschlimmbesserung -- trying to make
things better but making them worse in the process.
November 21, 2001
Salesman's serendipity
The registry business has been driven by the wedding and baby market so far, Mr. Nandkeolyar said, but he is optimistic that consumers who try those registries will migrate to the general wish list.
"There are two types of gift givers: those who buy the things they'd like to receive themselves and those who buy what the other person wants," he said. It
is people who buy what other people want, Mr. Nandkeolyar predicts, who will
drive demand for all- registries.
Compelling registrants to spread the word takes some creativity, according to Hans Xu, marketing manager for Felicite.com, a London company whose
activities include helping Web sites set up registries and wish lists. Mr. Xu
said his company provided an online R.S.V.P. and photo- album service
that appeared to be unrelated to the registry business, but was actually a
Trojan horse, of sorts.
When someone goes to the site to respond to an invitation for a party, reception or show, or to view photos from an , the Web page includes a link for the
host's registry. That way, the person hoping to receive the gifts does not have to
notify people of the registry more directly, "which etiquette people are all
against," Mr. Xu said.
"This helps satisfy a whole aspect of managing social obligations that's not really met right now," Mr. Xu said. "And that's really what gift- giving is about: fulfilling
social obligations."
...
The wish lists serve two functions, Ms. David said. "The first is as a true wish list, where you either mail it out to someone, or have a parent do it," she said.
"Second, it gives you a place to park something you want to come back and buy
later."
-- BOB TEDESCHI
2001 November 19, 2001 E-COMMERCE REPORT (NYT): Retailers Stick With Web Gift Lists
ticketmaster for the air
Fees (if not prices) attached to airline tickets keep going up, even
though the costs of data handling keep going down.
November 20, 2001
Where it's at
| BMW make some very sophisticated cars, some with more than 60 computer systems, and cram 700 functions onto a single rotary push knob ; and among these nifty features is a navigation system. BMW also provides trained technicians and equipment to read the diagnostics for all this equipment. |  |
|
|
However, when your BMW is ready to be picked up, the dealer will try to pick you up with a minivan with no navigation system, the minivan driver gets lost for two hours and has an unlisted cell phone number while the service advisors are too busy to return calls within four hours, so it takes longer to retrieve the car than to service it. |
Kay mart
Some fantastic systems (like Butler Lampson's and Peter Deutsch's
GENIE OS) were programmed completely on Model 33 Teletypes (at 10
characters a second = 300 baud).
But isn't the real point far from what highly motivated hackers and
scientists can do when they are burning to do? What we are really
interested in is: what is required for those who are not "burning to
do" to get interested and invested in the new literacy? -- Alan Kay
I don't want to be believed in by delusional people
So, according to the WTO and to an incompetent journalist
at Computerworld establishing an anti-WTO site
that shows up fifth in search engines is tantamount to
site-jacking.
November 18, 2001
code orange
I begin to see a pattern, and it's not the one these instructors see. But who am I
to try to figure things out?
The D.A. told us up front in his presentation that this isn't a workshop. But like
some fictional Clockwork Orange thugs being mentally conditioned to loathe
violence, we're in School to listen, learn, and see the light of our own 'deviant'
ways—and certainly not to contribute.
Yahoo
Yahoo ! deathwatch |
Advertisement |
| From NTK shows the high editorial diligence of Yahoo's editors. |
Advertisement |
From Kevin Fury Fox; 2 has the insider's perspective. |
Advertisement |
Much of what Mr. Semel has done so far has involved throwing out a traditional Yahoo culture that put user experience and audience growth above revenue. from the NYT. |
Advertisement |
| And of course there are the stories of how Y! killed webring. |
Advertisement |
Show me the money
Matt Marshall at the San Jose Mercury knows knows who is funding whom,
from Silicon Valley VC survey.
November 14, 2001
dotted line
Story 1
Published Wednesday, October 24, 2001, in the Contra Costa Times
Botts' dots may go the way of the Edsel
Ubiquitous ceramic highway bumps can't stand up to pounding by heavy
truck traffic
By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times
...
But the future of the ubiquitous Botts' dot is in question,
particularly in Southern California, where heavy truck traffic is
increasingly turning the ceramic road markers into roadway rubble.
"We have a durability problem," said Larry Ornay, the regional
manager for special crews at the Los Angeles office of the California
Department of Transportation.
It seems the little dot is cracking and crumbling under the weight of
big fast-moving trucks. The same is true of the plastic yellow and
white reflective markers, which are considered the higher-tech
descendants of the Botts' dot.
The life expectancy of the dots and plastic markers has been dropping
steadily, from nearly 10 years to about two. And the future does not
look rosy: Truck traffic is expected to double by 2020 because of
increased cargo coming from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
...
At the Caltrans testing laboratory, the most promising alternative to
the dots seems to be a thick highly reflective paint that contains
bits of recycled glass, said Terry Germany, information officer for
the research lab.
The paint, which resembles toothpaste, can be applied on the pavement
by machine, eliminating the need to put work crews in the path of
fast-moving traffic during installation.
To replicate the dots' rumble-strip effect, Germany said an extra-
thick glob of the paint can be dropped every few feet, creating a
mound of the substance.
But Germany said it could be years before the durability tests on the
goopy reflective paint are completed. If the tests are positive, the
Botts' dot could ually be useful as a paperweight.
November 12, 2001
six sisters
the six blue-chip technology companies
that had successfully made the transition to the Internet
era -- Apple, Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO), Dell Computer
(Nasdaq: DELL), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Microsoft, and Oracle
(Nasdaq: ORCL) -- are still run by their original
entrepreneurs. In essence, I believe that it takes the same
aptitude for risk to point a large corporation in an
entirely new direction as it does to start a company.
Anthony B. Perkins in Red Herring
November 11, 2001
We need more research
"The emergence of new technologies has called into question whether we might have gone too far in strengthening the rights of property holders against consumers," said Richard C. Levin, the president of Yale University, who is
heading an investigation by the National Academy of Sciences into the nation's intellectual property policy. "The key question is, are we getting the balance right?"
NYTimes, 11, 2001,
Suddenly, 'Idea Wars' Take On a New Global Urgency
By AMY HARMON
shills everywhere
Stephen Greyser, a longtime marketing professor at Harvard Business School, said many marketers face a pressing need to find independent voices to validate their claims. "The public won't accept exploitation in either substance or style," he said.
Many marketers also raced to issue educational "white papers" on technology or social problems, get their chief executives treated as experts by the media or, best of all, secure invitations to testify before a Congressional committee — all as an indirect way to attract recognition. "You don't get many opportunities for your ship to come in," Professor Greyser said.
November 11, 2001 Marketing Bonanzas, and Pitfalls, in a Disaster
By BARNABY J. FEDER
take a number
SJ Mercury link good for one week
Travelers meet crowds, delays at San Jose airport
BY CONNIE SKIPITARES (cskipitares@sjmercury.com
Published Saturday, Nov. 10, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News
Hundreds of unsuspecting weekend travelers arrived at San Jose airport on
Friday to face colossal lines at security checkpoints that snaked through
its two terminals, spilled into hallways and ramps and even into the
parking garage.
Perhaps passengers could be given a number upon arrival at the airport and
sent shopping for n hours, and every five minutes the next batch of numbers
could be paged to the security gate.
November 08, 2001
the Onion is news, not satire.
Now, which is more informative:
an hour of TV news every day for a month, or five minutes
to read the three Onion paragraphs below:
The whole damn country's been paranoid about terrorism ever since the whole damn country was devastated by terrorism.
Terrorism Storylines Being Added To TV Shows As Quickly As They Were Dropped
LOS ANGELES— Less than two months after frantically excising any allusions to
terrorism, network executives are scrambling to add terror-related storylines to TV shows, sources reported Monday. "We're working around the clock to squeeze in a special episode where a Libyan with ties to Al Qaeda threatens to blow up the D.A.'s office," said Law & Order producer Dick Wolf, who on Sept. 15 scrapped an episode of the NBC drama in which a character utters the word "bomb." "We've got to stay on top of this thing." Next week, Spin City, which last month pulled an episode featuring a shot of the World Trade Center, will air a "very special" one-hour episode in which Mayor Winston is infected with anthrax.
CIA Admits It's Good At Overthrowing Stuff, Not So Much The Intelligence
LANGLEY, VA— Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet conceded Monday that the organization excels at overthrowing foreign governments but isn't so hot at the actual intelligence gathering. "Iran, Zaire, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Greece,
Panama, Australia, Haiti... we're real good at toppling regimes," Tenet said.
"But just collecting your basic data about who's up to what in the U.S. and whatnot, that's not our strong suit." Tenet added that if the U.S. needed to "swoop in
and take out Colombia's current government, man, we could have that done by the weekend."
use the false loop
Open source's metric is attracting developers;
Commercial software's metric is attracting users.
Which method should produce the most user friendly software ?
November 07, 2001
got that right
|
For some Web retailers, financial belt-tightening may be hampering their operations. BizRate, a combination shopping mall and market research firm, has seen signs from its surveys that online shoppers are less satisfied with customer service on the Web — even as ratings for the appearance and performance of Web sites continues to improve. "Most sites already look slick and work great," said Chuck Davis, BizRate's chief executive. "If your site is tight on money, you don't cut corners on your face to the public, but you may let your customer service representatives go." |
From the NYT: ONLINE HOLIDAY OUTLOOK: Web Is Now Vulnerable to the Weak Economy
By SAUL HANSELL, November 5, 2001
OK, name some names.
November 05, 2001
belletrist
Word of the day: belletrist .
|
''Where the Stress Falls,'' which reprints much of her nonfiction from the last two decades, is a very different kind of collection. Its 41 pieces, which cover a wide variety of writers and visual and theatrical artists, are mostly brief -- appreciations, elegies, reflections -- and mostly occasional: prefaces, catalog copy, talks. This is connoisseurial prose, not sustained argumentation. But a belletrist Sontag has never been; a few of these pieces are quite fine, but most reproduce the faults of her earlier essays while eschewing their virtues. Still there the opacities and self-contradictions, the verbal infelicities, the thundering announcements of the obvious or dubious. Gone the analytic energy, the synthesizing reach, the lightning insight. Trying to sound lyrical, she merely sounds silly.
-- WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ on WHERE THE STRESS FALLS (Essays by Susan Sontag). |
November 04, 2001
[++] the web is no longer an art
| Once, manifest destiny was to put everthing on the web.
All was new. All was art. That was 1996. The next phase will be an engineering phase, where we refine the scientific techniques to be finely, highly efficient production processes. This was basically Bertrand Meyer's argument in Object Oriented Software Construction. Because object-oriented software lets us make everything into components, soon everything will already be implemented in these components, and then we'll have nothing but catalogues of components. Making software that works will be a matter of selecting the proper objects from the huge set of existing objects, not writing new objects (except glue code). |
November 03, 2001
Rebel yell
ROCK REVIEW | PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TOUR
Warlike Aggressors, But in Fantasy Only
The affluent, self-satisfied 1990's spawned a paradoxical response: hard rock that inflates
private feelings of victimization into a self-pitying rage. The songs are tantrums in search of a
target, lashing out at family, ex-girlfriends and general human duplicity.
-- JON PARELES
Smug Nuts
an article in Metropolis which compares New Urbanism's affecting authentic communities
to a method actor's becoming a character.
NUTS; New Urbanist Transit Supporters
SmUG; Smart Urban Growth.
PEVERTS; Promoting Exclusion of Vehicles Except Regional Transit
TROGldytes; Transit Only Groupies
New Urbanism
NU may not provide "a viable alternative" for this or that group, but
that's a matter of demand. I work in the DC area, and frequently
confront the issue of consumer preference writ large in some of the
counties here -- mainly Fairfax and Loudoun and Virginia and
Montgomery and PG in Maryland. What I see is consumer preference by
the middle class, black or white, for a large lot and a big house as
far away from real or perceived social problems as possible and as
commute time will permit. There is simply very little demand for NU
by newcomers to the middle class aspiring to obtain their version of
the American Dream.
-- charles buki