The Old Twenty
I stopped by my local pizza joint tonight to grab a lazy dinner, and upon getting to the counter I noticed that I had five ones and one twenty.
The tab was $7.30 so the obvious choice would be to whip out the twenty, which I did. Upon holding this Jackson in my hand though, I remembered it wasn’t just any Jackson. It was a pre-1998 redesign Jackson. 1969 in fact.
I’d had this beauty in my wallet for a couple of weeks and tried not to spend it — although I knew I eventually would unless it was put into safe keeping. Such a beautiful bill… clearly superior in every way to the new rubbish.
My head told me I was the only person in the restaurant who would care about such a thing.
Inhale. Exhale. I handed the bill unceremoniously to girl behind the counter.
“Oh wow! An old twenty! I’m SO keeping this!” she said to my surprise as she plucked a modern twenty from her own wallet and made the exchange.
“I’m glad it’s going to someone who appreciates it,” I said as I watched her show it off to the other employees.
After relinquishing the twenty, I realized that it had been probably two or so years since I’d seen one… and I pay with cash a lot. I wonder what that says about the shelf-life and geographic distribution of paper currency in our country. I’d love to see some studies on this.
UPDATE: Kottke, the master of interesting cultural trivia, is up-to-date on this and has detailed info.
Communication
If a communicatee is at all interested in understanding a communicator and the communicatee misunderstands something the communicator communicates, it is almost always the fault of the communicator.
I need to communicate better.
Introducing swfIR
I’m a rule breaker… and when other people break rules in the name of good design, I stand up and applaud.
That is why, I’m happy to point Mike Industries readers to a new creation by Messrs Dan Mall, Jon Aldinger, and Mark Huot: swfIR.
“But I already have a swfIR!”, you say. “I use it to shine my beautiful linoleum floors.”
This swfIR isn’t a disposable mop, though. It’s a new Flash replacement technique in the tradition of sIFR. While sIFR uses Flash to replace boring browser text with interesting custom-rendered Flash text, swfIR uses Flash to replace boring browser images with more interesting custom-rendered Flash images. So instead of settling for plain, rectangular jpegs and gifs, you can now apply borders, rounded corners, shadows, opacity, and more to your images… dynamically, without having to edit your images or muddy up your beautiful code.
Flash for images?
I can hear screams coming from the ivory towers where the validatorians and standardistas live. I like those screams. I live for those screams. I will sleep well tonight with thoughts of prettier imagery on the web.
“What Will The TV Spot Look Like?”
I was meeting with our investors today about Newsvine and the subject of product “explainability” came up. It seems that every time we think about adding a new feature to Newsvine, it becomes progressively harder to explain exactly what Newsvine is. This is a fairly common problem in product development, and if not dealt with swiftly can lead to consumer confusion and adoption issues.
One of our investors then proceeded to tell me how it works at Apple (he was behind a lot of Apple’s successful product marketing and development). He said:
“The answer to every product question that comes up at Apple is ‘What will the TV spot look like?'”
In other words, if you can’t think of a 30-second spot that neatly and efficiently explains your company, your product, or whatever other consumer-facing thing you happen to be working on, you aren’t building the right thing.
Refreshing.
Holy Headlines, CNN!
I’m not complaining or anything, but has anyone noticed how tabloidy the CNN.com front page has gotten lately? The subject matter is more topsy-turvy than ever and the headline writing seems deliberately offbeat.
“Libby’s Defense Tackles Bush’s Former Spokesman” (TACKLES?!?)
“Dead Soldier To Father Kid With Woman He Never Met”
“Idiot Window Washer Hangs By Toes 6 Floors Up”
A screenshot of the front page as of one minute ago is below:
Just to repeat, I’m not complaining, but I’ve definitely noticed a gradual change from CNN’s matter-of-fact hard news approach to a more entertainment-based approach over the last year. For better or for worse, I think most news outlets will move in the same direction if they aren’t already.
Oh, Minty Day!
A few minutes ago, The Wolf released version 2.0 of his highly successful and highly awesome stat package, Mint.
I’ve been beta testing it for several months now. It’s good. You should get it.
(Shaun also launched a new version of Shauninman.com because the paint was starting to dry on the “old” one, but we’ll ignore that for now.)
The Wolf has also figured out something Alan Greenspan never could: how to buck inflation. The price of Mint is still $30 and existing users can upgrade for a mere Jackson.
Anyway, that’s it. It’s a nice upgrade. My only beef is that the interface is de-Mint-ified a bit by default, but by throwing this hack at the end of your /mint/app/styles/vanilla_mint/style.css file, you can get green again:
/* BEGIN RETURN TO MINTYNESS */
.display table.striped tr.alt td,
.display table.visits table.striped tr.alt td
{
background-color: #F0F7E2;
border-top: 1px solid #E7F0D0;
border-bottom: 1px solid #E7F0D0;
}
.display table tr:hover td,
.display table.visits td tr:hover td
{
background-color: #F0F7E2;
}
.display table.striped tr:hover td,
.display table.visits table.striped tr:hover td,
.display table.striped tr.alt:hover td,
.display table.visits table.striped tr.alt:hover td
{
background-color: #cde9a7;
}
/* END RETURN TO MINTYNESS */
At the request of Chris, here is a sample of what the mod looks like:
Introducing the Newsvine Question of the Day
One question per day. 150 words or less per answer. One answer per person.
Those are the only rules for the freshly announced Newsvine Question of the Day competition, and thanks to the nice people at Nike, each winner this week will receive an iPod Nano and Nike + iPod Sport Kit as a victory keepsake. Did you know Nike means victory in Greek?
We’re very excited about the launch of the Newsvine QOTD because it’s the first in a series of “lighter” activities we’re prepping for debut on the ‘Vine. Sometimes you’re just not in the mood to read and debate articles and essays and would rather spend a minute or two here and there doing less time-intensive things. The QOTD is designed to be read quickly and answered quickly. We’ll see how it evolves.
So head on over to the QOTD landing page (http://questions.newsvine.com) and answer the first question. It’s about the public figure below:
24 Is Back — Please Kill The President
So the best show on TV — 24 — is back for a sixth season. If you missed last night’s two hour premiere, try and download it somewhere and then tune in tonight for hours three and four. This season, like all others before it, starts out with the sort of high drama that draws you in almost from the opening minute. I won’t give anything away for those who may have missed it, but I do have some concerns about season six so far:
- First and foremost, who the hell decided to cast D.B. Woodside (“Wayne Palmer”) as the President of the United States? Especially after last season’s great performance by Gregory Itzin. Woodside has been by far and away the worst actor in six seasons of the show and his portrayal of the president is laughable. Chloe O’Brien would be more believable. The actor’s previous career highlight was a largely inconsequential role in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The only rationale I can think of is that 24’s writers sometimes try to mirror things to real life and since we now have a less-able relative of a former president in the White House, maybe they thought it would be cool to do the same thing on the show. Bottom line: I hope Wayne Palmer is dead before the end of tonight.
- Early in the premiere I grew a bit worried about how Muslims would be portrayed throughout the season. In the past, 24 has not shied away from casting religious and ethnic minorities in questionable light and this season started out no different with Islamic radicals and suicide bombings dominating the plot. You can already see, however, that there will be efforts to separate these sorts of people from the U.S. Muslim population as a whole… and that’s good. For instance, one of the past terror leaders has already “turned peaceful”. Hopefully, by the end of the season, the public will come away with a higher opinion of U.S. Muslims and not a lower one. I think it is the show’s responsibility to keep the portrayal honest and socially constructive.
- I love seeing Kal Penn of “Harold & Kumar” fame in the cast! Although he plays a serious role as a complicit instrument of terrorism, I can’t stop picturing him with a joint in his mouth. Go Kumar!
Between the start of 24 and the restarting of the third season of Lost in a few weeks, 2007’s TV season is off to a great start.
iPhone: SAND In Your Hand
Back in the mid ’80s, when Apple was getting ready to introduce the first Macintosh, the company gave advance peeks of the new machine and operating system to a few key software developers, one of them being Bill Gates. Gates and his pal Charles Simonyi weren’t told the name of the machine for security reasons so they nicknamed it S.A.N.D., or “Steve’s Amazing New Device”.
It’s interesting to think of that acronym today in light of the day’s announcements because in 2007 terms, a computer is not generally referred to as a “device”. A phone, however, is the epitome of a device… and that’s exactly what we got today: Steve’s Amazing New Device 2007.
In my mind, the iPhone is the second most exciting technology product announcement of my lifetime, after the original Mac in 1984. It is to phones what the Mac was to computers. Jobs mentioned the iPod as the second “revolution” between the Mac and the iPhone but I think both the Mac and the iPhone are much more significant. Music is great and all but the relative importance of the sorts of things you do on a computer and on a phone (now) are several orders of magnitude higher.
There are so many things to say about this iPhone that it’s hard to know where to start. To me, the single most impressive thing about it is that, like a lot of Apple products but specifically this one, there is no other company in the world capable of inventing it. How many times do you see a new product come out and you think “Damn, I wish I would have thought of that!”
The iPhone is no such product.
You couldn’t think of it, and even if you did, your finished product would be a godamned fingerpainting compared to this. It is so fulfilling to watch technology unfold like this, in the hands of the most indispensable and world-changing CEO of our lifetime. It makes all other work you may be doing in the technology world seem like peanuts.
When Apple says they are five years ahead of every other phone on the market with this offering, they are being conservative. If many of the 200 patent applications filed in association with this phone are accepted, there is no opportunity to copycat. If a multi-touch interface turns out to be the panacea of the mobile device input problem, then what are other handset manufacturers to do while they are prevented from implementing it on their own? I mean seriously, how would you like to work at Palm, Motorola, Samsung, or LG right now? Those guys must feel like a nuclear bomb hit them.
Read more…
Earbud Impotence
So I ordered a pair of highly, highly, highly regarded Etymotic ER-6i earbuds the other day and I have to say, they have about as much bass as the iPod Nano’s built in speaker. I don’t get it… all over the web, people rave about these things. iLounge, a community of smart iPod fanatics, has 17 independent reviews and almost every single one gives the Etymotics five stars.
The one thing that makes me suspicious is that many of the reviews — as well as the instruction manual — stress the importance of stuffing these things as far into your ear canals as possible. Well I’ve done that, and with all four supplied earpieces. Still nothing. Any further pushing and I’m going to puncture an eardrum.
So my question is, has anyone else had problems with the fit of high-end isolator earbuds? I’m thinking that some ears are probably just incompatible with them entirely.