Author: Victor

Very cool “Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design” called Teddy. via peterme (not someone you want to borrow links from without crediting! ;-)

Every time I walk into my local Fresh Fields I think how they picked a great niche and are positioned so well. They appeal to people’s desire to eat well – in regards to health, taste, and quality – without being too upscale or alienating. Some gourmet foods, some organic, some yummy stuff made on the premises, but I still have the choice to buy “regular” food too. I think, yeah, this is going to catch on, people will start eating more organic foods.

Then I saw a commercial for Fit. Fit is a product you can buy to wash the pesticides off your fruits and vegetables. Instead of buying organic foods, we are going to spray our food with chemicals and then later buy this stuff to wash the pesticides off. I don’t care if it is made from natural materials, it’s going in the wrong direction. This really disturbes me that this product came as far as it has, and will really sadden me if it’s a success.

I keep thinking, and telling people, that the most important thing I’ve learned at work in the past few months is the importance of feedback. A fundamental aspect of communication theory, feedback can help improve systems, people, processes…everything. In communication theory, feedback helps ensure that a message was transmitted. In the same way, we don’t know if the work we’ve done unless we hear from the people it affects.

When it comes to people, it seems that even when we’re good at receiving feedback, a lot of people aren’t good at giving feedback. Specifically, we too often associate feedback with harsh criticism and shy away from it (or put it on our blogs in instead of doing it face to face ;-). Also, most people I’ve seen don’t have any structure to their feedback, so it lacks effectiveness.

I like the classic, simple, “plus/delta” method taught be such folks as Outward Bound, which is where I learned it. In a group situation, the leader (the person seeking feedback) talks about what she thinks she did well. Then each person in the group takes a turn talking about what the leader did well. Then the leader talks about what she could improve next time, and then each person talks about what she could do better next time. It’s important that the turn taking is strictly enforced; these are not discussions or arguments. It takes some discipline to introduce this to people and to feel comfortable with it, but it’s worth the effort.

New book that explains the evolution of culture through sexual evolution: The Mating Mind : How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature.

Thomas Locke Hobbs (great name, btw) correctly pointed out that, statistically and probability, if polls now show Gore ahead of Bush in my state I can safely let the electoral college cast its votes while I vote for Nader. My fear below is fueled by my denial that the electoral college really still exists; it seems like such a nasty vestigal leftover of our past. I read Walt Whitman and I crave true democracy.

Thomas created an interesting home page and blog. I especially like his photography of Torres del Paine and the portraits.

A was going to vote for Nader in order to support the an alternative party in Amercia (if a party receives at least 5% of the vote they are eligible for significant federal funding). Just now some co-workers walked by and uttered the time-worn dictum, “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.” Damnit, I’d hate to think I’m putting Bush in the Whitehouse just for wanting to support a third party. Arrrrrgh.

Gorgeous Mac clone. When they actually start shipping I’ll start to believe it reliably runs at 1200 MHz.

More great in-yer-face attitude from Phil Greenspun: ArsDigita: Redefining Professionalism for Software Engineers

Wow, a whole series of articles on what people say is the one Meeting I Never Miss. I’m liking Fast Company more and more, and letting my Wired subscription expire for the second time.

A recent issue of Fast Company actually praised people who removed themselves from the rat race and the tech industry to regain their lives; Wired’s attitude seems to be you’re worthless if you haven’t studied at the Media Lab (what, you have to ask which one?) or have rejected the current paradigm, regardless of the worth of your work to humanity.

Scrum Meetings, a more strict version of the standup meeting.

How one company uses it.

My friend Sam and I cycled over 75 miles through New York City in the Transportation Alternatives Bike Tour yesterday. What was particularly amazing/surprising is that most of the route was through parks, along the shoreline, and beside preserved woodlands. I expected to see sights I haven’t seen before, but after having lived in Queens for two years I thought I would’ve known about miles of bike paths through the woods.

Nothing new, but the Extreme
Programming site has lots of good ideas. Makes me
wonder how many other disciplines could be improved using
this approach. What if we did user-interface design
the same way: extreme user-interface design
(“extreme design”)? Doesn’t look like anyone
has made this connection yet.

Incidentally, the site makes occasional references to the Portland Pattern Repository, drawing on the knowledge recorded by design pattern folks.

I was just walking down Broadway and discovered the office of govWorks.com. I’m trying to figure out the thought process that will generate return traffic on this site. Is it, “Oh I need to pay the water bill, I’ll go to govWorks” or is it “Hmmm, I need to pay the water bill, and that’s a transaction with the goverment, so I should go to govWorks.” In other words, by not focusing on a task like auctioning or paying bills they can offer a much broader array of services, but they run the risk of becoming a mushy entity that people won’t associate with their tasks. Or people might start using the site for one feature and gradually discover the other features(like Yahoo! with its email, briefcase, stock quotes, etc.). Or…

fusionOne looks like a cool service for syncing all of life’s various data.

Very weird coincidence…I just discovered the InfoDesign site the other day, and this morning I find out the author just started working here at Razorfish.