Victor – Page 65 – Noise Between Stations

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“A woman’s voice on the telephone

can convince you you’re wrong.

A woman’s voice on the radio

can convince you you’re in love.”

– TMGB

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I guess the irony of a product called SynDirect never occured to the greedy capitalists who launched it.

It would also make a good name for a porn web site. Duh.

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Beautiful, but simple, chord progression on Counting Crow’s Goodnight Elizabeth: four major chords are used for the chorus and the same four chords with suspensions are used for the verses.

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Always a lover of the contrarian point of view, I appreciate this posting on the CHI-WEB list reminding us not to mistake ourselves for every-user:

One of the sad things I realized while doing some testing of boo is that I
am not part of its target audience – alas, I am no longer young and hip. I
realized this after watching a couple of 20-somethings put up with its
technical glitches because they genuinely thought it was cool. The lesson I
took from this is that us middle-aged usability professionals should not be
so quick to decide that we know what all customers want. It’s possible –
just possible, mind you – that boo understood their own market better than I
do.

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looking for one thing and found something else…

		Buddha's dying words
		"Do your best."

		Come to the edge.
		No, we will fall.
		Come to the edge.
		No, we will fall.

		They came to the edge.
		He pushed them, and they flew.
                                   - Appollinaire

Sarah and I stayed up late last night discussing the potential spiritual effects of various church services. We stumbled on an interesting idea where different religions have differing ideas of what their commonalities are. Some all believe the same thing, some all practice the same way, where those two don’t necessarily go together.

Some, like Unitarian Universalists, basically value the same thing without actually believing the same thing. We each felt differently about what we want in common, how the spirituality we feel relates to that commonality, and how much freedom from commonality we need to grow.

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There’s all these exciting jobs from premiere companies on the CHI-JOBS list, then the SAS Institute posts this:

POSITION TITLE
User Interface Analyst (any level)


POSITION NUMBER
8044ALB


POSTING DATE
2000-04-25


CLOSING DATE
Open until filled


DIVISION
Data Visualization Research and Development


DEPARTMENT
Data Visualization Usability

etc. Yuck, who wants to apply to a company with that kind of advertising?! “Yeeehaaaaa, I got position number 8044ALB!!!”

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Boo bites it. I’m not surprised.

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Passed a guy handing out pamphlets in the NYC subway last night. I said no thank you. He asked what I thought of Jesus Christ, and I said (and motioned) “Thumbs Up!” He asked, as I walked on, if Jesus was my personal Lord and Savior. Jeez, it isn’t enough that I try to follow these teachings, this guy has to save my soul as well.

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I think the story of boo.com’s impending doom is making a fascinating case study. In addition to their crazy ass use of client side technology the business is big and unweildy as well. They’ve only been around for 18 months and have offices in four countries. Aren’t dot coms supposed to capitalize on not needing lots of physical space? You’d think they would need a staff in one city and a distribution center somewhere less expensive, instead they have a huge staff in four expensive European cities.

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Once again Tog comes up with what should’ve been a blatently obvious solution to everyone, this time for squashing inappropriate ringing cell phones.

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A woman at U of Hawaii, doing research on music record labeling, called my undergrad thesis on Music and Censorship “very well-researched and surprisingly current…it still applies today.” Schucks. It’s nice to know a paper I worked my butt off to write eight years ago is still current.