Noise Between Stations

Way back when, I was a journalism major in college. So I was pleased to meet the folks from Daylife last year and bat around some ideas about how they’re aggregating, understanding, and syndicating news applications. I just found part of the conversation lying around my hard drive and thought you might be interested in [...]

Much has been written about the importance of failure in design. To improve things we need to try new approaches which sometimes work and sometimes don’t. Straight forward enough, at least to designers. But business managers won’t go near that. “Yes, I need to fail!” Bull-shit, you ain’t gonna hear that in many management offices. [...]

Once is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time, and accomplishes this very simply, without trying very hard. A tale short enough to be a short story. A musical setting so natural you almost don’t realize you’re watching a musical. Characters that are beautiful people you’d want to be friends with. Website Soundtrack

I just noticed that Worthwhile magazine dodged a trademark suit bullet and re-emerged as Motto magazine. They had good spirit before, I’m looking forward to checking out this new incarnation.

I splurged on a new headshot recently and was lucky to find Carla Coria, a photographer here in Brooklyn, New York who does amazing work with a simple studio and a digital camera. She made prep easy and effective, the shoot as fast and painless as possible, and a week later had a final shot [...]

Lou dropped off a loaf of this amazing no-knead bread that’s all the rage among home cooks these days (recipe). It was and continues to be delicious, and as I munched through the crunchy exterior into the large crumb I pondered Lou’s search for a no-knead information architecture. My brain loves reducing complex processes to [...]

…that’s the spoiler from Michael Pollen’s Unhappy Meals, in which he expertly dissects the food industry at the personal, commercial, industrial, and societal levels in just a few thousand words, helping us see the problems with Western nutrition are worse than we thought. I’ve been working in this industry lately, and fascinated by the meta-designs [...]

An Inconvenient Truth is Al Gore’s film about global warming. A friend of a friend who saw a preview said it blew her mind. Who Killed the Electric Car? investigates, murder mystery style, the birth, limited commercialization and subsequent death of the electric vehicle in the United states.

Surrounded by the twin mystiques of brunch and Hollandaise, Elaine Corn offers a better, simpler cooking method (boil water in a shallow skillet, add vinegar and salt, slide the eggs in and turn the heat off, let cook in covered skillet for three minutes). I can tear that page out of my Betty Crocker cookbook [...]

We’ve been working for several companies facing how they and their markets change with the further spread of social media. It’s creating enormous potential for more democratic media production and sophisticated tools, but a lot of it will rely on companies understanding it and being receptive to it. We’re developing a framework to help companies [...]

I finally got a around to reading Don’t Think of an Elephant! in which George Lakoff applies his linguistic and cognitive ideas on framing to American progressive politics. It’s a compelling, important book, and the theory can be used anywhere, particularly the hierarchy of vision -> values -> principles -> policies -> ten-word philosophy. It’s [...]

Strong Lattes, Sour Notes at Starbucks: Starbucks’ adventures in media bars aren’t playing out as planned BusinessWeek, June 20, 2005 At Starbucks, a Blend of Coffee And Music Creates a Potent Mix: Chain Boosts Sales and Careers As It Co-Produces, Offers Selected CDs in Its Stores Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2005

Terry just taught me clean washing greenwashing, which is when a company smears on the energy-efficient PR while continuing their old inefficient ways. And now there’s hygrid, a hybrid of electricity from the grid and rolling your own.

NYC school kids learn ballroom dancing, wonderful.

This book review reminded me of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra… …which has forged a successful recording and performance career without the need of a conductor. Their group is not leaderless, members are keen to emphasize; rather, the leadership role shifts among them within a performance and even within a piece. Echoing Peter Drucker, the [...]