Month: July 2000

Wow. Both Bruce Tognazzini and Brenda Laurel joined the Nielson Norman Group. All they need now is Don Norman and Joy Mountford and they’ll have the dream team.

Failure Magazine is along the lines of what I was referring to in Sweden’s ill-designed 17th century warship, or France’s statue to a cyclist that rode himself to death. Holding up a surpreme effort and learning, and gaining inspiration from, the failure.

Usually I perceive advertising as necessary evil on web sites, though ads in general can play a useful role in calling our attention to useful stuff, if in a mostly ugly and untargetted way.

Once in a while when flipping through a big ad-laden magazine like Wired I get absorbed in the meta-reading activity of looking at page after page of ads and wondering what they were thinking with each particular creative and marketing approach. Part of me is also just reading the ads in consumer mode like the advertisers want me to. I also think about how we watch TV shows about famous TV ads, make a big deal about the Super Bowl ads, and mimic ads (my relatively conservative father just sent me an email with the subject, “Whassup?”).

Recently I wondered, if these big, creative, attractive ads so captivate people that it’s conceivable to fill 20 consecutive pages with them, would people also want to experience them similarly on the web? The Onion I think comes closest to this with their long list of “sponsers”. But imagine taking the next step: a broadband site where you could navigate through the content but also step through a linear progression of big, beautiful advertisements. Would people want to do this? My gut says yes, some people would. And if that pays for great content then it’s worth pursuing.

Just had to post this picture of my cousins, just ‘cus…

eNormicon and Signals vs. Noise have gotten some linkage recently, but the real gem is the authors’ company site, 37signals. I think I just read every page on the site, and then went to a site they designed and ordered something. It’s a company you could take home to mom.

Having worked in the recording industry (my original career track was becoming a recording engineer) I feel little pity for them in these days of free Napster-music. They’ve held on to old, star- and marketing-driven business models too long, mostly out of stupidity and greed. Even now, they just want control and not to actually adapt to changing times.

I’d love to hear one record exec say, “We’ve got to throw out our oxygen-sucking marketing and A&R departments and use the Internet to give people the music they want at a reasonable price that makes us a reasonable profit.”

Too bad emusic.com isn’t more popular. I love getting this They Might Be Giants album for $.99 a song or $8.99 for almost an hour of music. I bet the artists make a higher profit in the end too.

Now I know that daemon is “from the mythological meaning, later rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor’ “. Perhaps that’s why it’s so often pronounced DEE-men.

Our CFO’s father is a partner at PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and therefore the latter company had to resign as our auditors. According to Dow Jones, “The SEC requires that a partner of an accounting firm who has a close relative with an important position with an audit client be geographically separated from the relative and from the engagement team by at least 500 miles to reduce undue influence.” Seems kinda arbitrary and paternalistic to me.

Patagonia’s self-imposed Earth Tax is a great idea, I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me earlier to follow their lead. My new business plan will include a similar tax, but targeted more towards improving my daytime environment of New York City.

Spent four days in Santa Monica, CA – one day of work and three days hanging out in a sumptuous hotel room in the Casa del Mar. Lots of sleep, room service, and hanging with Sarah. Never made it to Universal Studios or the Getty, and only a short drive up the PCH. Didn’t think at all about blogging anything either, which is a good thing. I’ve become more sensitive to the life/work balance lately after seeing friends get burned out, and being able to forget about my computer-centric hobbies is a positive sign for me.

Scientists have seen a pulse of light emerge from a cloud of gas before it even entered.

Lusting for the new Power Mac G4 Cube – pathetic really that I feel this way for a computer.

A leaner, meaner Noise Between Stations. Nothin’ fancy, not even tables. 1,615 characters of streamlined Blogger template goodness.

Tog’s latest column dispenses yet more design wisdom:

“I have come to the conclusion that all new revision efforts should apportion 20% of the design effort to correcting what is already there. Almost universally, people become so wrapped up in the exciting new features that they ignore the current problems.”

I’m making my first trip to Los Angeles this weekend, any suggestions on fun places to go? So far I’ve got Universal Studios, the Getty Museum, and a drive up the PCH on my list.