I’m quoted in today’s Boston Globe

NEW YORK - To those who dwell in the design universe, Apple Computer has accomplished the near-impossible: making nerdy computing products seem hip and friendly.Sleek, ergonomic, and accessible, first their computers and now their iPods have gained raves and a cult following, and they have brought terms like ‘nano’ out of geekdom and into everyday use. ‘I think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal should become the iPod of its category,’ says Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting, a California firm specializing in design and business strategy.

Now, with the opening of an architecturally audacious retail store in Manhattan, Apple has crossed another design threshold. The Apple Store Fifth Avenue a mammoth underground docking station for Macs, iPods, and accessories has made the ultimate statement of design and product packaging by morphing the design of Apple products with the design of the building that houses them.

‘It’s difficult to think of other companies that have such design coherence,’ says Paul Thompson, director of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. ‘Everything comes together under one design vision. Anyway you cut the apple, design is driving it.’

Article also quoted here.

The other night we saw a LongNow event, featuring Will Wright and Brian Eno. As Stewart Brand writes (in that link) “In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno gave an intense clinic on the joys and techniques of ‘generative’ creation. ”

Elsewhere on the web I found some great quotes from the event:

B.E. :: ‘ .. culture is everything that you don’t have to do, like choosing to style your hair in a certain way… what would it be like to be a person with hair like that? … the act of surrender is agreeing to live life under those values…’

W.W. :: on game design ‘… like a japanese zen garden, your garden is not complete until you cannot remove anything else.’

I was surprised no one mentioned Joshua Davis who does something similar writing algorithms that create art. Nice Wired piece here (the relevant-to-the-LongNow-event stuff is on page 2).

This was the best presentation I have ever seen. My brain was just ready to explode about a million times. The audio and video will be up on their site by the end of the week, and I’m definitely going to watch it.

There were a lot of Big Ideas, and the two presenters engaged each other in a wonderful dialog; they were smart, articulated, experienced (”well, when Bowie and I….”) and great listeners; building together. I’ve seen other presentations that try to accomplish this sort of thing but nothing has ever even come close.

I think one lesson for session organizers is that this stuff doesn’t come off spontaneously. If people are going to perform together (i.e. be part of a panel discussion), they need to interact, to learn about each other and each other’s work. I wish our recent Design 2.0 panel had done some of this; I’m sure our discussion would have been better if we had formed some sort of team ahead of time.

Last week Adaptive Path very generously hosted a presentation by Adam Greenfield, tied in with his new book Everyware.

I enjoyed the talk for the most part. He’s so passionate, respectful and articulate about the challenges facing designers as we unleash new technologies that have the potential to track insane amounts of data (he gave examples such as a door that would know who was approaching it based on sensors in the floor that match style of gait to a person’s name, and lock or unlock accordingly) in order to offer new functionality. Adam is thinking about ethical design principles for ubiqutious computing and certainly found a receptive audience with his presentation.

No disrespect to Adam, but I found the technological focus a bit wearisome, and wanted to hear more about the human element. Although the technologies he is warning us about are new(ish), the issues are really wrapped up in our discussions around privacy. The cultural behaviors (the culture of manufacturers who want the data, of designers who face these questions, of consumers who consider tradeoffs between privacy and functionality) are actively challenging and being challenged right now. Even if the technology of Google is not the same technology as an RFID chip in a credit card, the cultural and market issues are the same. This is happening now, so what is the point in drawing a line in the sand and saying “let’s focus on design values for everything on the other side of this line”?

Case-in-point in THE LAST DAYS OF PRIVACY in the SF Chron recently.

Pay By Touch admits it has encountered some resistance among shoppers it approached in supermarkets that already use the company’s fingerprint service. But Morris, its president, says many of these customers are quickly won over by the convenience of Pay By Touch, which is free for consumers, and that the company keeps data points based on users’ fingerprints, not actual fingerprints. So far, supermarkets in 40 states use the Pay By Touch system.
…
Pay By Touch says it takes great care to safeguard its users’ data. After fingerprints are converted into algorithms, they’re encrypted, then stored in IBM computers. Those algorithms can’t be reconverted into an exact copy of the fingerprint, though Pay By Touch may eventually store users’ actual fingerprints if the technology improves, Morris says. The company insists it will never sell users’ personal information or fingerprints to anyone else — a pledge that’s backed up in writing when users sign up with the company. But what if federal authorities, citing national security, insist on the finger scan and payment history of a Pay By Touch user?
Pam Dixon, who heads the World Privacy Forum, a public research group, went to Chicago to warn potential Pay By Touch users about possible dangers.
“It didn’t stick,” she says. “People were (more) concerned with (convenience than) the potential risks. People can put their thumb on a pad and be done with it. But meanwhile, their biometric data is sitting with another company, a third party, that’s subject to subpoena. One argument that I made: Let’s say that every supermarket in the country, particularly the large chains, (use) a biometric payment system. It’s a law enforcement dream because who needs a biometric database run by the U.S. government when you’ve got one being run by private companies?”
…
“(Users) like that they don’t have to pull their card out anymore. They (tell us they) like that they don’t have to carry their (purses or wallets) through the parking lot of an urban supermarket. There’s a physical security benefit. Their numbers are never displayed. The safety of securing their data is the No. 1 thing they like.”

No surprise to anyone reading that this is the angle I’m more interested in. Now, Adam didn’t ignore this angle by any means; he proposed a series of icons that would alert people to the fact that data was being collected in an environment and so on. But I think the challenges to addressing these issues are more fundamental - Adam is asking how things change when we’re interacting with a technology that’s in the room somewhere, rather than simply typing at a keyboard (a more deliberate act). But we don’t have a good handle yet on the fundamental cultural issues - the tradeoffs that people are making between what a technology affords and what they may be giving up. It’s the same issue no matter where that is happening, and solving for this new special case seems moot if we don’t get a handle on the underlying socio-cultural aspects.

I imagine many folks are familiar with the email newsletters from Constant Contact, that feature the SafeUnsubscribe logo above? I’ve received any number of newsletters sent via their service always from business or people I know. Their unsub mechanism has always seemed reliable, and I’ve felt good about the company as an alternative to other ways of sending mass-email that get flagged as spam, etc.

I was surprised, therefore, to get this:

An ad for some online pajama sales. With someone else’s name in the body of the ad (where my name presumably would be). I tried to unsub but the link didn’t work.

[Perhaps this was some sort of phishing scam, like those fake emails we receive from eBay, PayPal and every bank imaginable, asking us to log in and verify our accounts - those messages are clever fakes and don’t come from the companies they appear to come from].

I thought this was semi-legit and so I contacted the company about this messed up message they were sending out. Their less-than-helpful reply.

Dear Steve,

Thank you for contacting Constant Contact Customer Support.

We checked the account from which you received the campaign email and found that you have received a test email of one of the campaigns created in this account.

We understand that you tried to unsubscribe from this listing by clicking on the Unsubscribe link in the campaign but were unsuccessful.

Please be informed that certain features like “Unsubscribe” link do not function in the test email. If you wish to be removed from the mailing list please respond to the person who sent this campaign with your concern.

We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any further questions please send us a note.

Upendra
Constant Contact Support

What? So they aren’t responsible for what is sent out? And send me off to someone else? As far as a test email, that’s absolute bunk. I received three more of the pajama ads, all from different From: addresses. Someone is spamming either with or without the consent of Constant Contact.

If it wasn’t from them at all, you’d think they would have identified that, rather than the ridiculous “test email” story.

I contacted their abuse address, which I should have done in the first place. This was a few wees ago, and they’ve completed ignored me.

Of course, bad customer service is always a bad reflection on your brand, but this company’s core brand seems to be that they are a trusted delivery vehicle for email - their stuff is screened, bonded, whatever, to be NOT spam. They’re used for spam, and they drop the ball, entirely.

How could anyone trust them, or in fact, permit them to send us email, if this is what we are letting ourselves in for. Maybe they are known widely as a spamhaus (as they are called) but I’d never been aware of it. I’m going to assume they are, however.

My second run-in with bad support around service abuse comes from LinkedIn, a social networking site. People connect with others they know; of course, what it means to know someone is up for interpretation and LinkedIn’s own version of what those links should represent has been ignored by many people. A few weeks ago someone appeared to be running amok and sending linking invitations to as many people as humanly possible. I received a direct invitation which I declined (this is not someone I knew at all), but saw them connecting with others I knew later that day.

The next day I received another connection attempt from the same person, this time through the “school colleague” feature of the system. At this point I was fed up; the system expects people to behave reasonably, this person wasn’t, and now I was getting repeated unwanted solicitations. I contacted LinkedIn about it:

Thank you for your email. We apologize for the experience you have had. LinkedIn is very concerned with member experience.

LinkedIn can assure you, LinkedIn was not the source of the spam you received. As stated in LinkedIn’s Privacy Policy:

“Your privacy is our top concern. We work hard to earn and keep your trust, so we adhere to the following principles to protect your privacy:

� We will never rent or sell your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes

� We will never share your contact information with another user, unless both of you choose to contact one another

� Any sensitive information that you provide will be secured with all industry standard protocols and technology”

Would you please tell us what spam you received? Is it possible for you to forward copies of the emails (including full header information) so we may investigate the source of the emails?

Regards,

Loretta Thomas
LinkedIn Customer Service

Of course, I described the situation clearly in my first message, but they obviously didn’t read that. I used the “spam” word and that clearly blinds support staff from reading the rest of the message. I sent in the message in question, and of course, have heard nothing weeks later.

Privacy is becoming a ridiculously heated topic now, and it’s intersting to see companies who are offering different forms of introduction/connection services fail to - when it’s right in front of them - protect the privacy and quality of communication that their members receive. All the while, of course, proclaiming how they are indeed doing so. It’s pathetic!

Update: July 12 - I hear back

This account has been cancelled for abuse. It was cancelled on 6/15/06.

Thank you,

Leslie
Customer Compliance
Constant Contact

It’s not a new phenomenon by any means, but the fake Amazon product reviews are hilarious and surreal. Is this subverting Amazon’s attempt at community building/crowdsourcing/whatever? How does Amazon decide when reviews are too far out or should they even?

Check out FAKE MUSTACHE - 6 WAY

Having spent 20 years in the Far East I returned to Blitey with a greying head of hair. This unforseen aging process also affected my tash. Now, a tash is the signature of a Far East Expat, everyone knows that. So, yes hullo, I had to try and salvage what dignity I had.

I first of all tried to dye my tash. This resulted in me going to A&E for severe burns to the upper lip and they had to shave my white tickler off. I was distraught. I had an important meeting with some government ministers the following week and I would never grow my pride and joy back in time.

Hense my intro to FAKE MUSTACHE - 6 WAY. I was saved, and I had 5 spares incase number 1 fell into my beer.

My meeting with the governement ministers went very well indeed and everyone commented on how good I looked and how my tash had grown to a quality expat thickness.

I now no longer grow my natural tash as ‘6 WAY’ is more versatile and I can put it to bed at night (I have a little action man bunkbed for him) meaning I dont have a shabby tash in the morning.

Hurrray for 6 WAY.

Yes hullo…

and

Is there a man, woman, or child who would not benefit from ownership of a FAKE MUSTACHE - 6 WAY? I think not. Once the crucial element of Rosalind’s transformation in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, now the centerpiece of my casual Friday wear, the FAKE MUSTACHE - 6 WAY is as timeless as hair itself.

The product ships with an extensive manual describing the different curves the moustache can take, but neglects to list the six accepted ways of wearing the hairpiece:

1) Below the nose, above the lip: the classic; highly recommended.

2) Atop a bald head, in lieu of a toupee: be careful when removing your bowler.

3) On one’s right-hand index finger: briefly popular during the Victorian era; long out of favor in polite society.

4) On one’s bait and tackle: a delightful surprise. Ladies love this, as will your fellow fishermen.

5) Atop one’s feet: requires two moustaches. One bare foot looks ridiculous.

6) On the cheek: a jaunty variant of the classic upper palate.

It saddens me that I need to say this, but I have seen too many neglected moustaches to remain silent: please, gentlemen, take care of your moustache! I heartily recommend Colonel Ichabod Conk’s Moustache Wax. If you can withstand the Colonel’s grim visage staring at you from beyond the grave (and the side of the jar), your FAKE MUSTACHE - 6 WAY will thank you for the much-needed wax job.

PimpThatSnack is an insane website, documenting in reasonable detail some ambitious projects to look at a familiar snack and cook up really really large versions.

I wrote recently about rediscovering the vanilla slice on a trip to Toronto. Here they produce a very very large vanilla slice, shown here next to a regular-sized treat.

That is the money shot in all their projects - the original dwarfed by their pimped-out creation. Here’s a Nutrageous, complete with insanely-supersized-wrapper.

Another great example of consumer participation in a previously-limited-to-producer behavior, a theme I wrote about a while back.

And of course, we’ve got some ironic Google ads inserted into their pages.

Low-Carb? Sugar Free? These are death-inducing creations; not sure where Google’s algorithm gets those ads from!

With every trend, comes a counter-trend, and a counter-trend? We’ve seen Indians come to Silicon Valley to be successful, and then last year we heard about successful Silicon Valley immigrants from India returning home to be more successful, and now we’ve got Silicon Valley folks (Americans from Indian and non-Indian backgrounds) who are moving to India (not just for jobs, but for life lessons)

Dharma Sears, 27, who also grew up in Oakland, said he was seeking a different kind of employment when he landed his first job at a private Indian school. He now teaches at the American Embassy School in New Delhi.

India made a lot of sense,” he said. “It’s an English-speaking country. I could find a job in a school easily enough.”

Living in Europe didn’t appeal to Sears. “I wanted to be in a country starkly different. India is a changing and dynamic country.”

Ashok Bardhan, senior economist at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, said that India is facing a shortage of skilled workers and while the large majority of employees inside any one company is still Indian, there is a concerted effort to recruit from abroad.

Indian Americans are especially attractive because they can easily adapt, Bardhan said. “They’re a bridge between a different business culture practices in the U.S. and India. This is the key competitive advantage.”

He added: “There’s quite a significant number of people working at software companies. And at relatively higher positions are folks from the Bay Area.”

Statistics are hard to come regarding the number of young Americans landing jobs in India. Seasoned observers have noted a small but growing number over the past five years.

Robert Hetzel, director of the American Embassy School, said working in India has become a resume builder for many young Americans.

“You can’t pick up a news magazine without (reading) an article about the growth of the economy and the opportunities that are here,” he said. Young Americans “see it as a stepping-stone to a global economy. It says you’ve been in one of the drivers of that economy, India.”

India’s fast growing high-tech and banking companies need skilled employees. Infosys Chief Financial Officer Mohandas Pai said his company has grown from 500 to 50,000 workers in 12 years and has hired many young Americans.

Americans used to say “Go west, young man,” said Pai. “Now it’s go east. With the rise of India and China as economic powers, we are seeing life-changing opportunities here.”

Cultural adjustments come along with working in India for young, single Americans. Erik Simonsen, a 26-year-old native of Riverside, earns a low-six-figure salary working with the investment banking research firm Copal Partners in New Delhi. He rents a nice three-bedroom apartment with cable TV and paid utilities for $400 a month. But he can’t get a date.

“It’s not a place where you just approach somebody and introduce yourself,” he said. “There are expectations from the family. They usually date people from their own communities.”

With a smile, he admitted, “I’ve spent a lot of nights on the couch by myself.”

Hetzel said social life constitutes the biggest worry for his teaching staff. If American staff decide to leave India, he said, “that’s probably the No. 1 reason. They have not been able to create a social life for themselves. Culturally, that’s challenging here.” Single women face the same problem. Couples tend to marry much younger in India than in the United States. By the time a woman hits her late 20s, Indians “think something’s wrong if you’re not married,” said Hetzel. Nightclubs rarely attract single people in their late 20s or 30s.

“All the eligible men are married,” he said.

India has other downsides. Young American transplants immediately notice the poverty and crowded conditions. Simonsen said the first time he emerged from the New Delhi airport, it seemed as if people were “stacked on top of each other.'’

“Then you snake into the parking lot and then into a rickety cab,” he said. “At 1 a.m., the highway is packed with trucks, honking, and you’re weaving in and out of them. It’s a pretty crazy first couple of hours when you get here.”

All the Americans interviewed for this story said, despite the difficulties, they wouldn’t give up the experience of living in India. They praised the opportunity to work at interesting jobs and immerse themselves in another culture.

Simonsen said he expects more Americans to head east. “A lot of Indians now in Silicon Valley are coming home, and they’re taking some of their western co-workers back with them,” he said.

“There’s an excitement here that we haven’t seen since the dot-com boom.”

Work proceeds behind the scenes to build a new ChittahChattah, ensconced at portigal.com, rather than out here in the wilds of Blogger. We’re a week yet from opening the doors but it seemed like time for a coming-soon announcement! Stay tuned to this Chat-Channel for more info.

I wrote (a while back) about phone calls on airplanes, and was intrigued to see this news today

Verizon Airfone, whose handsets have graced the backs of airline seats for more than two decades, will end its phone service on commercial airliners before the end of the year.

Verizon Communications, Airfone’s parent company, has decided instead to focus on its faster-growing broadband, cellular and television businesses, Jim Pilcher, the director of marketing at Verizon Airfone, said yesterday.

Though Mr. Pilcher declined to say how many customers Airfone has, industry analysts said the service was rarely used. Verizon, they said, would have had to spend heavily to install newer, more compelling technology.

“The business they went after is the calling business, and the reality is no one sits on planes and makes calls,” said Jonathan Schildkraut, a telecommunications analyst at Jefferies & Company. Verizon has “much bigger fish to fry,” he said.

Airfone, which Verizon acquired when it bought GTE in 2000, has phones in about 1,000 planes operated by Continental, Delta, United Airlines and US Airways. The company will work with the airlines to figure out how to remove the phones and other equipment from the planes.

Airfone, which began service 21 years ago, is still exploring the option of selling the business. Mr. Pilcher declined to say whether his company had identified any potential buyers.

Airfone will continue to provide telecommunications services on about 3,400 corporate and government planes.

I’ve rarely seen the phones used, as their expert suggests. Do we think data services (i.e., get your laptop on the Internet while you fly) is a bigger fish? Is using your own personal cell phone a bigger fish? Maybe we’ll get seatback LCD screens in place of the phones. Or in-seat pretzel dispensers that could make use of the credit-card-swiping mechanism already in place?

The Washington Post profiles the goofy-ass training at a new the hotel where I’ll be for Adaptive Path’s UX Week

And so the sleek marble lobby bobbed with the compact frame and overflowing personality of Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre, who commandeered a troupe of lavender-shirted bellhops in a lesson of classical ballet.

“Fluid movements, one two three, one two three,” Webre chanted, extending his arm toward the lobby’s textured wallpaper. “Tuck in your [backside]. No booties out in Maryland, please. It’s 202, not 301.”

Greenbelt resident and Palomar bellboy-in-training Alvin Green tucked in. “This is extensive training,” he said. “It’s a . . . uh . . . different experience.” Sighing at Green’s port de bras, Septime said only, “Very, very good” before swanning away to adjust the shoulders of a future concierge.
…
The Palomar hopes to tell its story to gallery-hopping guests who would get excited about chocolates hand-painted by an “artist chocolatier” and nightly “art of wine” tastings at which local artists mingle with the crowd. The Dupont Circle hotel will have its grand opening in September, but is currently accepting guests on a limited basis. It is Kimpton Hotels’ seventh location in the District; others include Hotel Monaco and the Hotel Madera, just two blocks away.
…
By a carved column of dark ebony, comedians Amy Saidman and Natasha Rothwell theatrically complained yesterday, throwing up their hands like prima donnas, while bellhops improvised ways to calm them.

As she ran her finger over her chest flirtatiously, Rothwell stage-whispered in a low, breathy drawl, “I could stay longer than three nights.”

Amid the hoots and whistles of the watching employees, bellhop Wendell Williams said, in absolute deadpan, “That won’t be possible, ma’am.”
…
Or, as Orlando described it: “We’re as minimalistic as possible to allow the guests to experience art. So our lobby is discreet and philosophical.”

Looking around the lobby, ballet master Webre explained what he saw to his students: “The theatrical experience is going to have a beginning . . . when the curtain goes up and the lights go on. This is that beginning.”

Orlando agreed with Webre’s vision: “Art starts at the curb when the bellman opens the door.”

Sigh. I’ve stayed at other Kimpton Hotels before (the Allegro in Chicago, the Monaco in Chicago, the Argonaut in San Francisco) and I just find the experience to be silly and unrelated to what I’m there for. I don’t need art, ballet, music, guys in silly pith helmets, or whatever in the foreground. I’m not asking the hotel to be purely functional, but I don’t think the hotel needs to demand that I participate in its concept, to ram that concept down my throat. If I want a specifically-art experience, I’ll go to a museum. If I want to sleep, eat, check-in/check-out, and hide from the busy world, I’ll go to a hotel. There are ways to differentiate, and enhance the experience with a bit of “isn’t that cool!” but I feel like Kimpton just takes it too far, creating parodic experiences with no authenticity at all.

And this article further takes the wind out of their self-inflated sails; their approach to corporate training just seems ludicrous.

I’ll report back in late August on our experience!

Doc Searls asks about great driving songs - pounding on the steering wheel - or potsw as he’s calling it. But in a slight twist, and the only reason I’m blogging this, he’s asking people not to post their thoughts on his blog, but to post on their own blog. And use technorati tags to create the master list of these songs.

This is an interesting way to have a dialog, across sites. Rather than Doc’s entry becoming a destination where many of us go (”generate traffic”) and talk together, he’s using an aggregation service that will capture all (ideally) of the responses across the blogosphere, but using a tool or site (technorati) that is vaguely central, rather than our individual sites which you might imagine as external nodes.

It’s fairly straightforward but still, an innovative approach, since the sense of bloggy space is treated differently.

See the resulting tagged posts here. As of this posting there’s nothing there yet.

My suggestion: That Smell by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

A product I worked on a few years ago has launched! I worked with IDEO on what became the Avaya one-X Deskphone. I helped out a team of designers in doing some upfront research on how knowledge workers were using their various communication platforms (email, phone, cell phone, IM, and beyond). (Of course IDEO has tons of people that do this stuff, but they were all busy doing other projects at the time). They designed what seems like a pretty nice form (a significant upgrade from their previous phones) and a smart interface, at least from the demo on Avaya’s site.

It’s always cool when some work hits the market!

Like I said earlier, the old car is gone. Here’s the new one, a brand new Mazda RX8!

A few hours from now I’ll be trading in my 1995 Miata, which was new to me in 1997. I’ve been car shopping for a few months which is an interesting process in navigating websites, trying to understand features, having my emotions played on without facts, coming to grips with desires versus issues of sustainability and ecology, not to mention class and other issues from childhood around money, not to mention silly sales exchanges (if I hear “how can we earn your business?” again I’ll scream) and upsells (Lo-Jack anyone?).

But looking backwards is what this post is about. This car was the first thing I ever acquired that was so rich in meaning, because of it what it embodied and what it looked like and what it represented in my life.

It was the first car I ever bought that was a car of choice, not a car of necessity. I spent a long time agonizing over finding something that was right for me. I remember the decision being embedded in many other uncertainties in my personal and professional life at the time, and feeling like these things were all intertwined, and I would not be able to address any of them without addressing all of them.

The Miata is a wonderfully designed object. The experience of driving was like nothing I had ever experienced, super zippy, great handling, all facets of driving that are meaningless as words, but powerful as sensory experiences. I remember parking the car after I got it and looking backwards at it as I walked away, just stunned by the form. I remember looks from other people at stoplights (or the guy that rolled down his window in my first traffic jam and said “what COLOR is THAT?” as it was a weird blue-green when washed and shiny). I remember friends taking out to learn to drive stick-shift, and I remember others who rejected the choice as I was making it, telling me that (even though I was yet to turn 30) I was probably having a mid-life crisis.

This was a bold choice at the time, I think to some I may have been taking on a new and fake identity, but for me, the permission to choose something special, exotic, fast, racey, lifestyle-y, was the change - in fact, it wasn’t a change, it was opening up to something that was already there, something I was afraid of. That personal growth alienated me from others, but was widely welcomed by most.

I was never a “Miata guy.” I never named my car, I never modded my car, and of course as the years went by it began to resemble a comfortable sneaker, with dings and warts and all.

It’s tempting to write this filled with anthropomorphic language (as Chevron and Pixar would have us do), about my companion or friend, but it’s never been that, even in fun. It’s absolutely been about what I was able to go through at that stage of adulthood. The car itself didn’t change me, but I can see my life before the car and my life after the car as somewhat different eras, characterized by how I saw myself. The car was designed in such a way that it was the right choice for me at that point, and allowed me to make a statement about myself, to others, but also to myself.

This is hopefully not too maudlin or too confessional. I blog it here because it’s about a thing and the meaning of a thing, and of course, that meaning goes far beyond the thing itself.

Okay, one more picture

The New York Times reminds us that we don’t have to travel to exotic Asia to enjoy the thrill of discovering new cultures.

Then the Wal-Mart Jews arrived [in Bentonville, AR]

Recruited from around the country as workers for Wal-Mart or one of its suppliers, hundreds of which have opened offices near the retailer’s headquarters here, a growing number of Jewish families have become increasingly vocal proponents of religious neutrality in the county. They have asked school principals to rename Christmas vacation as winter break (many have) and lobbied the mayor’s office to put a menorah on the town square (it did).

Wal-Mart has transformed small towns across America, but perhaps its greatest impact has been on Bentonville, where the migration of executives from cities like New York, Boston and Atlanta has turned this sedate rural community into a teeming mini-metropolis populated by Hindus, Muslims and Jews.

It is the Jews of Benton County, however, who have asserted themselves most. Two years ago, they opened the county’s first synagogue and, ever since, its roughly 100 members have become eager spokesmen and women for a religion that remains a mystery to most people here.

When the synagogue celebrated its first bar mitzvah, the boy’s father � Scott Winchester, whose company sells propane tanks to Wal-Mart � invited two local radio D.J.’s, who broadcast the event across the county, even though, by their own admission, they had only a vague idea of what a bar mitzvah was.

“Jesus was Jewish,” one D.J. noted in a dispatch from the reception at a local hotel. The other remarked, “I love Seinfeld.”

Shortly after he moved to the area, Tom Douglass, a member of the synagogue who works in Wal-Mart’s logistics department, made a presentation about Hanukkah to his son’s kindergarten class. The lesson, complete with an explanation of how to play with a spinning dreidel and compete for chocolate coins, imported from New York, proved so popular that the school’s librarian taped it for future classes.

Then there is Ron Haberman, a doctor and synagogue member, who has introduced Jewish cuisine to the county. His new restaurant, Eat This, next door to a new 140,000-square-foot glass-enclosed Baptist church, serves knishes, matzo ball soup and latkes. To guide the uninitiated, the menu explains that it is pronounced “LOT-kuz.”

Not everyone is ordering the knishes, but Christians throughout Benton County are slowly learning the complexities of Jewish life. Gary Compton, the superintendent of schools in Bentonville and a member of a Methodist church in town, has learned not to schedule PTA meetings the night before Jewish holidays, which begin at sundown, and has encouraged the high school choir to incorporate Jewish songs into a largely Christian lineup.

“We need to get better at some things,” he said. “You just don’t go from being noninclusive to being inclusive overnight.”

Surrounded by Christian neighbors, Bible study groups, 100-foot-tall crucifixes and free copies of the book “The Truth About Mary Magdalene” left in the seating area of the Bentonville IHOP, the Jews of Benton County say they have become more observant in � and protective of � their faith than ever before.

Marcy Winchester, the mother of the synagogue’s first bar mitzvah, said, “You have to try harder to be Jewish down here.”

In some ways, this is no different than other periods of Jewish migration and immigration. It’s a little off-putting to read about cultural illiteracy in the US but of course it shouldn’t be too surprising. Still, there’s something about the New York tone of the article (where, of course, everyone is Jewish?) that I find irksome. I’m not sure how I feel about “Wal-Mart Jews” and “The Jews of Bentonville” - perhaps those are terms used by those folks, themselves, but in the context of the article, it’s just slightly mocking in a way that seems out of step with the rest of the article. Their tone is all over the place.

And this is a front page story! Cultural criss-cross! Wal-Mart! A chance to say “knishes” in the body of a piece! It’s gold, gold I tell ya!

Yesterday I received my copy of the new Swedish translation of Design: A Very Short Introduction (Design - en introduktion) by John Heskett. I can’t read Swedish, but this edition features two (here, here) of my photographs from Hong Kong. Hooray!

I flipped through the book and found a photo captioned Amerikansk “strip mall” but is obviously taken in Canada, showing the Canadian McDonald’s logo, Tim Horton’s, Mark’s Work Wearhouse, and Canadian Tire. Hmm.

From its inception, I’ve been an active participant and support of the about, with & for conference. I’m entirely not thrilled with this year’s topic

AWF 2006 - Responsible Design | The Value of Good Intention

Design can have the best of intentions but sometimes is trumped by business agendas. Does it have to be a balancing act, or can good intention fuel real innovation? From organic foods to the future of urban spaces, what role does responsibility play in how companies approach innovation and design?

The 2006 About, With and For conference will explore how user-centered design research can unveil the potential of responsible design.

I know this is hot stuff these days, but at least as of this writing (I can always change my mind, right?) I’m fed up with this whole save-the-world thing. I’m into the power of design (and many other tools of innovation, business, makin’ stuff, etc.) to cause big changes, but I’m not into the liberaller-than-thou imperative that seems to be issued to designers upon their entry to design school.

The Core77/BusinessWeek Design 2.0 event was almost 2 weeks ago. It was a fantastic experience, good networking, different presentations, good conversation.

Some links
the set crashing during my talk (and Niti’s take on it)
PeterMe’s writeup
LukeW’s writeup here and here
Nick Baum’s detailed notes here

steve brings down the house, originally uploaded by selfconstruct.