I pulled a page out of Newsweek a year ago, intending to do something with the article, anyway a year later, I finally get around to blogging Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth, mostly as Yet Another example of what I would call Inventory Porn (of which Taschen books might be a leading example) – if you go to some extreme length and document something (a big collection, all the stuff in your home, every manhole cover, gum wads, lost pet posters, bowling pins) at length, it becomes some publishable hipster NPR-reporting bloggable story.

It’s sort of the ultimate in DIY (or sorry, I mean User Created Content); anyone can seemingly visit every Starbucks in the US. Most won’t. But the person that does can get a book/movie/TV deal.

Some of these efforts are fun, some offer some insight, but others are just tedious. I might like to photograph the hotel doorknob of every room I stayed in over the last 3 years. Do you want to look at those pictures? What if I tell you engaging stories about each doorknob? Or each hotel? Or each trip? Well….maybe.

I admit it’s compelling to consume and create, but I’m also feeling a little burned out with this stuff. Perhaps it’s the lowbrow ethno vibe the whole thing gives off, that it’s an aesthetic and attitude of being into the details of consumption more than the implications or outcomes of the study (if it is even study; perhaps it’s just documentation).

Tags: books, collection, documentation, everyday life, genre, imagery, inventory, observation, photograph, taschen

I’m attending an interesting event next week. It’s a two-day summit on the topic of (as far as I can tell) what we want from our cities in the future. There’s an implied (to me) technological bias, but not any assumption that technology is good.

This is not a topic I feel very expert in, not even very well informed, or strongly opinionated about. Given the discussion-based slant the organizers are taking, this could be a risk, but I’m hoping that diving into the issues will unearth some perspectives on, well, living life in the spaces we live in, that I haven’t previously written or talked about.

Tipping the scales for me, therefore, to attend, are the facts that the event is free and local and especially that organizers/presenters include Eric Paulos and Matt Jones, two big-thinking design/culture/technology folks whom I admire.

This summit is part of a larger event going on in San Jose (electronic art, and presumably some other themes; I can’t really parse the details or remember the name of the conference without regular use of the web) – I won’t be part of that.

If you are attending the interactive city summit, let me know!

Tags: blackbelt jones, cities, city, conference, eric paulos, event, future, interactive city summit, matt jones, San Francisco, summit, zero one, zero one san jose

Life does imitate The Simpsons, or at least exhibit the absurditity so well captured by The Simpsons. First, while I’m all about avoiding waste and am brimming in admiration for cultures that use every part of the buffalo, it’s hard not to be a bit suspicious when the Dole Nutrition Institute goes to some great lengths to offer non-food (but hey, they are healthy) uses for Dole products.

For example, Banana Bread Head

Have a couple of bananas that have ripened beyond their prime? Don’t throw them away! Treat your hair to this vitamin-rich conditioning pack by blending a banana with a tablespoon or two of honey, plus a few drops of almond or vanilla extract for extra shine and a yummy fragrance that will remind you of mom’s fresh-baked banana bread.

Mix together banana, and honey in a blender. Wet hair with warm water and apply. For extra penetration, use plastic shower cap or wrap your hair with a towel. Wait about 20 minutes – perfect time to try the banana mask below – then rinse thoroughly, following with shampoo and conditioner as usual.

Mashed banana functions as a mucilage, much like aloe vera gel, protecting hair from environmental damage and smoothing frizzy flyaway hair. By bringing moisture to the surface of your scalp, this pack also serves as an excellent treatment for a dry, flaky scalp.

I’m going to be sick. I have been known to sport some fruity-smelling hair, but really, too much. Remember Steve Martin’s deodorant?

Tunafish Sandwich! I put a tunafish sandwich under each arm, one or two behind the ears… I don’t smell like any other guy! And it’s economical too, because the smell lasts for four or five days.

Dole also offers information on some other fresh fruit stuff to rub on yourself, including
* Lana’i Pineapple Body Scrub
* Strawberry Body Smoothie
* Indian Mangocado Body Polish
* Brown Sugar Jojoba Scrub
* Caribbean Conditioner
* Green Goddess Mask
* After-Beach Banana Mask
* Piña Party Peel
* Good Morning Mask
* Papaya Peel
* Queen Bee Cleanser
* Green Tea Tonic

And elsewhere in Homer-esque food stuffs comes The Butter Trough, a restaurant in Atlanta that serves a strangely limited menu of bread, breadsticks, butter, and iced tea. It’s all free, thanks to advertising.

Finally, we serve you the absolute best and freshest supply of butter to be found in the region. Made from only organic minerals, The Butter Trough’s butter is made daily for your enjoyment. Twice hourly, the supply of butter in The Butter Trough is refilled. For your enjoyment, our farm clad employees slop the super heated butter into the butter trough so that you can enjoy it at its most liquid consistency.

The butter is made of minerals? Employees are “farm clad” and “slop” the butter into a trough? Damn right it better be free because who the hell would pay for this?

Don’t miss their catchy slogan “Friends. Fun. Food. Free.”

[via Mom; The Consumerist]

Tags: banana, banana bread head, butter, butter trough, dole, food, fruit, homer simpson, steve martin, the simpsons, trough

I’m psyched to see Chuck Klosterman (who I’ve gently raved about before) resurface (after SPIN) at Eqsuire, where he is writing of-the-moment (and sometimes controversial) stories about (pop) culture topics, such as The “Snakes on a Plane” Problem

I worked in newspapers for eight years, right when that industry was starting to disintegrate. As such, we spent a lot of time talking with focus groups, forever trying to figure out what readers wanted. And here is what they wanted: everything. They wanted shorter stories, but also longer stories. They wanted more international news, but also more local news. And more in-depth reporting. And more playful arts coverage. And less sports. And more sports. And maybe some sports on the front page.

When it comes to mass media, it’s useless to ask people what they want; nobody knows what they want until they have it. If studios start to view the blogosphere as some kind of massive focus group, two things will happen: The first is that the movies will become idiotic and impersonal, which is probably pre¬dictable. But the less predictable second result will be that many of those movies will still fail commercially, even if the studios’ research was perfect. If you asked a hundred million people exactly what they wanted from a movie, and you used that data to make exactly the film they claimed to desire, it might succeed. Or it might not. Making artistic decisions by consensus doesn\’t work any better than giving one person complete autonomy; both strategies work roughly half the time.

I don’t know that Klosterman is the next Gladwell; I hope he doesn’t get managed/edited into that role. He’s more about looking again at something we’ve all been looking at than in coming up with wild connections between things we didn’t know were related. And he’s (still) focused on telling stories, often about himself. The pop culture beat is an important one, and even though it shifts near-seamlessly into implications for marketing and business (umm, hello, this blog, case-in-point?), I hope Chuck can sit that part of it out and stick to what he’s done best (rather than entering the dark waters of populism that this piece focuses on).

Tags: chuck klosterman, journalism, malcolm gladwell, pop culture, populism, populist, snakes on a plane, soap, what people want

I have no idea of Google Maps is in Beta or not, but man, is it broken. In Firefox and in IE, I can not print a map. It’ll generate a nice print preview with all the directions and so on, but the all-important IMAGE is absent. Argh.

Do you ever find yourself screwing around with some semi-working website (especially one you trust and expect to work, like Google) for a ridiculously long time, only to have to completely throw up your hands and go onto another method? It’s nice that it’s free and all, but what a waste of time! This used to work only recently. Very annoying!

Tags: beta, bugs, crapware, google, google maps, printing

An article on the recent Aryan Brotherhood convictions quotes Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School/former federal prosecutor.”But the truth is, this (gang) is like a hydra — you cut off a limb and it’s going to grow back,” she said. “These guys have been around a long time and they’re going to get new leaders.”

But the Hydra had many heads, not many limbs. It was difficult/impossible to kill because the heads would grow back. That really breaks her metaphor! I’m sure the journalist just went with the quote anyway, as did the editor. Too bad.

Tags: accuracy, aryan brotherhood, editing, error, fact checking, hydra, journalism, metaphor, mistake, myth, mythology, quote

In a brief but insightful entry on Wal-Mart’s withdrawal from the German market

And it’s culture. You’ve got to know your customer’s culture to give your customer a great experience.

I received a jar of sunflower seeds in the mail today, as part of some promotion for a market research company’s new website. Or so I think. It’s very confusing. The jar is filled with what seem to be “beer baked” sunflower seeds, with their own brand name, and the label alternates cheesy references to this brand and the different brands and URLs for the company. It’s a mess, it seems to have no relevance. Yeah, I looked at the website of the company (and I’m very deliberately not mentioning any specifics here because why give ‘em the juice if they don’t really deserve it) but would I want to do business with them over a poorly executed gimmick?

I don’t know if this counts as a Purple Cow or not (supposedly a good marketing thing to do) but I find it strange and inappropriate, more than anything.

Tags: market research, marketing, promo, promotion, snack, sunflower seeds

Returned home today to news that Devil’s Slide will re-open by 5 a.m., Friday, Aug. 4. This is fantastic! Four months after it closed, and 7 weeks earlier than estimated. I have felt pretty trapped in Montara, with poor access to San Francisco, and more planning required for out-of-town meetings and lunches and like. My colleagues have been understanding of the limitations, but it’s still hard not to feel marginalized by location. And I don’t even have a regular commute like so many others!

The Aug. 4 opening does not mean all repair work will be done by then. While work required to stabilize the road will be complete, drainage and electrical systems work will continue together with some erosion control into September.

Tags: caltrans, coastside, commute, Devil’s Slide, half moon bay, highway, highway 1, Montara, pacifica, traffic

We’re back from 10 days in Hawaii; trip was excellent, relaxing, and entirely offline. I’ll be posting more photos and stories, and here’s a quickie starter:

Reminiscent of old-people walkers with tennis balls to help the legs slide, these barricade/signs at the Honolulu airport do the same thing – in bulk.

Tags: adaption, airport, barricade, barrier, feet, hawaii, honolulu, tennis ball

Models stalked the runway in designer clothes made from fermented corn sugar Thursday in a fashion show held at an international biotech conference in Toronto in an attempt to “make green sexy.”

The one-of-a-kind outfits created by big name designers Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Elisa Jimenez and others included a strapless beige ball gown, a cream baby-doll dress with ribbon and sheer overlay, and a pink and yellow taffeta skirt with a silver recycled polyester bustier.

Okay, it’s really about Tribe 8 and the documentary film ‘Rise Above’ but I like the FreshMeat t-shirt. I guess I could go to cafepress if I was really interested in merch, but still, it’s cool.

(__)
(oo) Fresh
 \\/  Meat

I love the automatic checkouts at Home Depot. There’s usually no line for them, so I can start my transaction right away. Even if it’s slow and inefficient, I’m actually doing something, rather than waiting behind another customer. I like being in control!

There’s a balance of design goals at work in these monsters – standalone/simplicity (and by that I do not mean ease-of-use), theft prevention, staff reduction. Those goals are not all met very well, and they are sometimes at odds with each other.

After using this for a couple of years, I’ve figured out that to start to check out, you must place all your items on a tray to the left of the screen (this isn’t so obvious). You pick your items, one at a time, pass them over the scanner, and then place them in a bag on the tray to the right of the screen.

The trays on either side contain scales. Your items are being weighed, with the left and right being compared. You can only have one in the air (i.e., not in the bag and not on the to-be-bought tray) at a time. And you must stow it in the bag before picking up the next one. This is not beep-beep-beep rapid scanning. It feels very silly and slow, but that’s what the system wants you to do.

If you try to go too fast, the system warms you. “Please re-place item in bagging area.” It’s far from foolproof (not that the users are fools, but the users can fool it!); it often goes out of sync. The item it wants to be put in the bagging area is already in the bagging area. Often we have to flag down the cashier at the master station who is “supervising” the four self-check devices (usually trying to help poor first-timers, or calling out instructions from her station).

Anyway, I was plodding away with my purchase of 4 $0.69 switchplates the other day, and of course, we got out of sync. Everything was either in a bag or waiting to be scanned and I was being given instructions about what to return to where, even though there was nothing that could be returned. In my attempt to mollify the system, I picked up one of my to-be-rung-up items and put it in the bag. That seemed to satisfy it. That left one remaining. I picked it up, scanned it, and put it in the bag. All four of the items were now in the bag. But I had only scanned three.

Screw this. I clicked “finish and pay” and ran through the payment swipe interaction (this takes place on another interface, about 5 feet from the first interface).

The machine, which represents Home Depot and its interests, didn’t want my $0.69 for my fourth item. It insisted that I put it in the bag without swiping it. Did I alert the supervising cashier so she could come over and rejigger the whatsit and charge me the right amount? I did not.

I was able to somehow justify this because it was the will of the machine; the error was not like an ATM that gives you two $20.00 bills stuck together; it was a richly interactive error – “put this in the bag, Steve” it told me… (but I never…) NO – PUT IT IN THE BAG NOW PLEASE. (okay, sir). The machine is the boss, but I’m responsible for knowing more than it about what is right and what is accurate?

Please don’t read this as some sort of attempt to rationalize something that is obviously wrong. We can get the Ethicist in here if we need to, but we all know what he’d say. I guess I’m more interest in the attributes of the exchange and how it influenced my own decision.

Of course, the fact that was $0.69 also is a factor. Do we want to call this stealing? If so, then the dollar amount shouldn’t matter? Although we’ve got a recent story where Wal-Mart is ignoring some sub-$25 shoplifting, so maybe there’s a sense that the amount does matter.

Presumably, I was doing a calculation of time, cost of goods, aggravation, and wrapping that up in a bit of self-justification and walking out with my extra (free!) switchplate because of that. These decisions are complex, with a lot of factors mixed in, in an organic (rather than linear) fashion.

Tags: cash, cashier, design, error, error recovery, ethics, home depot, interaction, self check, self serve, shrinkage

I bitched about Spin magazine and questioned the notion of relaunch vs. loyalty vs. targeting in a previous post, only to read in Wired (in a piece by Chris Anderson excerpted from the just-released The Long Tail”) that “money-losing Spin magazine was just, well, spun off for a fire-sale sum.” Wikipedia sez

[Under the direction of new editor-in-chief Andy Pemberton] The [May 2006] issue’s format took a dramatic turn to many readers’ disgust. The new style has been compared to celebrity gossip magazines such as Us Weekly, even going as far as to have a cover story and picture on Kevin Federline. Prior to the issue’s release, much of the staff quit or were fired.

and

As of June 26, 2006, Andy Pemberton resigned from Spin as editor-in-chief amid much criticism of his handling of the magazine.

and

Vibe’s recent sale of the magazine for only $5 million, given the fact that VIBE paid over $45 million for the publication in 1997.

I left my last issue at the post office, didn’t even take it home to flip through. I didn’t even open the magazine before discarding it. Sad, really.

Meanwhile, Chuck Klosterman has created a big stir in the blogosphere with his Esquire article about the lack of criticism in the gaming scene.

Tags: brand, chris anderson, chuck klosterman, consistency, long tail, loyalty, magazine, publishing, relaunch, spin, spin magazine

I was at Staples recently and saw an interesting display; a standalone kiosk that dispensed a variety of shopping lists suggesting what school supplies would be needed for diferent grades Let’s forget for a moment that it’s July and they’re selling back-to-school, this was an interesting idea.

I know grocery stores, for example, have toyed with getting shopping lists into customer’s hands in order to presumably help them buy more, but this occasional purchase seems more appropriate. The bottom of the sheets offer handy suggestions on parenting, which Staples frames as “Organizational Tip” – example: “You can’t make the bus come later or stop them from “forgetting” their homework. What you can help with is getting, and keeping, them organized. Binders, notebooks with pockets, folders, and accordion files are all great organizational tools.”

Of course, that’s the solution!

Yeah, I’m a bit cynical, but I think the idea is basically a good one. They have a long way to go if they want to be your kids-management partner (or your workflow management partner, or any other sort of partner based on the types of tools they are selling); they are no Steelcase/Herman-Miller, but the little signs are intriguing.

Also, I saw a funny binder comparison widget that Sara should blog about. On the wall of binders, there is a small device that is intended to help you decide between the Durable binders and the Heavy Duty binders. It’s a small card with the binder rings on either side, with a comparison chart highlighting the different features. But the humor comes from their inability to be direct and point to one version as better than the other. Instead of the Good-Better-Best cliche, they’ve gone for an even more confusing Pretty Darn Great and Really Great. I don’t remember the exact verbage, but one binder might feature Stay-Tite lock rings and the other would feature Sup-R-Secure D-rings. You had to go back to the price point on the individual binders and infer which was actually “better” than the other. Their little display (unlke Sara, I don’t shop with a camera on hand and wasn’t prepared to capture it) is cleanly designed and suggests transparency and helpfulness but it’s really an awful piece of propaganda.

Tags: back to school, binder, comparison, environment, in-store, kiosk, retail, shopping list, staples