• Match.com goes mobile, CEO utters meaningless “listening to customers” PR-scripted BS
  Another in a series: “When we listened to customers, they told us they saw the distinction between the Web and mobile as somewhat artificial,” said Match.com CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony.

I’ve blogged here and here about good and bad implementations of wipes in grocery stores.

I found another one in Coupeville, WA, the other day.

Despite the rather industrial graphics, there’s a few improvements. It’s very clearly for cleaning the cart, not your hands (as Safeway suggested).. It’s right next to the carts, so when you take a cart, you use it (rather than located near the exit, at Safeway). And should the Red Apple employees fail to maintain the display, there’s at least an encouraging reminder to the customer that they should ask to have it replenished.

This is no iPhone, it’s not a radical innovation, but it’s a definite response to a need, and tracking how it is and isn’t being dealt with is enlightening. First, one has to understand the need. Then one has to develop a solution. Then the solution must be implemented. Properly. Effectively. And throw in iteration, for fun. The fact that something as simple as this fails around solution/implementation at a major chain like Safeway tells you something about the organizational barriers to even the most mild of innovations.

The New York Times looks at Ludlum and other dead authors who continue to (sorta) release books. This isn’t new; in recent years we’ve seen post-Frank Herbert Dune and other Asimov/Robots books. John Gardner and others have been writing James Bond books for a while now. But as media continues to talk about “brands” and (ugh) “franchises” then I guess this is what we’re in for. It’s easier to sell (and buy) something that is already known that break through with something new. Movies into games. Games into movies. Sequels. Prequels. Remakes. The book people may just be getting started.

Whether it is fair to readers to publish the Ludlum books posthumously — in the form of spruced-up old manuscripts or new novels written by others — is not a serious concern to the estate or to Grand Central Publishing, the former Warner Books, where the rights to all new novels moved from St. Martin’s Press.

“I don’t think anyone objects as long as you maintain the quality of the book,” Mr. Morrison said. “The Sherlock Holmes novels have been a business since ‘The Seven-Percent Solution,’ and some have been better than others. It’s the characters that interest people.”

Steve has an article (PDF link) about the Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in the Summer 07 issue of Ambidextrous Magazine.

• The Bedroom Project - an ethno study of young people and digital media
  Link to video at end of post; as one would expect it only shows the topics explored and no conclusions. What did they learn? Oh, and what kind of model release are they using to get permission to post subject videos online?

• Idaho Spud candy on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  Yum? Chocolate potato-shaped thingy.
• Idaho Candy Products
  The popular Idaho Spud Bar is a wonderful combination of a light cocoa flavored marshmallow center drenched with a dark chocolate coating and then sprinkled with coconut (Sorry, no potato!)

• Supersize Returns to McDonald’s
  Winston Smith’s new job is in product naming, as the Supersize is now called the Hugo. Rhymes with Peugeot?

The next issue of Ambidextrous Magazine features an article (PDF link) that I wrote about my Museum of Foreign Grocery Products.

Update: link to the article fixed

Jesus Said is a line of gift-shop-y products (t-shirts, caps, etc.) that combine pedestrian slogans with a vaguely humorous religious message, where each phrase is prefaced by God/Jesus Said. Spotted on vacation in Coupeville, WA.

These are the controls for reclining the new first-class seats on American Airlines. Luxury equals complexity, apparently.

Driveway is brand new online file sharing service. But Driveway was an online file storage service that shut down in 2000.

Driveway, 2000

Driveway, 2007

Driveway’s original heights and crash weren’t as spectacular (except perhaps to the players involved) as other web 1.0 flameouts (ahem, learning experiences), so it’s reappearance (owned by an entirely new company) won’t be as buzz-worthy as the Second Coming of Boo but I still thought it was worth a mention.

Perhaps we’re in for a wave of remakes in the dot-com space. WebVan 2.0, anyone?

• Everything good for you is bad for you
  Grapefruit linked to increased breast cancer in women (”more research is needed”). Paging Miles Monroe (aka Woody Allen) - “Those were the charmed substances that some years ago were felt to contain life-preserving properties”- but are actually unhealthy
• President’s Choice - Home products
  During my days in Canada, this was a great success story of a premium house brand that did very very well. Now it’s become a lifestyle brand; they aren’t selling just grocery products, but furniture, too! Nice line extension.
• President’s Choice Financial - Memories of Credit
  Another line extension! Financial services. Not just dipping sauces and Decadent chocolate chip cookies, it’s now a bank. How cool and weird.
• Joe Fresh Style (Frais)
  Another line extension from Loblaws/President’s Choice - fashion!

As Japan prepares to switch to a jury system, the government has been running mock trials to expose people to the idea. There’s a big cultural challenge, though.

“I think there is also the matter of how much he has repented,” one of the judges said. “Has he genuinely, deeply repented, or has the defendant repented in his own way? What’s the degree? I mean, some could even say that he hasn’t repented at all.”

Hoping for some response, the judge waited 14 seconds, then said, “What does everybody think?”

Nine seconds passed. “Doesn’t anyone have any opinions?”

After six more seconds, one woman questioned whether repentance should lead to a reduced sentence. “The way the defendant expresses himself and such, it could be viewed as someone who’s not good at it,” she said. “So there’s no way for us to know what is the degree of repentance from how he has repented in his own way.”

I’m reminded of our work with consumers in Japan; we got a lot of warning from people about what kind of answers the Japanese wouldn’t give us. I was somewhat nervous that things would tank entirely, but in fact, an open-ended conversational approach (with lots of follow up) worked out very well. The two situations (trials and design research sessions) are completely different; we didn’t represent the state, for one thing! Still, there’s a cultural layer to this story that many will no doubt recognize.

“Is that for your kids?” asked the Sears dude as he handed me the box. “Uh, my kids?, heh heh, it’s for me!” I managed as I headed out of the online-order-pickup station. [Yeah, Sears.com actually has something in their store if their website says they do; unlike Circuit City that shows an item available when you look on their website but when you visit their store it’s not on the shelves and if you can find a human who’s willing to help you, all you’ll hear is that they don’t have it. You lost a customer, Circuit City!]

Just last week I saw leaked footage (since pulled down) of an upcoming video game called Rock Band where a group of people perform a song (using guitar controllers, a drum accessory, and a microphone) and it just gave me chills. I realized I needed to get Guitar Hero, the existing predecessor.

I grew up playing video games. As a kid, we’d find any bowling alley or arcade and spend hours pumping in quarters. I used to hang out a dry cleaners (!) after school, playing whatever game they had. I got an ATM card and moved my bank account just so I could go next door to get $5 at a time in this afterschool activity. So why was I not doing it still? I had a PSX for a while; it was amusing, but it never really fit.

But this - the idea of a game that was about performing…I’d been hearing about it for a long time; stumbling across the video and subsequent conversation with friends was the motivational tipping point for me.

Wow.

The game is fun. It’s really really fun. This is an innovation around the notion of what a video game can be. Musical and performing games have been appearing for many years, such as PaRappa the Rapper, and Dance Dance Revolution, or the various precursors of Guitar Hero that one could find in a Tokyo arcade 5 years ago.

The idea of the game isn’t new, but is definitely novel. You hold a guitar, with five different buttons where frets would be. Instead of strings, there is a strumming bar. On screen, notes come towards you on a fretboard. When the note gets to the bottom, press the corresponding button on the fretboard and strum, zapping the note. Each level is a different song and the notes that play (or don’t, if you miss) as you zap ‘em make up the guitar parts of the song. You are essentially playing the song, with enough realism that you get a real charge out of it.

Some nice touches make it really work. There is a great tutorial that explains how to play and how to use the controller. No need to page through the tiny print in a book and figure out what the heck is going on; they’ve designed an explicit learning interface.

As well, there are various levels, to enable you to have some success. We played on Easy, and it was tough at first, then become somewhat less tough with practice. And more fun, the better we got. We dabbled with the Medium setting and it was more fun to play. This blew me away. Instead of simply increasing the challenge (more monsters, smarter monsters, faster moving monsters), the game gives back more. The more intricate the pattern of notes you are sent, the closer you are to “playing” the song. It’s more fun and more engaging.

There’s a nice mode where you can go through any of the songs at a variety of slower speeds and practice the guitar parts. The songs are broken down into intro/chorus 1/verse 1/bridge/solo etc. so you can really focus on what you are trying to learn.

This is the best game I’ve ever seen and it’s a really nice implementation of some fresh thinking about what video games can enable.

We were amused to see the game featured in the New York Times today (although they referred incorrect to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Texas Flood” as “Texas Blood.” Nice).

Finally, the SF Chron featured this image, full-size, on their real estate supplement.

Kids? Sheesh. This is the perfect game for my generation, young Sears dude.

I recently found myself at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, where I discovered that the outdoor amusement park industry has been continuing to push the snack food envelope.

I’ll start with my personal favorite:

Deep Fried Twinkies

Hey, and if you can deep fry a Twinkie, why not . . .

Deep Fried Cheesecake

Treat someone who’s named you as the beneficiary on their life insurance policy to a couple of those!

And then, there’s the cutting edge in frozen dessert:

Dippin’ Dots, the Ice Cream of the Future

It may be hard to imagine if you haven’t experienced it yourself, but these are tiny dot-sized balls of ice cream, served in a cup.

Call me old-fashioned, but amidst all this Food 2.0, I was heartened to see an old favorite still going strong.

Burgers

• Be Careful What You Ask Your Customers
  Research shows that choice of how you ask for feedback influences the feedback itself. In principle, everyone would agree, but this article is much more specific about the “what” and “how.”
• Phil McKinney and the “Trend Safari”
  Kind of like what we’ve tried to do with CultureVenture - get into environments that you don’t normally get into and try to figure out who, and what, and why - more exploratory and experiential than ethnography typically is. Also see JanChipchase.com

Given what we’re trying to figure out and plan for here at Portigal Consulting (essentially growth in all the ways one might define that), I enjoyed listening to two brief podcasts about starting and growing (design) consulting firms, one with Chris Fahey and another with Myk Lum. Both are in the category of here’s what I did which is very different than here’s what you should do. That’s not a criticism, of course. Anyone who is has been in similar situations will hear a number of head-nodding-in-recognition moments, and maybe find a few ideas for things to try.

• Flavors and ingredients: the rapidly increasing path from high-end to mass-market
  [Is it truly accelerating? What parallels do we see in other categories?] The NYT calls out wasabi, Meyer lemons, chipotle, dulce de leche, and mojito as examples of this accelerating vector.
• A US-based overview of British chocolate bars (many of which are ones I grew up with in Canada)
  “A Web developer in the Bay Area who grew up in Canada was shocked when his parents took him to a candy counter in the US. He found out that not every child in the world was eating the same chocolate bars he was.”
• The nursery rhyme is on the way out. Some lament.
  Parents are singing pop songs to their kids and so fewer people know fewer nursery rhymes. Sign o’ the times?
• Baby from the Nevermind album cover will be 16
  What a drag it is getting old?

• Harajuku: Rebels on the Bridge
  Scribd is a document repository that I have yet to properly explore. Here is an ethnographic study from 2005 of the wildly costumed teens in Harajuku, in Tokyo.

The latest edition of Rob Walker’s Consumed is about Threadless, a darling-of-the-blogosphere site that sells user-submitted/user-chosen t-shirt designs.

The voting system is straightforward: users rate each submission on a 0-to-5 scale and offer comments that range from the constructive to the unprintable. Still, some submissions never make it to the voting stage, usually because they ignore format rules, raise copyright issues or, sometimes, are simply “awful.” (Kalmikoff says that eliminating ugly designs before a vote is an infrequent but sometimes necessary measure to “protect the experience” of Threadless voters.) While most winners have scores of 2.6 or higher, one recent batch included a design with a score of 2.0. That’s because the final decision about which T’s actually get made and sold has always involved a bit of nonpublic number crunching. For example, Threadless looks at how many 0s and 5s a design gets; designs that inspire passionate disagreement often get printed because they tend to sell, Kalmikoff says.

Seems anything but straightforward! But that’s okay, I think it reveals several truths around wisdom of crowd stuff. Neat how the decision process is iterative and cumulative, as the community gets smarter and tries to game the system, and as Threadless gets smarter and tries to right the system. This sort of evolution is completely unacceptable in politics, say, but seems to be innovative when done by Threadless.

I love the blunt naivete of putting forward X choices and having people pick, and then the sophisticated noodling that comes out later as the community grows in sophisticate. It’s not unlike the elaborate hierarchy of individuals, monitoring, and other checks-and-balances created by Wikipedia, outlined by the NYT magazine last week. A simple idea and simple implementation becomes arcane and complex by inches. Is this entropy? Human nature? Evolution? Line extensions?

• BIODIESEL decals and bumper stickers

  

  Saw tnis on a truck today. Powerful and to the point. Bumper-sticker politics are an artifact of cultural dumbing-down, but they are also an opportunity to make a passionate point clearly. I’m sure these are old, but new to me. Meme!

• Dunkin’ Donuts and its place in New England culture/identity
  One of those articles that purports to explore why, but seems to mostly just restate (in loving and engaging detail) the what. BTW, it’s the coffee, not the donuts.
• Training for empathy - the use of role-playing in training Indian tech support workers to deal with customer rage
  Article I saved from Feb., ironically before we had any idea we would be doing a project on customer service (and empathy) and using role playing as a methodology. Whaddya know.

I got a pamphlet from the EDD the other day, explaining their Telefile service. A joyful anthropomorphized telephone welcomes you from the front of the brochure:

Opening it up once reveals a basic three-step process:

click to view full size

But after opening the next fold, all hell breaks loose (and you need to see it large to get the full impact of chaos):

click to view full size

A site map of the phone interface is pretty much a guarantee of bad design, isn’t it?

Just the other day, more news that dark chocolate can help lower pressure (seems like old news, but okay). Here’s how the SF Chron presented the story:

Front page. Two columns. One of those columns is simply a (confusing) image of swirling chocolate, providing absolutely no information whatsoever. What the hell is the front page about, here? Advertisements, eye-candy imagery, very non-news stories.

Contrast the NYT treatment of the story:

Tucked away on page 11. No hype or imagery. The front page of the New York Times is still for news, apparently.

Although these are both products in the same category (newspaper), they are really not the same kind of thing at all. Their purpose, intent, motivation, audience differ vastly. I need to stop thinking of them as a set of like items, because that lulls me (as the user) into a misleading state of expectation.