What a great collections of truisms. A fun read for the experienced designer and an essential read for design students.
Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School
Zeldman’s latest piece discusses the struggles that any web designer working in the prevailing XHTML/CSS techniques experiences on every project. I have felt the same way one many occasions while wrestling with hacks and browser bugs tweaking a CSS layout that I know could be built in HTML 4 with minimal effort. Its a great read for anyone who has been there.
My friends and family have taken a unnatural amount of entertainment from my recent announcement that I am about to retire my car. But not just any car, it’s the car. My first car.
Yes, I am nearly thirty years old and I still have my first car. I have driven my 1987 Toyota Tercel DX 3 door for 11 years now, every day. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing fancy about it. The clear-coat is peeling, but the interior is in great shape. It has virtually no power, crank windows, no heat, no AC…but it still gets 30 miles to the gallon and never lets me down. My dad bought me this car when I was a senior in high school in 1993. I have had it longer than my wife and kids, longer than my house, longer than my job, and even longer than I’ve lived in Oklahoma. It certainly has its shortcomings in a range of categories but like an old friend, I know it completely. I know every quirk, every sound; the feel, the smell. It burns oil as I leave for work each morning in a puff of smoke and when its cold the speedometer freaks out and buries itself even if I am only going 35MPH.
So, despite the prospect of a new model, it is with mixed emotions that I leave this friend behind. I have a short list of cars that I am interested in. I will most likely buy new as I intend to keep the next car for a similarly matrimonial period of time. The process is in full swing now as I have been poking, researching, and test-driving. I am a little behind on this blog, but I plan to detail my process and progress in this exciting search in the coming weeks (or maybe months). I would love to hear everyone’s car buying tips and experiences.
A recent CNN story reports that a study by Sony about the gaming habits of Playstation 2 owners shows that the majority of gaming takes place from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., directly competing with network TV’s “prime-time” programming.
The article concludes that perhaps the decline of TV viewership in general can be attributed to gamers. This is certainly plausible as Sony reports that 65% of those gamers fit the 18-35 male demographic. Personally, I think there is more to it than that.
To me, this is an issue of interactive vs. passive entertainment. It is difficult to sit and watch TV when you can interact with the Internet or a video game. Video games, in particular offer a similar visual experience to TV but allow you to control the action. Furthermore online-enabled play brings social interaction into the mix for a very immersive experience. The internet offers similar interactivity as we use instant messaging, email, and browsers. As well as the ability to control of the flow of that information.
I find it difficult to schedule time to watch the few programs that even appeal to me and find myself enjoying very little of that. With competitive entertainment like DVDs, video games, and the Internet, combined with DVRs that allow viewers to never miss an episode and watch them on their own time, I think it is safe to say that the death of “prime-time” is at hand.
I broke down and joined the head-bobbing, white-corded masses and bought an iPod a couple of months ago. There is little that I can say about this fantastic little device that hasn’t been said time and again. As a designer of user experiences, this is the holy grail from the tiny word “enjoy” greeting the purchaser as he opens the package to the way the backlight fades out instead of merely shutting off. Its a lovely piece of electronics that doesn’t feel technical or well, like electronics. It changes the way you listen to music.
An article in Wired News today captured my feelings on this device very accurately.
So, for example, music allows people to use their eyes when they’re listening in public. I call it nonreciprocal looking. Listening to music lets you look at someone but don’t look at them when they look back. The earplugs tell them you’re otherwise engaged. It’s a great urban strategy for controlling interaction.
It’s also very cinematic. The music allows you to construct narratives about what’s going on.
Its amazing the detachment, the feeling of being in a personal space, that one gets by putting on a pair of headphones and listening to music. I particularly enjoy listen to music while shopping—perfect for canceling-out the hubbub of a busy grocery store or mall. And, of course, the ability to tune out the periphery at work is another great use.
The iPod has liberated me from the mundane and given legs to portions of my music collection that I haven’t touched in years. Pretty powerful stuff.
Thinkcage has turned grey today, in support of Grey Tuesday.
Grey Tuesday is an online protest by people who support Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album and are concerned about the state of art and copyright law in the United States.
The album is an independent remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ The White Album. EMI, the company who claims copyrights to The Beatles’ works has sent numerous cease and desist notices to stores and websites distributing this work. Despite the critical acclaim of this important work, EMI has only shown interest in the protection of profits, further demonstrating the stifling of art in the name of financial gain. In this case we see a viably marketable work that is denied sale due to the hoarding of copyrights by the big five record companies.
Opponents of current copyright law in the U.S., arguably the most stringent in the world, have shown time and again the foundation on derivative work that many of the current copyright proponents are built upon. Disney has long been one of the biggest lobbyists of increasing the reach of copyright law as noted by Lawrence Lessig in one of his numerous keynotes:
Here’s my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But what you probably don’t recognize about Steamboat Willie and his emergence into Mickey Mouse is that in 1928, Walt Disney, to use the language of the Disney Corporation today, “stole” Willie from Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill.”
It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928, no [waiting] 14 years—just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did [laughter] to produce the Disney empire. This was his character. Walt always parroted feature-length mainstream films to produce the Disney empire, and we see the product of this. This is the Disney Corporation: taking works in the public domain, and not even in the public domain, and turning them into vastly greater, new creativity. They took the works of this guy, these guys, the Brothers Grimm, who you think are probably great authors on their own. They produce these horrible stories, these fairy tales, which anybody should keep their children far from because they’re utterly bloody and moralistic stories, and are not the sort of thing that children should see, but they were retold for us by the Disney Corporation. Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone.
Disney built a media empire in the very type of culture that they, just like the big five, are now trying to destroy. Without the ability to make derivative work, Disney likely would not exist today. It is frightening to think of the art that will not exist tomorrow because it cannot be created to day.
Oh, and give The Grey Album a listen.