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did you want it, cause yer gonna get it...
Originally uploaded by jimmydan.
Its coming soon the googlezon(m) will come for us all, offering more than we can possiblity every imagine.. and or use... typically.
Communication is an interesting concept. Ideally it should work, I say hello, you hear me and you say goodbye. In the workplace I find that misconception runs rampant. Those simple hellos get tagged with fear, and aggression and position and statement, and focus, and attention look at me dick. And those goodbyes come with I told you so, oh so there, and as if, and whatever and oh ya well take that and that!
Management steps in and either makes the problem worse or in some cases irons it all out. I suggest odd concepts when these meetings occur. I think people should be empowered to get whatever is bothering them off their chest. The problem with tags in these communcations of hello and goodbye is that they are like tags to recall feelings, the emotional aspect isnt shared with the party. They get the hello in a tone and we all have to sit around and think about what tone that was or what was he or she really saying.
Tagged communication. Its like I wanted to say hello, and I did but it came with this bagage that I wont release cause i'm so tied to the emotional comforting twisting concept of it.
What is it about discomfort that clings to us, what do we fear about releasing it. If I was manager I would request that people tell me off when they feel they need to. Please dont say hello, say "fuck you dan I hated that presentation.." thats what I want you to say. Cause now that youve said it, we can move on.
Fear grows in small companies, outwardly chatty people and well more so seriously opinionated folks just have a habit of issuing it as they clash their ideals with others. Like here's yer fear at the door, come on in. The not so chatty folks build this up and then explode causing management to take notice and act, where as chatty folks well they are just always in yer face.
So does management want everyone just to always be in your face? I think that's a good thing. BUT understand what to do with it. Say yer piece but move on. Recognize the agony of a person but move past it.
Its when management or a company as a whole decides to wallow in the infinite insanity of a issue that drives me crazy. And I hate it when I see management do that. Listen, nod, accept, and lets move forward!
Change is always good. I find that its often a constant war though between the not so chatty kids and the chatty gang. Its those that have opinions hear me roar vs the ones that have just as many ideas but feel they cant accurately communicate them. I put myself in that not so chatty group myself, despite this blog which serves as my sanity sounding board really. Basically i'm talking to myself here, and its like therapy to spill all this out, not caring about proper x or proper y and of course not giving a crap about spelling. A stream of thoughts could care less about clarity as far as spelling goes, the minute you turn to correct it, you lost the stream of it. Now look at what youve done, you've killed the magic by insisting to correct it for the masses.
However back to the chatty issue, so someone explodes big deal, happens all the time really. But I wish i could get people to explode less often. I get pressure from people that see me as x and not y, or want me to be z because they see that in me. And its never just a pure observation, theres always a catch, if you could be z, well.. life would be grand, your sense of purpose would be better. As if that person has the right to tell me that. The nerve. Or they say if only you were more b, well thats interesting Sally, i'll consider it, and ya know you'd look better if you had like a 3rd breast like that chick from Total Recall, remember? Sure I want to say that, yet I can't really, though.. i consider it for a split second.. what would that look like.
Maybe we shouldnt be asking people to be x or y, yet thats what career development is all about in some ways. Perhaps what I need is mere refinement of what I want, what I want, not what others want. Natural abilites pay off far more than contrived, pressured unrealistic landscapes of this is who you are via these people. Its like trying manifest magic out people via peer pressure. And it upsets me that people dont get that. They dont get the concept of talent. Talent is in all of us, we all have talent, we all have natural ability at something. Shouldnt it be managements role to seek out the talent in the team and cultivate it, draw it out?
I have too many interests and too many talents perhaps. Am I sales, am I biz dev, am I video editing guy, what about mister IT, or mister project development, or mister rig builder, idea guy, something man, I do work thats what I do. Got a project, odds are I can do something on it. Question is what do I want to do? And thats hard for me to answer. I see the value in doing alot though, sure I get the jack of all trades line alot but my mind is so scattered with ideas and its constantly changing thats not gonna stop anytime soon, so why fight it, why label it as some kind of disorder. I'm tried of being viewed as a mistake. I my lack of focus is somehow a bad thing. While they focus one thing and beat it into the ground, I can do many things. My focus is my ability to defocus and leap from tree to tree soaking it all up as I go. I see the big picture, the big reality the nose grinding folks cannot. Their one way is just one of many ways in my book.
Like yourself Dan, like who you are, chatty or not, accept it, assume it. Be the Dan. Well end of day 6:42, I think I'll retire for the evening and finish this edit in the morning.
Tis a sad day back on the 25th when Autodesk decided to re-brand Discreet Logic as simply Autodesk. Without really diving into the details of that, to me, right off the bat it makes me think of GMC buying BMW and then re-branding the two of them as simply GMC. Doh, what a cluster!
Autodesk made Autocad.. snoore.
Discreet Logic made Flame, Fire, Ignite, and who knows what else, oh ya Combustion, the caused stir in the post production industry, they caused fire, they were the end all be all of expensive godly powerful post production equipment. Sure it had an interface from hell but it was powerfull and it was Discreet man!! Resumes were made on discreet. You had instant street cred if you knew how to operate a Flame, or Fire, or Quake or whatever else they made. Flame stands out in my mind at the moment. I remember a production house down in Texas getting one and it took the podunk little production house from the crapper to the arena, suddenly they were doing spots for the Rockets on the Flame man... WE GOT FLAME!
But then Autodesk comes along and buys Discreet Logic. Wah. GMC got crafty and said lets buy BMW, they'll make us cool! And they did for a time... and then you re-branded not to the cool side but to the mundane side and you didnt do it discreetly.
I cry for the creators and founds of Discreet Logic. They always had these bad ass booths at NAB ( the biggest video production convention typically held in vegas ), their booth was snobish and elite, they defined elite. They made video fucking kick ass. They made it cool. They made Avid and everyone else on the planet take notice. They created cool stuff. The brand was mega, mega awesome, killer cool, they were the ipod of their time at the peak of Flameness.. and then they got bought.... and now.. re-branded.
My Discreet Logic is gone. The cool bluetone booth images in my mind are all but faded. The salesmen telling me "well this one is 500k, that is about 1.2mil with all the options" is done. Ok maybe not 1.2mil, but they were frickin expensive. But they defyed expensive, they didnt sell you something expensive, they sold you a slice of magic and the power to weild it. They GAVE you magic at a price.
But again, re-branded... GMC... autodesk. Autodesk is safe, its known, its ordinary. We need more heros that leap off the edge of post production mystical goodness without looking to see if they will be ok, we need risk, we need daring, we need essence, not known, not standard, not a given. Risk it! Be bold, your customers are demanding it.
wtf is a webinar
Originally uploaded by jimmydan.
Yet another reminder that what I think is groovy, odds are is also groovy to someone else. Sadly these people always beat me to the punch!
ideo features RND# a series of videos that well..."The RND# project, which will ultimately comprise 100 short films, explores our increasingly bizarre dependence on and relationship with technology." . I really like 51ST State. Sure the ORB music is good, but the use of Plumb Design's Visual Thesarus application, that shows all the various words connected, using that application and applying it to a film is an effect i've wanted to do for a long time.
WoW
The World of Warcraft has been in turmoil lately. Several server outages continue as the serves go up and down and up and down. In the short term sure it bothers me, in the long term it doesn't. Nearly every online game world i've been to has had server issues at one time or another. EQ1, AC2, and now WoW. So its like a calling card saying "go do something else!", so I try. I honestly try. I surf, I ponder editing, maybe clean up my room... but i keep checking to see when the servers are back up! Addicted maybe? Its just fun really. It doesnt consume me really, in fact all I really wanted to do is to see if my auctions sold.
Is the auction house addiction in WoW like being addicted to ebay? Constantly checking seeing whats new and how your items are doing, are they being bid on. I sometimes put items up for sale that I really want to keep but I'll put them up there for outrageous prices in the hope that they dont sell or that if that do I'll get my $$$ for them. Seeing my reactions to the auction house in WoW makes me glad I dont ebay.
I've been thinking about the little occurances in games lately. Like passing on loot items. Typically its need before greed on loot. Hey I need that sword.. or HEY I want that dagger! I find that the more you decide on need before greed, you somehow build character. Yer not a loot monger. As a result you get some kinda odd respect token. Maybe its just me but I yern to group with non-loot-mongers, despite how bad they are in their abilites. Well a good leader that knows a dungeon is nice but a loot whore geeze get outa my way!!
IMPROV
Other than gaming, or the lack there of due to server mayhem, I've signed up for an improv class that I hope will take more of my creative time in the coming months. I'm actually kinda nervous about it really. Which Mary thinks is funny.. "but yer so confident..." am I? I mean its one thing to heckle and joke for the fuck of it, but in a group setting, to be a team player, I dunno if im good at that. I mean I shot Bob in Battlefield 1942, I like to deathmatch sure, but cooperate? That seems risky. I dunno. Actually I'm looking forward to it. I'm overdue for really chasing after this. I know I've got natural talent when it comes to comedy, lets see how far I can take it.
NOT HEARING YOU
Work has been congested lately. Taking just one day off last week has created a shift in my brain of not caring so much really. I really tune out conversations that don't matter to me, and as a result has had some mixed reactions at work. Some folks have noticed and have either mentioned something to me or have decided to turn up the volume even louder. I'm hanging on to bliss as hard as I can. Its working so far really. One reason why is because i'm editing this week again.
CLOSE TO THE EDIT
Editing creates a soothing calming sensation in my mind. Its a known. Its a done deal. I can edit. Video editing that is for those that don't know me here. It's probably the first and longest lasting true skill I think I have. I love to edit. Well, usually I do. I do miss making trailers for japanese animation, those were fun and I miss editing more for me, just whatever comes to mind. But even so work edits arent all that bad, provided they take place in the Avid. I was talking to myself in the car the other day on the way home, what takes me 8hrs can be done in 6 and if i really crank it up that can be 4, and I remember way back when, when I had to do it in 2. That goes for pure editing btw, not digitizing which is like anti-editing. The mundane pulling of footage, and while batch digitize works nicely in a post production enviroment, we dont really have nice tape decks here that allow for that easily. Actually batch digitizing should be easier than editing, but on this latest project it didnt work. Something about the funky time code issues we were having. Ahh well, thats all behind us. We're editing now. Next up, I'm going to attempt some graphics magic, do a little serious magic, and then author a dvd, which I havent done in ages. So I'm thinking ulead's DVD movie factory, or something. I dunno what "the" tool is at the moment.
DRAWING
For the last 4 years or so, since i've returned from texas, I've wanted to draw so badly lately. I keep eyeing classes at CCAD or dublinarts assocication, or anything, just someone teach me to draw. This week I said screw it, I'll just doodle my way to the top and I started drawing. I love drawing perspectives right away. Strange little buildings, semi 3d looking things, things like that i can draw, i think, even poorly, but people, yikes - no idea! Its fun. Its actually another form of release too really. I can play out my strange ideas, manifestations, whatever I want and I dont care if its funny or not, just draw it. One of the big lessons I've learned over time for creativity is to NOT censor your own creations, even if they suck, or are poorly created, dont toss them out. Just stick it out, get it out, if they suck so what, something made you draw them, so get them out. The more you analyze yourself, the more you put yerself up to pieced out and analyzed every single aspect of who you are, what you did, oh look how bad that is, the more you do that, the more you lose whats being funneled into you. Let it out.
It doesn't happen very often in the physical world, yet online with my eyes wide open expectations of all that is good will happen for me... well it happens alot. Today's offender, the kickin of me in the balls is SafariU "now in beta flavor!"
The tag line is Your Course In Print On the Web Your way.
Create publish and share your own book. Yes sure you pay for it, but you can create it. You pull what you want and you learn. Now I like this idea. I like it alot. Sure I got 800 some idenities on the web, what's another, lets add safariU to the list, yet another login.
I take the tour, seems all good, I hit apply.
Now apparently this site is only for educators. WTF? OWWW kicked in the balls! Take that! Where on this site does it say "educators only"??? Does it actually expect me to read the terms of service agreement? Does anyone actually read that any more? Maybe that little notifcation was in there. Nice move! Course I dont know, I dont ever plan to read another terms of service agreement for awhile. Where else could be the flashing red light of warning only spend time on this site and or concept if you are an educator!! You could argue that I should of known! I mean isnt it obvious, it does say your course! Well guess what we teach classes here at work all the time, still not an educator in the official sense. Ok lets keep looking....Well in the fine print of "how it works" theres still no reference as far as i can see in a quick read of the page regarding me, the need of me to be an official falculty member. I did notice just now the $700 bucks min order notice. Thats a neat little reality not tossed into the overal vibe you get from the site.
SafariU is a lie. Its a big bad wolf in sheeps clothing or something. Basically as a user i'm hit with golden promise up front, the wismical idea, the animated tour of all that is possible and then i'm fucked at the door to get in.
I bet money I'm not the first joe blow that thought this was a cool concept of a site and tried to join up only to get the "notice" that it aint happenin.
So the problem is all these joe blows really. I remember working on an ecommerce project for a clothing company and the CEO's response to the errors and failures people had via their checkout process was "well can we get smarter people?" Blissful arrogance, thats what we all need eh?
The idea what I should of known bothers me really. I got the link off the Make Magazine website. A DIY for hackers and freaks messin with empowerment and technologies, not really a site i'd associate with educators and falculty members. The only thing that applies to the placement on Make's website is the DIY factor, but its not pure like Make's, its with a catch. So sell on the promise of possibility and then smack them dead center in the door pane when the attempt.
Sure in hindsight yer right i dont have $700 to blow on books for my students. But the concept makes me want to still use it. Creating my own How To on using flash sounds interesting, or perhaps a cafepress style creation or biz model would make more sense for me. Still a win win for Safari. A stupid cash cow win win if you ask me. They provide the interface and content, I provide the passion and drive to make the ideal book, they make them and profit. Where is the problem here. Production costs? See cafepress.
Well I guess i'm done here ranting about yet another experience online. Balls intact!
I feel empty in a good way. I've dropped off the web for a four days and it felt good, looking back at the net now its all so... same. The new new new new new read me read me, its all there, like every other day. I think I need to paint and drink more tea. I need more non-connected creative habits.
Oooooo futurecast!
Well Easter has passed, the bunnies are all but gone, and what do we know? Well first off, Mary & I spent a quiet lovely evening at the Murphin Ridge Inn this weekend. It's bed and breakfast number 2 for us and it was an great stay.
That was our cabin.
Its a great B&B, we definately plan to go back. The rates were, well I'd say a wee bit high but the overall experience was expectional. The service was top notch and the food.. oh my god, best food I've had in a long while. That really blew our socks off, the food was incredible. We even bought the cookbook heh.
We've already made plans for a return visit to Murphin Ridge Inn with some of Mary's improv friends, make for a fun filled evening i'm sure. Those whacky improv'ers!
This is the pool, but do not be decieved, it is only 4 feet deep! WTF is up with that? Thats to my knee... or just below my don johnson!!
One of the things Mary had to try was the six head shower! She went on and on and on about the six head shower!!! It was pretty good, the two person tub was nice as well.
Overall I can't stress it enough to say that this was our best bed and breakfast stay in ohio yet. Highly Recommended!!
Over the years ya pick up on the little things. For me, its the ever growing semi wise manager, biz owner, jet set minded, human resources capable, awe inspiring oh yes I see I see, character in me. I'm convinced I see things a certain way. In fact I'm not alone in that, we all see things a certain way and then roll the dice to see if our guesses come true.
Sometimes we hope they don't come true.
Like last night in World of Warcraft I had a mighty 26gold, i was well on my way to save up for a big ass lizard mount, but then I saw the Dazzling Longsword, an epic item in the game, and it was just a shy bit better than the Sword of Omen, but it was purple! The auction had just 30mins left before being over. The gold in my pocket started to burn thru, it wanted to be spent! Sixteen gold was the price, did I really need this sword? I've had so so gear for awhile now and I wanted a prize, something to say, ya i've made it, afterall I was 37th level, i've worked hard, I.. I.. needed self justification. Actually I sorta hoped I would be outbid. Several nights back I went thru a bidding war in the auction house for a measly health potion, but damnit I wanted it! This time around, ok I probably really don't need the sword, its not a bad sword, not totally amazing, but it would be nice to have in pvp maybe, since I could proc its effect on a rogue and they wouldn't be able to stealth for 30 seconds. And rogues love to stay stealthed in pvp, they need the backstabber action, head on I doubt they are as deadly, then from behind. This little sword, provided it would proc, could be fun indeed, but then again I haven't pvp'd much, and probably wont until say mid 40's-60's. So I spent it. 16 gold. And prayed I would be outbid, I really needed that cash for something else. Wrong. Got it! A gleeful cheer met with dang... I still had the option to put it back up for sale but what the hell I'm a fury based warrior and 1.70 speed on that weapon was hard to resist and afterall I can just dual wield them both.
However some things are just pure speculation... we call it the gut instinct, I call it plausible reality.
When people get on non-billable work, an odd sort of aura surrounds them. In fact in the consulting arena, I'd wager to say that non-billable work is the kiss of death. Its like the calm before the storm, in fact its too calm. Waaaay too calm. This is my 3rd instance of working in a billable environment. First it was a computer store, sell sell sell sell, what are you doing to make me money right now. Second it was broadcast video, sell that 250,000 avid system, tell them to sell their house, they need this video editor. Third time around its pipeline, whats in the pipeline, fill the pipeline, need bodies, must bill.
Now I assure you I understand the concept, gotta make the green if you wanna be on the scene, everyone is selling something.
Still I think they all have something in common, the dead zone of non-billableness. Its like a virus, once it attaches on a person they are infected and it will take extreme measures to deal with that infection. Typically the patient is sacrificed in order to stem the possible case of infection. We can't let this virus spread!
So what's this look like in the workplace, how can you spot an infected non-billable co-worker? Well first look for the seven signs.
I pray for those infected. Deep down they didn't ask to be infected and perhaps while they are flawed, aren't we all, I can't help but wonder, how one fights back infection to reclaim their glory, their blillableness.
I do love this quote...
" Every career, regardless of how much you love it, contains a certain percentage of crap. "
And I want this chair... I think.. or a red outfit.. or wait, those plants, i want the plants..
Talk about art of the sale. I know nothing of this cool funky chair but woah holy cats what a way to sell it! I want one!!! I guess this brings out the leg fetish in me eh? Actually if I had a cool neon looking bar at home, these stools would rawk!
Buzy buzy web out there...
Ask Jeeves buys Bloglines and then sells the whole caboose for 1.6 billion!
Yahoo buys Flickr for the mystery amount. ( does that mean my fake promos just went up in value? )
Microsoft buys Groove Networks.
HP buys Snapfish. Snapwah?
"Snapfish's expertise in online photo services, coupled with HP's worldwide customer reach, will rapidly enhance HP's ability to capitalize on the growing market for online photo printing," the press release says.
Snapfish has more than 13 million registered users with more than 350 million photos stored online and is signing up more than 500,000 per month, the release says."
Yahoo launches Yahoo 360.
Ourmedia.org launches.. with server problems.
I've lost 4k on the Buzz Game.
Oh ya.. and remember kids its ok, its all ok. My brother Paul tells me..
"there isnt a problem out there that horsepower cant fix..." heh, I always crack up inside when I hear that..
for me, i'll quote myself here
"there isnt a problem out there that a good bassline cant fix..." heh editing blissfully to the tune of some serious BT thumpin.
If you think yer gonna be boned by management, clap yer hands!
If you think yer gonna be boned by management, clap yer hands!
If you think yer gonna be boned and ya know its gonna be bad...
If you think yer gonna be boned by management, clap yer hands!
Why is it that you always have an issue with 9am?
Why is it that you always have an issue with 9am?
Why is it that management never cares if I work tilll 12am, but when I'm late past 9am.. odds are im a terrorist.. and from.. iran.
And then ya get the email that says lets discuss!
And then ya get the email that says lets discuss!
And ya know its not about discuss its about do my will or bust, cause baby i'm gonna break yer spirit yes I am!
And so here i am spending an hour crafting a response.
And so here I am spending an hour crafting a response.
Did management just realize that in an attempt to over terrorize that they made me less of worker, yes thats right, i am a can of spam.
Response crafted, do I hit send and reply?
Response crafted, do I hit send and reply?
Should even bother having a spine or should i just toss in the cards and whine, should i even other to respond, after all its their dime?
Well fuck it now I need to get back to work.
Well fuck it now I need to get back to work.
Well fuck it now, I really need to edit now, well fuck it now I need to get back to work.
Ok one last verse and then I gotta go.
Ok one last verse and then I gotta go.
Ok one last verse, dont fear the worst, its all about keepin you under the tumb, oh management my management, look how far you've come...
Ok writing this here for more later...
tags transforming college
trying out ourmedia,
mobile video on the go
make your own comics? I could never hear in nightclubs. I'd go to the clubs, the music was bumpin and thumpin, and then people would want to have a conversation amongst the bass as if that was possible, in fact, in my mind, you were infringing on the groove, how dare you speak while this killer floor filler spilled out. I never could really hear anyone right, I kept picturing myself brushin up against a nice lookin gal (not like mr castrol here), and sayin something that would just be misunderstood.
Well its gone. The sea plane is missing. Every day going to work I drive past the OSU Airport, a little tiny airport with one big ass sea plane on the lawn. It was pleasing to see everyday. I will miss my sea plane! Where is my sea plane I wonder. It's been there for about a year or more now, and suddenly presto gone. End of era of "whats cool" while driving to work for me. No more sea plane. I love sea planes. Anything that can land on water is cool I think. A big ole sea plane just makes me all dreamy, somehow life is better knowing you got a sea plane somewhere in your life, but now, nooooo the cold harsh reality returns, no more sea plane!
This weekend was good, Mary and I took my sister in law Sharon out for her birthday and we ate meat galore at Barleys which was packed!!! Saturday we had dinner with Carolin & Steve, Mary's friends, Carolin runs and teaches the improv group that Mary is in. She's hilarious and Steve looks extactally like Billy Joel, which makes it hard to carry a conversation with him at times cause I just keep thinking, this is billy joel.. this is billy joel. After dinner at the Hiaku where they accidentily spilled hot spicy oil on my leg, yeahness, we went on to see a free opera at Captial University entitled "Die Mouse Die", it was a comedy. It was pretty good really aside from the "you cant fit in these seats", owww i cant fit in these tiny seats. In the middle of the opera, just before act 3, the brought out Captial University's Kodo Drummers, which were damn good, not sure why they were in the middle of the opera, but they were there. Kinda makes me wanna go back and just see these Kodo Drummers, they were really really good. Sunday we slept in.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, watched the Incredibles, which was ok, and then went to Springfield for one of Mary's nieces, Emily, her birthday party. Dang she made out good, new camera, sims2 university, cash, purse and more... heh. She's a great kid, Mary's family is fun and comfy.
What else is happening. I need 80 gold in World of Warcraft for my lizard mount, so every day I'm selling something, even right now I have close to 20 items for sale in the auction house, and I keep finding more. My trade for badcow, my cow warrior, is skinning, thats pretty much it. I thought about enchantments but everything is on hold until I cash out for the mount, must have that first.
In other other news, Avid aquires Pinnacle thanks Clint! Now what does that mean? For the longest time Avid has been using Pinnacle's acceleratoration cards for awhile now, i'm sure this just means more and better hardware for Avid to utilitize. Also a new Avid Free DV is out >> 1.6.1 Hmmm I think I need this as well, the Avid Xpress DV 4.5 upgrade.
Ok I see how this works, I have 3.5, which needs 4.6 so I need $445, then I need $995 for Avid Xpress Pro, which has some damn fine additions to it. Ok I can get that past the board of directors here me thinks.
Oh ya and Yahoo buys Flickr... feelings? Well its important that the flickr peeps get paid. So that is important, other than that? Should be interesting to see where it goes from here. I've always been lukewarm about yahoo really.
On the blogbites route, lets see what do we have to report.
Anyone using Movielink yet?
Wearable VJ controller video... I dunno when I did video for raves, to me, the key wasnt the all the abstract videoness, it was the cool video footage from movies i gathered and stuff i shot with friends.
Program yer tivo remote with a 30 sec skip button.
SxSW video log, check it out!
Check out Dart Mail,( video) -- RFID snail mail.. pretty cool, sounds like a fun project.
Phone tags? The UK is kinda big on this stuff I think. At least awhile back they had resource after resource enabling people hear mp3s thru a phone system from multiple dj magazines, and now this, which is kinda like a service from Sony awhile back, listen to the radio and then click a button on this little device and it tells you who that artist was etc.
This is an excellent video demonstration of Locus:ExperimentalSocialInterface. Check that out, thats awesome. Wait a sec.. what is Locus?
Locus is an instant messanger, social experiment, and art piece that is built on the premise that you are how you act.
By examining how you and your friends talk with each other, Locus automatically tries to find likenesses between your friends. You can then see these potential relations mapped out for you! You can watch your social web grow as you speak.
tagged via >> etech
Losing Money
Well I'm down 2k on the Yahoo Research Labs Buzz Game, dang it! Come on iPod Shuffle!! BTW, did ya read on Engadget that Samsung plans to ownz u all as far as mp3 players come 2007? Ummm I dunno if thats possible. Sure they all make killer little boxes but I think forget the power of the accessorising brand from hell. To me the Apple success is in its established base which they got there by making a superior simply pure, accessorizing like all hell product. The accessorising part is what attracts me to Apple in the first place, sure people tell me all the time, dude what is the difference between that and this, and the answer is, your this has no accessories. Have you ever tuned into the accessories on the apple front? Theres like 30 different things, sure, more crap to buy but it also tells me wow, theres alot I can do here. I think Samsung has a long way to go to dismount the Apple brand when it comes to music. Heck even doing mp3s on the net of people talking in interviews is now called podcasting, before it attaching mp3s to yer website, now, suddenly its somehow podrelated. How is Samsung gonna defeat that? Smoke, they are blowin and smokin something over there.
Oh I love this.. HA!
Yo What's Up With That ICON?
Sometimes I get asked why this icon is my current IM icon and I dunno why really. Its actually a sample of a possible artbox you can get. I like it, its wildly vibrantily delicious. Well drawn that is, its also kinda lusty in a arty deco pinup meets 12 color kinda way. Makes me think simple, clean, expressive, pronounced, wow, hello, you talkin me speaky, hear me, this is me, hello there, not calm, not tame, ask and you get an earful, alive, playful, provoking, not that simple, like amazing without the who dunit wow factor, ny, japan, belguim, freaky on a tuesday, clean, now, present, not yesterday, happening now, capture me if you can. There ya go.
Nokia's Big Clue
Ok heres an idea i had oh awhile ago and now, once again, it arrives. I hate it sometimes, I should just roll with it, i mean its not like i've got all the answers really, but just tickles me to death when I see this stuff arrive and think to myself, doh! I mean this is just the start of something much bigger, I've seen it anime, and I know its coming. Heh, thats vague enough eh?
Ok so Nokia gets an idea, and goes for it. Cool. I dig, but I think it could be much bigger than just phones. Add the coke machine or the digitial signage factor in there.
Hey You There?!
The product folks are having fun today. I keep getting approched by the gang next door working on a product project for what I think is housewares, but i dunno. First up Regina comes up to me and asks.. here can you break this? A spatuchla? You want me to break this spatuchla? "Yes".. Ok I can try... couldn't do it. She leaves. Next up Justine comes to me "can you seperate this object?" Ummmm what is it. "Cant say..." Ummm ok I cant, the surface is too smooth. I ask her, can I use my feet? "Do you need to?" Yes I reply. I need foot power. Sure enough pinning the object on the floor allowed me to open it up. She says "thanks" and wisks it away. Makes me wonder what they are doing really. Its one of the cool things about this job really. I mean while I'm here working on medical video madness, one team is working on some product related, another team is on something interactive, and two other rambling folks are talkin up biz dev behind me.
There's Something on Your Face!
Kim who sits across from me is all giddy today because of two things, Quisp and her Vette.
And thats all fine and good. But then she looks at me and says "theres something on your face, lemme get my mirror.." I've never picked up and used a womans compact whatever mirror before, sure enough the black mark was actually chocolate biscotti which somehow made it to my cheek, but what was more shocking was the detail i got to see of my face, my god, how can girls do this everyday, stare at themselves and freakin out about every little pore in their skin!!
Lets Talk about Search!
Say do you ever read EMERGIC.org? Its one of my favorite blogs to read. I must tune in daily. Today theres a nice piece on "search" >> check it out.
Speakin of Bloglines...
There are many many many new blogs i'm blogrollin these days, check out the list and enjoy! Two finds today actually, Blueseeker ( all about bluetooth ) and Guerrilla Innovation, which is simply bad ass, i love blogs like that, so very cool. Sure in some sense all blogs just blog about each other but hey new stuff arrives in various ways.
Capturing Life
daNotes is a program I'm sure i've talked about before but in case you've missed it, its a program that I had created by my friend Bob to capture data, time, and events for research. Its more than just a note taking application. I can capture time, events, script points, and customize what i want captured to best fit my needs. A focus group is different than a usability test, and daNotes is flexible enough to do both and more. Its also part of the Retrospective Ethnography Retail Rig, where we track a users progression thru a retail enviroment and then analyze events, stop times, way finding paths thru the store and more. Overall very cool and very needed since typically researchers use things like excel, which is good for the basic stuff, but not robust or flexible enough to do more for the researcher I think. Now my brother may differ with me on that, he loves his excel, for me daNotes was created to take what excel could do and make it do much more. Taking notes implies you can take notes, and in research, yer always best served taking notes. Sure i mean you need notes, but what if yer a one man operation? Doesn't happen? Sure it does, all the time. Just you and the subject. Now yer saying, no way to take notes. But we do, its just hard to take notes and maintain that conversation you need to be having with the subject. So I'm always looking for accelerators to help me do things.
So here's the scenario, I'm conducting a usability test, i'm the moderator and the note taker. Being a note taker is distracting really, i cant have a conversation and capture the notes fast enough to keep up and or not make it so distracting to the user that we lose "flow" of thoughts cause i need to scribble.
So pen and paper is one accelerator here, and it doesnt usually work well, its always the fall back upon method. Another is video, capture the whole session, this is a nuff said already, capture it, i agree. Still not tracking events very well. Audio capture, yes along with video its there. Still notation of the events along with the video capture, how can I do that better. What do I need to have to conduct a seamless conversational experience and at the same time record events without writing them down.
Hmmmmm, each pedal gets a callout, or function or event that has occured. Using something like this on the floor connected to my laptop, means i could snap timecodes, and capture 2 critical events, provided we're talkin just about one tap on the floor pad. I suppose you could do 1 tap hold tap off, and that basically says timecode IN "conversation happening" OUT. But you usually dont know for sure what the iIN's are until they've happened. So I'd want the software to always take my IN point and push it back say 20seconds, to give me a conversational buffer almost. Then I could have things like three taps is a question, four taps is a design idea etc. People may see this and go gezze why cant you use a pen man? Cause, well ok, cause its two parts, i've done enough testing to know that a pen and writing in front of the user when you are the facilitor is bad, you end up with crappy rushed notes and you didnt spend enough time having the conversation. And secondily, my brother is right, i'm often finding solutions and then looking for problems to solve. Ok sure, but still the conversation is key, nothing else matters, yer not there to take notes just to take notes, yer there to capture usable data and you cant get usable data unless you are free to have that conversation. So again, what accelerators are available out there to help ease your burden. Foot Switches:
Well what's happening? Let's see. I've been dabbling with FRAPS lately, creating some interesting videos using World of Warcraft as source material. FRAPS works amazingly well expect for the fact the captured file sizes are ENORMOUS, i'm talkin like massive. It'd be nice it they didnt do that. But ahh well.
In other news work goes and goes. This week I'm grinding out a serious video for a medical firm on the next gen product. So I'm watching a ton of proceedures in far away and distant places, I've seen surgery rooms in France that are sooooo white, i mean super white. Kinda interesting really. I wish the team on this project captured more of the general surroundings, I always crave interesting bROLL footage, ya know gimme some streets, buildings, some context to where we are, better yet, lets do a steadicam shot into the building, oooo that'd be nice.
In the land of books, I'm still trying to finish 5 Patterns of Extrodinary Careers, which is a really good read btw. This week while doing the capture phase of the video, i typically have time to do something else at the same time, so I plan to multitask and digitize footage for this video im working on and read the latest Real Simple, Dwell, and start checkin out Tom Peters Re-Imagine book which is a total trip to flip thru. Its a cool book of biz ideas and inspiration, and excessive use of clip art and bad layout rule breaking.. like i hate tiny white text over funky backgrounds, makes it hard to read. I think he planned it that way.
In other other news... Mary and I are doing well. We're about oh six/seven months into our relatioship here and it all kind suprises me in some ways. I didnt expect it to be this way really, i had strange ideals pressed into my head from every "long lost love" or whatever flick i've seen since highschool. I like btw, I like it alot. Mary is awesome, beautiful, funny, instantanous, creative, agressive, passionate, smart, shes really a trip at times. Watching her do improv I can see her talent just pour out and she gets the audience factor well, she can connect in an instant with people on the stage, very cool to watch. And she makes a delight devilish deviled eggs and a kickass cheese cake. I'm very lucky to have her in my life right now. There are days I catch myself rambling away about work and I think "oh shit.. i just bored her to tears over my crap about work.." but she listens, advises and urges me to move on to whats important.
I missed SXSW and ETCON this year, but next year I won't! At least these days we can get wikis with info on the two cons and all the bloggers help me get clued into what went down. I do plan to attend another Trend Watching Seminar if I can this year. But this time I'd drag another member of our team along so that they can see the light along with me. I've also debated attending Global Shop and or Super Nova, two very different conferences but both are very appealing to me. In GlobalShop I could test the waters and find a new partner for the Retrospective Enthnography Rig for Retail I created last year, and at Super Nova, well thats like another mini Emerging Technology type conference to me.
And lastly state of the blogbites... I have ALOT!
ExperimentalGameplay!
More gaming ramblin notes, good stuff.
Apparently while americans seem to work more hours than the average bear, we still suck.
The PDF's are starting to roll outa ETCON, here's one on Tangible Computing, I noticed its got a shot of the audiopad or some kind of cool dj flash interactive mixer, ive seen awhile back, very cool. Notes of this presenation are here
Sketchup clone? Looks interesting...
In the land of gaming Will Wright of Sim City & the Sims fame has introduced a new kind of game development called procedural content development, which is basically put the creation of the game into the hands of our audience and supposedly, now i havent read the whole thing, but near real time etc. So different than say mod development, more like active participation. Now long long ago back before Quake ever hit I thought Quake was going to do that actually, you could keep adding maps to the game and keep creating basically teleport stations to get to them. In fact there is a quake like game called zcube or something that lets you modify the game map in real time while playing it, which is pretty damn spiffy.
Near Field Communications, very cool stuff here, I need to get into some research on this gang!
At ETCON this year the theme is "remix" and one of the sub threads at the conference is, guess what, justication on why we ( me ) and those I work with should be at ETCON..
" User-centred development:
There is great benefit in sharing your development efforts and processes with your users. Therefore release early and often. Set up mechanisms for user feedback, bug reports and patch contribution. "
Actually just go read everything at Wonderland if you are interested in ETCON. Especially this post regarding the opening statement.
Now I think this is awesome but its also like feeding yahoo your collective intel on trends of the planet, its like viral fun that just informs Yahoo waay to much, but i cant resist. Ok lemme change that..just starting messing with it.. its damn fun! LOL, i spent my 10k, initally at first i put waaaay too much into the ipod Shuffle, but wtf, lets see what it does.
Hmmm what do ya think? Crazy? Lets hope so, being sane sucks!
Ha! In the hr or so ive spent in writing this big ass blog entry, i'm up 2k already!
Ok I am loving this blog, Wonderland, theres some excellent insights on game design taken from the the GDC con, which while im no longer tied to the industry per say ( my skint with Ritual and the making of Sin while at ADV Films ), I'm still very curious about the gaming industry. There's some tasty comments on there about how WoW is amazing that i'd love to post over into normal ( my local listserve of sorts with local friends ) but I must resist that cause of the fires it will produce. :P
Here's a taste from Alice in Wonderland's GDC's (Gaming Developers Con) blog notes:
"Wal-Mart drives development decisions now. When publishers minimise risk by kow-towing to the retailers, you have a serious problem. When every game has to either be a blockbuster or a student film, we got a real problem. For my end of the game business all of our efforts are going into reaching a mainstream audience who may well even not be interested in what we do! My first game cost me 273,000 dollars. My next one is BLAH millions. How many of you work on games that make money? 4 out of 5 games lose money, according to one pundit who may be lying, admittedly. Can we do any worse if we just trusted the creative folks entirely instead of the publishers? "
"Every creative person was owned by a studio. Cinemas were owned by studios. Content was limited. "
"One day your publisher will walk in and cut a game because the government says you can’t make X types of games. "
"How many of you are here because you’re after a paycheck? "
"Publishers are becoming increasingly risk averse. Today you cannot get an innovative title published unless your last name is Wright or Miyamoto. Who was at the Microsoft keynote? I don’t know about you but it made my flesh crawl. [laughter] The HD era? Bigger, louder? Big bucks to be made! Well not by you and me of course. Those budgets and teams ensure the death of innovation.
"How often DO they perform human sacrifices at Nintendo?? My friends, we are FUCKED [laughter]. We are well and truly fucked. The bar in terms of graphics and glitz has been raised and raised until we can’t afford to do anything at all. 80 hour weeks until our jobs are all outsourced to Asia. but it’s ok because the HD era is here right? I say, enough. The time has come for revolution! It may seem to you that what I describe is inevitable forces of history, but no, we have free will! EA could have chosen to focus on innovation, but they did not. Nintendo could make development kits cheaply available to small firms, but they prefer to rely on the creativity on one aging designer. You have choices too: work in a massive sweatshop publisher-run studio with thousands of others making the next racing game with the same gameplay as Pole Position. Or you can riot in the streets of redwood city! Choose another business model, development path, and you can choose to remember why you love games and make sure in a generation’s time there are still games to love. You can start today."
"Did you ever notice there’s not place for the earth on the bottom line? We cancelled the Voyager mission for less than the cost of a video game! The dream of space appropriated by George W Bush? How can we stand for this?"
"We model male ethos in the games we design: soldier, super athlete, criminal. Anyone who was born with internet and computers are prosocial. Skaters are mainstream. We have two models of alpha maleness: skaters and ballers"
" I’m going to rant about How Sony And Microsoft Are About To Screw Your Game Design"
"NOW is your time to make something innovative or wacky. When you’re working on a student project, use your opportunity to do some crazy stuff "
"I’m pro-piracy. I want people to play the games I make. I do it because it’s art. I think DRM is a total fucking stupid mess. If the game industry collapses and can be reborn, I’m all for it. Pirate on!"
"Once WoW launched, WoW shot by everything. They have 600-800,000 paying subscribers in the US. EQ and co start at around 300K paying subs. What’s happened in the market shift from previous MMOs to today, is all existing MMOs went down in population when WoW came out. ALL of them. What does this mean?"
"The Sims sold 42m units. Half Life sold maybe 4m. WoW – comparitively speaking, a mere 800K. But WoW will generate more revenue in its lifetime than the others "
"MMOs generally last 5+ years. They have ancillary revenue. One of the things we’ll analyse is what makes (in terms of game design) MMOs up today. CoH (City of Heroes) taught us that games that aren’t deep and don’t have huge structure can be fun! CoH was a huge wakeup call for us all. "
"Immersion. Wow is AMAZING. It’s seamless and beautiful. Everything looks like it blends together." - side note, this is my #1 point i've been trying to convey to my "normal" kidz as of late.
"The Glue:
CoH had 250K and now it’s down to 125K. People on average played for 6 months and had done all the content. It didn’t have what I call the glue. You gotta think about the glue. "
mobile folks got in on the action as well
"Brands drive growth. You can create applications based on a publisher’s brand (e.g. NBA, NFL, etc, rights already reside with publishers there). We can do like half a dozen applications based on basketball in a season, for instance. Brands are important to us because the wireless users are the mass market. Half the users are female. It’s got to both young and old. Half these people already play games. They want to have the same experience interface with their favourite brands over the wireless network, like they already do with TV, film, etc.
Know your mass market mobile consumer:
Ok thats it, absorb, retain, and something.. crap i need to edit man!
Now this is some seriously cool tech and I want one now. Heck i'd use it in research or just for fun.
Actually on the research end of things, we could capture enviroments of where the user lives more accurately and more accessibily interesting to help feed the design process back at the client hq etc. This kind of technology is awesome. I want. Must have! Very cool stuff.
Can I tell your lying? I've always been hugely interested in body language studies, or tools and technology to "read" a person better.
Gates givin us RFID suite tools soon. And Japan always gets to implement all the cool toys first, like the unmaned police station im watching you device.
Moonraker three.. lift off!
21 Most Influential in Contemporary Design.
Saw the Jacket this weekend, strange flick, good, kinda, lost, what day is it? How much time do we have?!?! If you liked: Butterfly Effect, Donnie Darko, or maybe even Momento, you'll like the Jacket.
Holy crap this video is hilarious! Talk about swinging from tree to tree here, I mean seriously.. microsoft buying friendster? What a lame purchase that was! Long live the googlezom! Seeing this video just makes me wanna create my own, FEAR the future flick, but this time I'll focus on spam or tentacle porn factor of it all.
..... wait a sec that's not Morae?!
Ahh there we go that's Morae!
Ok so i've been using Morae lately on yet another usability video gig. Overall I like Morae alot. It truly solves the nightmare involving usability video, its perfect, yet, it needs some improvements. I'm currently using the 1.1.1 version, btw and its dandy, some new things in there, especially the video rendering codec which seems much faster is great, but the Manager end of the product overall needs some help.
Traditionally I would of shot dv video of the process, and edited it all on the Avid, thats the world i'm coming from and I would argue that 80% of user base using Morae is in that situation as well. People have been using the Norman Wilcox dv capture system or working with just straight dv for for a bit now, when it comes to the product end of it, avid or some like product, is and will be involved.
As a user I cling to what works for me. And so I want Morae to cater to that, since its new to the field really, having said that, lets talk about my improvements Morae needs in the next version.
- multiple storyboard saves | Why?
Often when creating the highlights reel the client will come back and want a second version, even more hard hitting or just shorter for the limited time to make a case for x issue engagement. So what can Morae do presently? Well there is no multiple storyboard save mode, so you have to copy the entire project, and we're talking 12 90 min sessions so massive amount of space has to be duplicated. Why? Cause I need to have both copies of the storyboard on hand just in case changes hit me, and they always do. So if my original save directory for the project is 4gigs, I need another 4gigs for a shorter storyboard version of the same project. Thats silly and a massive oversight for TechSmith, come on gang, we're talkin pointer files here kids. Its really simple and makes Morae's Manager even more powerful.
- audio tools & filters | Why?
Morae needs audio signal processing tools. Raise the volume, lower the volume, filter for x better voiceness, or something, get rid of clanking sounds, get rid of distant voices, etc. Being stuck with what you got is never a place an editor likes to be. In the Avid I can tweak it, and I want that ability in Morae. Start simple, give me basic audio control, then give me sweetening type tools to improve various audio situations, think of the context, what is happening, what are the common scenarios, give me tools to make my reels sound better.
- larger view of the storyboard | Why?
Right now I have a 25min reel on a storyboard timeline that is long, many clips. Moving clips from the end of the reel to the beginning is difficult, you have to really remember that clips name and slowly leap frog it over and over to get it to the area you want it in. Painfully slow and is another obvious cue to the editor that TechSmith doesn't know enough about its current user base. In the world of video, this feature of being able to see the whole timeline or to give the user an alternate view of the entire storyboard is highly needed. Again simple feature request, do it.
- import graphics in the title tool | Why?
Every basic title tool on the planet can import graphics, why can't Manager? Maybe this one requires some serious coding on TechSmiths part, I dont know. I just know I'd like to drop a logo in now and then.
- spell checker in the title tool | Why?
I can't spell. There I admit it.
- keyboard shorts and sets | Why?
Again most Morae users are coming from old school methods using entry to mid level editing gear to get results. So that means they know how to edit and they love to use the editor short cuts when available. In fact for me, Avid like editing shortcuts are a must have. I blow thru an edit damn fast on the Avid, and shortcuts and keyboard assignments make that possible. Basic keyboard key maps should be available in Morae. Heck the basic In and Out are overly complicated CTRL-BUTTON keys, this is not acceptable. They should be keymapped to more standardized tools. Morae wants a part of the video scene, i'll give you that, but you need to give me what I need.
- export all clips to video | Why?
12 participants, 35 some clips, boy it'd be nice just to say "export all clips to video". Damn that'd be spiffy. Batchness. Batch abilities are missing from Morae and they are sorely missed. Video production is often entangled in time, we want accelerators to escape, free me up from tedious tasks. The client wanted to pick and choose the list of clips, so to do that, guess what, i had to export each clip seperately. Gah what a waste of time to do that by hand. Again, simple features pay off big. In fact on the high end of video, I wouldnt consider a video production tool to be good for me if it didnt have some factor of batchness to it.
- print that clip list | Why?
Give me a print out of all the data here. Client wants to know what I got, so I want a print out of the clip, the reference image of it (first frame or settable in prefences (say 20 frame etc), when it was recorded, whatever meta data is with it. That shot list on print out makes the meetings regarding video more substantial, its not just me the editor on the stand. I have clippage proof! Empower me! Defend my honor Morae! Another basic wowness feature that'd I use often. What was really funny about this one was that once I exported all the clips out, and it ended up being 72 clips overall, I then wanted to print a directory and that was a pain to do in XP, hilarious. I can't do it here either. Next up I searched online to find ways to print a frickin directory in XP, i shouldnt have to go to google to get basic functionality hints for my operating system. In the end I tried one make shift batch file creation experiment, that failed and I opted to trick it completely! HA! I zipped them all, then used winzip to print the list, then printed that to file, then copied it to clipboard then pasted in excel and then printed my list. See piece of cake! No problem. I wonder does TechSmith realize the hurdles involved in such a simple user request?
- add meta data to recording | Why?
Morae recorder needs to be more nosey. It should ask the recorder more questions, ok and sure it should be clickable on or off, personally I'd want it on. I want to know: participant, location, name, time, project, etc and I'd want a few i could make up myself. This meta data is saved with the recording, along with time, setup, what resolution, name of computer, user logged in at the time etc. When I print my contact sheet all this info is included. I gives me structure, gives me more control.
No analyzer comments i've yet to use the analyzer portion of the application. I will say I attempted to use it the other day and couldn't get it going. I may pass it to our IT guy to figure out so I can get back to editing.
Today I end my Morae editing experience, reel complete, client happy, and move on to traditional video editing on the Avid for another project. Keep on truckin kidz!
A grand new evil approaches! Actually islam, for the record here on floozyspeak, isn't evil. Yet i'm sure its seen as evil, thru well, our country tis of thee fear-mongering society we see. Ahhh well, but lately blogs have been hittin the air waves, catching spots on cnn, the daily show.. ha!, and more. Blogs are forcing people to rethink things! Oh my god, we need to rethink!
What are blogs really? Before we had blogger what did people do to get online and create a presence... ummm lets see.. oh ya they had a website! Holy crap! Websites!
So like anything some people are spreading the fear of blogs out there. Stay in your homes, bloggers are near! Ohh how bout... "What to do if you suspect your neighbor of blogging?" "Save America, Slay a Blogger!"
The Participatory Communications Revolution! Viva la BLog!
And lately there's been a ton of little posts about how to blog better, of did you know.. a blog can help you? Holy frickin shit!?!
Get voice, make a statement, save a whale, all this and more thru the revolutionary blog, which is really just a website, and we had that before but now its better, more connected, yadda dadda. In six years it'll be called something else and then we can all jump on the bandwago and write a dozen new books about how to take advantage of it, when in fact, they are all just websites with peoples voices on them.. holy hell!
Some of these ideas/concepts/nuffsaid moments in time and space are things i've been stressing to work about as well. Obvious, frickin obvious.. probably need to play them out like this though.
Random linkage:
A New Theory of Cognition, hey i work in cognition, i need to be up on all this.
Hands off my Cookies!, damn straight i do, i delete, hell in firefox you will denyed over and over for cookies, i have them set to ask always and if I dont feel you need a cookie, well dont get one, and if you deny me access due to not havin a cookie, baby you are just one click away from someone else, skippin on thru!
Wow, what a weekend! Ok lets recap.. first post the bad...
All it takes is a few bad experiences...
They say three strikes and your out, to me, when it comes to service business, its litterly like one strike. First up is Wendy's, I ordered a single cheese combo and then I wanted to "swap" the fries, those fatting never aging always not as good as mcd's fries for something else. And I said 'swap" which to me is an equal exchange. So I know i can swap the fries for chili but i've done that, what else is available, I ask. Big mistake, once again I get hard of hearing spanish speaking not really all that understanding of english attendents on the other side of the mic, saying the basic four words.. "pull up, what, you want biggie and can i take your order". I struggle for a good 5mins trying to get to the heart of what I mean by swap.
"How bout a fruit cup, does that swap the fires?..." I see it get added to my order, adding $1.20 on to the price.. hmm not really a swap, "thats not a swap.." I say. "What can I swap the fries with?" The display goes out, and I'm told to come to the window. Now I'm a problem customer, I'll have to go to the window. Way to go Wendy's, thanks for making me feel like a dumbass! Actually my drive thur problems with Wendy's go way way way back. They continually short change me on sweet'n'sour dip. And the whole BANG fast ass transcation time to get yer fold shoved to you, thx come again and window slam on ya in 2seconds flat sort of pushing out out the door kinda thing really bothers me, cause I have to check the bag and then yes.. no sauce again! Now I just always ask for it. I assume they are wrong from the start, it assures me, comforts me.
I thought about pulling up and then having the conversation. I saw myself waving my hands, trying to explain what "swap" in america means. Like as if I have to explain a basic known customer prinicple of getting the max for my money to a fast food company. At the same time I'm replaying the GooBaks South Park episode in my head..."chicken?"..."chicken?".... What would Stan Marsh do?
Pull up eh? How bout I just pull away! Thats easier.
Enter the McDonald's... ok so I was still hungry and now closer to my destination, the Grandview Library, I decide ok, lets try McD's. First thing I notice right away - "Welcome to McD's what the hell you want.." kind of tone. But I understood the language! It was english, angry i hate this job english. "We don't have tea.." - Ummm cherry coke then eh? what the hell. "Pull around.." Here's yer food, get out! It wasnt kill me kindness while i restate the GooBacks "chicken?" in my head, it was a take yer damn food and get out experience. Nicely done McD's!
Next up KeyBank, this weekend I got ripped off by a KeyBank ATM. I was furious. I don't recall ever being that mad before. I guess when it comes to getting slapped on two fronts, i take it really really bad. First up convience, I needed x, and I the ATM is about that. Second, thats my money! So what happened? The cash drawer popped for .0005 seconds giving me no time to snag my cash. I was like WTF is happening, I need a time displacement device to slow everything down to see this cash window actually open? I thought was jammed or something, I dunno, just angered me alot. And I was running late as it is to my destintation. Now I'm on the road, driving, using the sidekick2 at 85mph which i dont reccomend, calling KeyBank to complain. Of course they dont give you a real number, they give you the "arent we cool" marketing number. 1800key2bank or what not, great, so ok b=x, y=z etc, trying to assert that out in the car, driving, ok find i figure that out, and keep my eyes on the road fun, go thru their phone support twice, so 5mins of endless options that dont cater to my current situation, then get yet another number that does, cant really write it down, still moving at 85mp, ok so lets remember it, get one digit wrong, call them back this time i remember it call them, and then i get "well call yer bank, we cant do anything for ya.." great! End result, why isnt the damn number for atm support on the atm slip?!?? Oh and I hate KeyBank. That just burns me up.. im gonna send them a nice little user experience note, here was my experience.
Yesterday I read something.. which btw, I wanted to write "i heard something.. about.." but I didnt really hear it, I read it, yet in reporting it, saying I "heard" it just reads better strangely when in fact i didnt hear it I read it. But in the sense that i did go to another persons blog and get wind of something new, thus hearing it in my mind.. there ya see. Sure I read it, but I heard it as well. So personally if you ask me, in spirit of writing it, write it how you want to be heard in the users mind. Deep for a friday I know. But I think this works better, feels better.. be the dolphin danny.
So anyways yesterday I heard, oh hell lets say, got wind of, Groove goin to the Office. Now I know they have this Virtual Office application and I figured that was the context but then today I heard/read/gotwindof/sucked the down low of...
" Microsoft announced that they are buying Groove Networks today, in a deal that has gotten some buzz. But I don't really think it's very significant given that Microsoft already had a large equity stake in Groove and has linked them into their apps for more than a year now. I've always been puzzled by the seeming contradiction between Groove and Netmeeting being in the same company as they are directly competitive offerings. But then again, I guess Microsoft can afford to not worry about details like that. In any case, I don't think this deal will make much of a difference for either company." via - mindingtheplanet
Hmmm interesting, a wee bit of dejavu too, cause yesterday at the office we had a discussion on Glance vs Webex vs Groove. And the groove part of the dicussion was really small. It was mainly Glance vs Webex for our needs of just sharing the desktop. Glance works really well, its a breeeeze to use. Webex is does alot more but then all we want is desktop sharing. We are experiencing an odd dropping issue on connectivity on the network which we believe is due to MHUOET (Max Hub Usage Over Extended Time).
Something I've noticed lately, especially for design research folks, even more so in the acdemic arena of peoples theres this throbbing need to engage in AWMVENWU or hell I forgot already... I think thats (Applied Word Magic Via Everlasting Nowness Word Usage), I keep seeing these things. SWMSFLLFF&E.
Insert Video...
Ok now leap from that ramble into this, an excellent video breakdown of what IS the Semantic Web.
Next Steps in Text Analysis?
Researchers from Cornell University have devised a way to improve sentiment classification that sidesteps having to deal with meaning by instead concentrating on context. Their method weeds out neutral sentences.
Well on that note back to work... next week all week... video madness. Time to get back on the Avid.
THEY LIVE! Ok I just saw this on MAKE, which I just subscribed to and all of you should subscribe to right now, in fact stop reading this and go get yer MAKE subscription. In fact you can read about this SeeFree company over there as well, which I think is a well played out hoax, damn spiffy though if it could work. I agree with Phillip though in that removing the ads is fine but lets put up those cool messages of SLEEP instead.
Thinking Retail...
Lets rewind, well lets review that is, whats happening in Retail, which is one of my work passions. Creating the Retail Retrospective Ethnography Rig awhile back was a true high for me at work. Very cool stuff. As a result of that passion I tune in daily into the world of retail news via the National Retail Federation Smart Brief, subscribe to it, its a good read in your into retail, marketing of retail spaces, new store concepts and overall trends in retail and the biz of it. Often its a great read for trend spotting and possible bizdev generation. Stay tuned ya know.
Catching up on the NRF Smart Brief we got:
The NRF bookstore is a great place for some tuned in reading, not sure what to read, check out this resource.
Morning, umm evening.. something. Kitty can't sleep. I'm thinking candy.. yes.. must get some candy..
IDEO's bright ideas always get the splash in the media, yet, to me at least, its a given or nuff said on many approaches they apply. The walk the path better than others perhaps. But what they really sell is access and the open mind. Freedom to absorb, understand, process, that's what's happening. Deep down everyone has the capacity for good design. They just help you see it, state it, and act on it, which is the goal really.
Finally a delicious bookmarks uploader/importer!
Ya I was watching tv tonight thinking.. channels... no dont want that, i want it all tagged. What if all my media was tagged how would that work. Hmmmm i'll get back to that. Trying to type quietly not to wake up miss swissmiss. :)
I love how it goes round and round. I've always liked how anime often captures facts and represents them in new ways. Two ideas, two realizations arrving in different ways sparking a firestorm in my mind.
First it was research based, I'm the emerging technology guy at work. I'm always dreaming up new ways to capture reality for analysis. In fact I seriously believe in that. The idea of capturing ones life is highly appealing to me, makes sense for blogging, grab a camera, snag some video, its starts out brute force, but can you refine the process and apply it other things. Can you find truth, what does it look like, how is it organized. I feel we dont tap into existing technology enough to fully capture reality really. We can always do it better but man often gets stuck in the old ways of things. Still the passion to absorb, catalog, retain truth of who i am, what i was, where i'm going is all here, you can see it, you can see the patterns.
Turning the pages back a bit its fun to discover other people who think, or thought about it as I do. Vannevar Bush is a name I wouldn't of discovered it wasn't for the anime Serial Experiments Lain. Which i think is interesting cause today, Microsoft is pursing a project entitled MyLifeBits, headed up by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell. What's interesting about this project other than the fact that in essence its what i'm rambling about, capturing your life, is that i find it a total trip to see the connection of thoughts and ideas of realizing its potent power thru multiple mediums. What the hell are you talking about? Dont you find it interesting to have an idea, a grand idea, and then to find it confirmed in japanese animated cartoon, and then that cartoon educates you and informs you of a man who had the idea that then inspired not only aspects of the animation storyline itself but a future research project at microsoft? I think thats a wild ride really. Sort of a strange six degrees thing happening. But what we don't really factor in is that flickr, delicious, hell google, is all really on the same bandwagon. Is human existance simply realizing the big idea? What is it about now, 2005, did we finally figure it out, are we on the verge of something amazing? Can going back and watching the entire Serial Experiments Lain series help me see where it may be going? Its interesting really. Very Interesting.&