Digital Reading

What a contentious issue this is... people have such very strong opinions about the act of reading a book or a newspaper. I'm on the fence about this. I think that economically, environmentally, the digital option is the best for the future. However, I will agree that there is something very tactile and grounding about reading something that is physically printed. Personally, I think it'll go like this... Books will never become obsolete. However, they may at some point attain the "cult" status that items like LPs have achieved. Stylishly anachronistic.

Check out this competition for the future of digital reading.

via core77

Hiding your emails...

From Seth Godin

"Promiscuous dispersal of your email address

I just went through the hassle of trying to get some B2B firms the details needed to give me an informed quote on a project.

I visited eight sites. Six of them hide their email address. They use forms of one sort of another. One firm refused to accept more than 500 characters in the "how can we help you" box, while three of them wanted to know what state I was in, etc.

Email contact is like a first date. If you show up with a clipboard and a questionnaire, it's not going to go well, I'm afraid. The object is to earn permission to respond.

If you sell something, set up an address like "sales@xyz.com". Put this on your home page, "contact us if you're looking for more information or a price quote." Sure, you'll get a lot of spam, but deleting spam is a lot easier than finding customers. (Hint, ask your IT people to make it a mailto link, with a subject line built in. That way, you can use the subject line to find the good email)."

This is an interesting phenomenon. When the internet first arrived on the scene, everyone was excited to get email. Now we live in a world of ubiquitous spam and people are afraid to give out their personal, or sometimes, business email addresses. It's the same thing has having an unlisted telephone number. What are you trying to accomplish? Sure you might get less spam, but making yourself available to your potential clients/customers is more important, isn't it?...

"In Praise of Shadows"

I love the idea behind this design exhibition in London. We always talk about how we use "light" in spaces, but no one ever talks about how you use the dark to create a statement in a space.

Not to mention, the post feeds my ongoing obsession with light fixtures:

via core77

The Crystal Cathedral, Orange Co., CA

by Philip Johnson.

Daniel Johnston

I'm familiar with the music of Daniel Johnston and saw the stellar documentary, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston." I also interned with his music publisher. I'm just not entirely sure that an iPhone app is the logical next step for the way off-kilter aesthetic that is Johnston's life.

Check out the article here.

Does everything in life need an iPhone app? Are we long past the age of slick new applications and on to the muddy world of "me too-ism?"

New Lights

Lighting can add or subtract an enormous amount of character and warmth to a room. I enjoy interesting light fixtures. One thing that's always fascinated me is the general continuity of the original lightbulb design. The exception, of course, being the energy-efficient coil bulbs. Perhaps Benjamin Hubert will design a lightbulb that looks like these fixtures?

via core77

Brochure Credits

Shulze, Franz. "Philip Johnson" Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1994
“Philip Johnson’s Glass House International Style” http://www.homehousedesign.com
“The Glass House” photo: Eirik Johnson. http://lookingaround.blogs.time.com/2007/06/22/people_who_live_in_glass_house/
“New York State Theater” http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_York_State_Theater_atrium_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
“Philip Johnson” http://tedmikulski.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/looking-like-an-artist-architect-designer/

"Commitment slows things down in the short run, but ultimately aligns interests."

"If Craigslist cost $1

Some things are better when they're not free.

If Craigslist charged a dollar for every listing, what would happen?

Well, the number of bogus listings and repetitive listings would plummet, making the site far easier to use.

The number of scam artists using the site would go down, because it's more difficult to be anonymous when money changes hands.

The revenue of the site would soar, which means that the people running the site could get (far) richer, or fund digital journalism or change the economy of an emerging nation.

Money creates a sort of friction. In the digital economy, magical things can happen when there is no friction. You can scale to infinity. On the other hand, sometimes you want friction.

If you lead a group that allows anyone to join, for free, your group might be large, but it's not tight, it's not organized to make important change. Commitment slows things down in the short run, but ultimately aligns interests."


This is so incredibly true. Just look at social networks like MySpace. In my mind, there is decreasing interest in sites like these because they are so inundated with repetitive pages and scammers. If you had to pay for your social networks, not only would you feel less vulnerable, but you would be more likely to invest time and effort into your network, thereby increasing the network's effectiveness for everyone.

via Seth Godin

Erm...

Somehow, this seems like a very bad idea... That cat looks like it is about to jump into the sleek new indoor fire.

Chimney-less Fire Pit


via core77

Hyper-Measurement

"Everyone gets paid on commission

The Washington Post recently laid off a columnist because his blog posts didn't get enough web traffic.

Of course, in the old days, the newspaper had no real way to tell which columns got read and which ones didn't. So journalists were lulled into the sense that it didn't really matter. The Times quotes Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, “It’s an unusual public rationale for serious newspaper people, that’s for sure.”

Wrong tense. It's not going to be unusual for long.

In fact, in a digital world where everything can be measured, we all work on commission. And why not? If you do great work and it works, you should get rewarded. And if you don't, it's hard to see why a rational organization would keep you on.

You don't have to like the coming era of hyper-measurement, but that doesn't mean it's not here."

Where does this leave the millions of people who are paid living wages where the value is much higher than the ACTUAL value their work generates? If we were all paid on commission, the vast majority of us would starve! May as well let the robots take it all over and we can allow our species to slowly become obsolete.

Then again... I do understand Seth's point. As I'm preparing to enter the job market, I have to ask myself, "Is there anything I can do that it is worth a living wage to an employer?" More often than not, the answer I come up with is "No."

via Seth Godin