Make Seriously | Design and Life

Even More Tweetness

Just when you may have started to think about using Twitter, let me give you one more reason: it’s an event organizing tool. What do you do to maintain order when you expect millions of people to show up at one location at one time? What do you do with ten thousand charter busses and ten times more people than there are spaces? If you’re the DC security staff working Obama’s inauguration, you’d use twitter.

And it’s pretty brilliant. It seems to me, in my infinite shuffle through new media articles, that Twitter has really been pushed as a “microblogging” tool; meaning you basically update your status so people can look at you and what you’re doing (as though they actually cared

The real power of a tool like Twitter comes from the creative organizational uses and the Obama security team understands this just like the Obama campaign team understood this. It streamlines communication lines. Instead of “trees”, you simply have a single text getting rerouted not just to other security members (which access can be limited to) but also to regular foot and vehicle traffic looking to navigate the soon to be packed-out DC streets. Where’s the traffic? Has there been a wreck? Are some lines not being used? Are there alternate routes? Twitter’s design allows for all of this information to be sent out immediately through a single channel of communication. Frankly, it’s brilliant.

Arbitrary top 8 of 2008

Because everyone likes to wrap up the year with lists (and because life is extremely busy right now and time is an issue when it comes to writing (and because I have Time’s year end issue on my desk)) this year I present you with my “Arbitrary Top 8″. This is going to be a list of ten things I found cool this year, regardless of whether or not they are actually from this year and without any common denominator besides my introduction to them during 2008. The order will also be arbitrary, so don’t try and read anything into placement.

1 | The opening credits for 30 Rock. The music plays up the fun and random feel that the show has while still making it a legitimate tune to pay attention to. It’s an added bonus that it’s an original piece from Tina Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond. (although based on her roles you might imagine she’s still a single middle aged woman who wants kids but can’t really make it right in romance) Richmonds spectacular music is combined with images of the “real” 30 Rock Plaza in New York City with a highly stylized photographic treatment resembling the old point-and-shoots developed in the wrong chemicals leading to blown out saturation and contrast. It’s a super cool treatment, and the typography that goes along with it is also pretty swell. It’s extremely simple, but it also ties everything together as a single element.

2 | The Obama campaign poster created by Shepard Fairey. I’ve been looking at his work for a few years, and was extremely pleased to see that he created this image. It’s easily one of my favorites, and it carries a sense of irony in that it acts as a work of a propaganda campaign designed by a member of society who apparently works against gross commercial advertising and similar political tactics. As an art object, it helps to show that things that are sometimes bad (propaganda) aren’t always bad.

3 | Saucony’s “Map My Run” minisite. I just discovered this yesterday, but it’s become a new favorite tool instantly. As a runner who doesn’t have all of the proper equipment at his disposal, it’s nice to have a mapping tool to help determine distance. Even cooler than that, however, is the ability to save and share the maps you create with other users around the world. In fact, someone had created 3 routes with a starting point within a couple of blocks of my house. It’s seriously a great tool for runners looking for new routes and possibly others to run with. Good Job Saucony! Way to may great shoes and a great website tool!

4 | Star Wars Minis. So maybe I sound about fourteen right now, but you know what? They’re cool. And you know what else is cool? A whole battalion of storm troopers descending from the ceiling via pulley rigged table. On an only slightly related side note, I used to play other games created by Wizards of the Coast and just recently they sent me a members rewards card after at least 6 years without any of their games. Strange.

5 | The movie “Idiocracy”. Sure it came out in 2006, but I didn’t watch it until early this year (we’re talking March). Sure it has Luke Wilson, but I promise it’s worth a watch. Frankly, I’m amazed that it only brought in $313,000 at the box office while scoring a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes.

6 | King David Hotdogs. The very wise grandson of two local Indianapolis meat makers reintroduced their dogs to the city when he opened up a store to sell those beautiful kosher franks in all manner of styles. If you haven’t had one, you’ve missed a real Indy treat and original. I had a South of the Border Dog today. It came with tots. Yes, tots. Who else serves this awesome food? None I tell you. None. Go there. It’s at 15 Pennsylvania St. Just east of the arts garden, right across from Dunkin Donuts. And I know, it’s also not new. But I was a vegetarian until now in my Kind David experience, and so I’m getting full exposure so it counts.

7 | Black Holes. The internet has these great places in it that I like to refer to as “black holes” (a term I picked up from Chris) I wrote about one of them in the last entry with the Milwaukee traveling storm report. Most of the world also saw one with the now-defunct Shiba Inu cam. (guess they had to grow up eventually…) But there is one enormous black hole which can be a real day waster for those who are inclined to the weird. It’s the personal website for Dutch web designer Coen Grift. Make sure you don’t miss it.

8 | Carmex Cherry Lipbalm. I’ve been using this for a while now. As in a couple of years. So it’s not new by any stretch of the imagination. What I didn’t know, however, was that I’ve become dependent on that lovely stick of moisturizing lip substance. I’ve tried regular Chapstick, and I still have some love for Bert’s Bees Cherry, but Carmex has won the battle. The thing is, however, it’s not just any of the Carmex line. The plain and strawberry just don’t pass muster. The cherry is the only version with a place on my list. Bert’s Cherry is a close second. Dead last on my list is Bert’s Honey.

Merry Christmas, and may this list inspire you for the remaining five days of the year!

The Black Hole of the Internet

There are certainly a few places online where you can find yourself getting lost for hours on end, but few make as good a use of new technology as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online’s new travelling snow cam. For those who haven’t looked at the link, the Sentinel has a journalist driving around with a mounted camera and is sending a live feed of the road conditions around the Milwaukee area (it was in Waukesha when I saw it) Apparently this nifty device has been dubbed the “weather wagon”, and quite frankly it’s very amusing. I’m really impressed, however, at the creative use of technology and the equipment that they’re using. The raw processing and transferring power they must have to send a live feed from a moving vehicle is pretty cool. It’s also a very helpful view of the area around you. Just imagine if you could watch the road conditions an hour before you left for or from work so that you know what you’ll be getting into before you even leave (assuming you want to know what roads other than the one in front of your residence look like). Another idea (probably not the best) would be for a live storm-chasing event which is fed directly from the chasers. Or, what if Deadliest Catch installed a 24/7 webfeed from the fishing boats? There are a lot of cool uses other than the puppy cam which was so recently popular (it saw 773 years of watching!!)

Sheldon’s First Christmas

Named after one of the funniest characters in one of the funniest shows, my fiancé was introduced to Sheldon tonight. Sheldon is her new kitten! And, for those who like kittens and find them irresistibly cute, I’ve gladly provided some footage of our new family member:

Simplifying Really Simple Syndication (five times fast…)

For those who have waited with baited breath, here’s the third installment in my web2.0 series:

If you’ve used the internet for more than fifteen minutes in the past several years, or you’ve used Outlook or Firefox, chances are you’ve seen a little orange box with a radio signal in it. Well, that happens to be the icon for RSS.

RSS you say? What on earth is that!? — Well, it’s not that easy to explain, but it’s a really useful tool that could very well make your virtual experience easier. It certainly helps mine. And, what’s more important, it could help you keep users coming to your site, inform your “customers” (whether they’re buying products or simply reading your material) of any news, and it can help you streamline information you want to provide subscribers.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It has been other things (Rich Site Summary and RDF Site Summary) but for all intents and purposes we’re going to stick with the name that makes the most sense. Really Simple Syndication is exactly what it sounds like: you publish information or content on your page, and the RSS web feed is syndicated so that subscribers get content without much or any need to seek it. It’s kind of like (or exactly like) a newspaper or magazine company. You write material, it publishes it and sends it to the people who have enrolled in a subscription. So, imagine you’re Sports Illustrated. You’ve just written an article, and as you publish it on your website your RSS feed will syndicate it so that your subscribers will get it at their doorstep (or in this case, a virtual mail-box like aggregator).

Those articles will appear in what’s known as a “feed reader”, which is really a tool used to collect newly published articles by people you’ve subscribed to. Those feeds will include either the full article or a summary (your choice) as well as author information and the date. The readers come in both web-based and desktop-based formats, and the long list includes readers like BlogLines, FeedDemon, FeedReader, and NewsGator. Most Browsers also include an aggregator, and typically it just requires going to the “feed” link on a website and bookmarking it. When you do that, you’ll often see the name in your bookmark bar followed by a number in parenthesis like : New York Times (25). In this case, it means I’ve subscribed to the NYT and I have 25 published articles that I haven’t read. The great thing is that the aggregator does all of the work for me. I don’t need to update or refresh it. As articles become available, the number will change accordingly.

Because the history is long, boring, and techy (and most of you probably don’t care) here’s a brief summary. The first significant contribution was a format created in 1999 by Ramanathan V. Guha for Netscape. (pretty much the only browser in the eighth grade!) This format was mostly limited to my.netscape.com users, and was pretty much destroyed in AOL’s restructuring of Netscape in 2001. After that, UserLand Software and RSS-DEV Working Group took up the banner, and in 2002 UserLand released our current version, RSS2.0. For the designers out there, 2005 marked the official acceptance of the ubiquitous orange RSS icon as IE and Opera adopted it from Mozilla.

I personally subscribe to several feeds, including those at Quipsologies, BrandNew, Ryan’s Blog, and numerous web aggregators.

So, make your life and website content really simple, and syndicate it, stupid! (MYRSSS!)

Merry Ad Agency Christmas Party Invites Charlie Brown!

I posted a link to this on Quipsologies the other day, and thought (after it bounced 10,000 views) that I should post it here too for those who work in ad agencies. A heads-up, it’s probably NSFW, so it’s best to watch with earphones on. (Video image is safe, language is not so much). A very, very entertaining video though.