Archives / June 2006

(Finally got around to it - only six months late! -mh)

As we head to a holiday weekend here in the US, here is some summer fun to keep everyone entertained. Below is a list of every Fun Stuff entry from the Good Experience e-mail newsletter for the year 2005. Note that these come every week in e-mail only, not on the website - so if you don't already subscribe to Good Experience via e-mail, sign up here.

- - -

Side note: If you want more interactive fun, try Good Experience Games. If, on the other hand, you want something more serious and edifying, I highly recommend this must-see Charlie Rose interview of Warren Buffett.

If you want something of all of those - fun, edifying, and visual - watch the Gel 2005 videos online.

Now on with the Fun Stuff.

- - -

I'd like to congratulate the "Back Dorm Boys" from China for making, in my opinion, the best Fun Stuff entry of the year 2005.

Fun Stuff 2005 Winner:
From a dorm in China, an outstanding short film - the new video you'll forward to (and get forwarded by) all your friends. Somehow this reminds me why I love the Internet.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6739710473912337648

(The 2004 winner was I Love Egg - click "Egg Song" in the upper right. )

- - -

All 2005 Fun Stuff entries, from Jan. 10, 2005 through December 12, 2005:

Potter Potter Potter Potter...
http://thefifthdistrict.com/potter/

Bizarre lip-syncing:
http://movies26.enwhore.com/206373_numanuma.swf

Converting the first 10,000 digits of pi into a musical sequence:
http://www.avoision.com/experiments/pi10k/pi10k.html

Whoa... dude. (Large collection of art and animation.)
http://www.levitated.net/gravityIndex.html

Montage-a-Google (thanks to Aby Rao):
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google/

If you've ever had trouble opening a stuck door, here are some ideas:
http://gprime.net/images/gifanimation/9.php

Very cool sidewalk chalk art:
http://gprime.net/images/sidewalkchalkguy/

People who look like their dogs:
http://ganns.com/Humor/ILookLikeMyDog/

Meat-scented air fresheners. "Funky fresh!"
http://www.stupid.com/stat/METF.html

Cute animation plugging Hallmark's Shoebox brand, and explaining how
greeting cards are made:
http://chrisharding.net/animation/shoebox/playmovie.html

A bunch of links about bubble wrap:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/28/web_zen_bubble_wrap_.html

Interesting three-legged seal-dog. (Am I missing something?)
http://www.vectorpark.com/ball.html

For Lord of the Rings fans: One does not simply walk into Mortor.
http://waxy.org/random/images/weblog/mortor.gif

Bizarre, bizarre, bizarre Flash video chock-full with pop culture
references. (Who has time to make this stuff?)
http://www.drennor.com/flash/oddities/misc/chocolateNibletBeans.htm

Only a little less bizzare: M. B. Saulnier points us to 3-minute world
travelogues, starring a pair of fingers and a lot of paper.
http://www.finging.com

Still less bizarre, but cool - dancing Flash-dude movie.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/221483

Futurist Poetry (thanks to Geoff Ross):
http://www.futurism.org.uk/poetry/

I always like Matthew Baldwin's writing, but this is one of his funniest
recent stories:
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001174.html

These links have made the rounds, but... parodies of "The Gates":
http://www.not-rocket-science.com/gates-complete.htmhttp://www.smilinggoat.com/crackers.html

The Gates at night, in the snow (thanks to Iris Bell):
http://www.maryannerussell.com/images/gates/

Bizarre experiment with mixed nuts, run by nuts:
http://www.cockeyed.com/inside/nuts/nuts.html
"The adventures of Chad, the guy who was so into Super Monkey Ball that
he decided to live in a ball" (bizarre video game commercials):
http://www.mybigball.com/home.html

Absolutely bizarre music mixes. (Thanks to www.thirdcoastfestival.org)
Check out #3 (I've Got You) and #13 (Bier Bier Bier Downtown).
http://www.ubu.com/sound/plu_abridged.html

And this, uhhhh,... I don't know. But it's sort of fun.
http://www.whatwhat.co.uk/whatever.html

We could all learn from this. How to say thank you in most human
languages:
http://www.etailersdigest.com/resources/saythanks.htm

Someone has finally created a Web calculator for an equation I've been
promoting for years: half plus seven.
http://www.lura.net/03/romance/

Silly patents (what else?):
http://www.patentlysilly.com/

For kids: animals from the alphabet. Thanks to Cathy Cotter.
http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf

Strange origami:
http://www.nipponham.co.jp/winny/kazari/index.html

10x10 - up-to-the-moment grid of current events in pics and text
http://www.tenbyten.org/10x10.html

Extremely cool sound toy:
http://www.lecielestbleu.com/media/pateasonframe.htm

Lejo theater: click "filmpjes" and have a ball. OK, if you must, click GB
for English. (Thanks to Lee Humphreys.)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~lrvk/lejo/

Comparing skylines around the world.
http://www.emporis.com/en/bu/sk/st/sr/

Bizarre kid-friendly fun (thanks to KP for the reminder):
http://www.boohbah.com/zone.html

Another oldie but goodie (note, it's sort of dark humor):
http://ml.hoogerbrugge.com/
"Transparent" computer backgrounds:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w00kie/sets/180637/

How do you spell a raspberry?
http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000339.php

If you've been watching my numerous "numa numa" links, you'll want to
catch the latest installment... (click "Watch This Movie".)
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/227808

Dial Comes to Town: from the Internet Archive, a very old film about one
Grampa learning how to use one of them newfangled phones with dials on
'em. (Click "Stream" on the left.)
http://www.archive.org/details/DialComesToT

And "Moustache Dreams", a movie on beard champs, from India... (Click "Stream" on the left.)
http://www.archive.org/details/MoustacheDreams

Shaken faces: http://www.shakeskin.com/Shakeskin/Gallery/Shaken/
and...
http://www.jowlers.com/

Jason Black points out something similar to boohbah. Kids' games:
http://www.noggin.com/shows/oobi.php

Plaintext outline-summaries of pop songs - funny:
http://qwantz.livejournal.com/28155.html

Structures from pennies:
http://www.fincher.org/Misc/Pennies/

Older pranksters back a few years:
http://www.coyleandsharpe.com/

Some suggestions on how (not) to speak "Murr-kin":
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/beastly/

Fun "greeking" machine:
http://www.duckisland.com/GreekMachine.asp

The view from Mt. Everest (thanks to David Teten):
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050306.html

A paper from computer scientists at my alma mater, MIT, got accepted for
presentation at an academic conference. Funny thing is, the entire paper
was generated automatically by a computer:

few hackers worldwide would disagree with the essential
unification of voice-over-IP and public/private key pair. In order to
solve this riddle, we confirm that SMPs can be made stochastic,
cacheable, and interposable...

Count the 12 guys. Watch carefully as, in a few seconds, they turn into
13 guys.
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/images/1213.gif

Matthew Baldwin explains where the 13th guy game from.
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001258.html

(More useful than fun...) Stevan Baird points us to another greeking tool:
http://ungreek.toolbot.com/

Barbershop signs from West Africa:
http://www.indigoarts.com/gallery_barbersign_main.html

Proximity - simple and engaging game. Nice work, Brian Cable!
http://www.koreus.com/media/proximity.html

Guess the Google: very attractive game, even if it's near-impossible to
guess the word right. Thanks to Amit Gupta.
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/

MP3 downloads from Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/7mc7g

Worth reading: Are you in a race to the top? Or...?
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/04/race_for_the_to.html

Fun dog site: Click "game" in the left column:
http://www.gone2thedogs.com/

Ramayana cartoon:
http://tinyurl.com/b3aqe

Worst hairstyles of all time:
http://www.thephatphree.com/features.asp?StoryID=645&SectionID=1

Virtual stapler!
http://www.virtualstapler.com/

Science toys you can make with your kids:
http://www.scitoys.com/

While we're on the topic, tell your kid how light sabers work:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber.htm

The comic strip FoxTrot, which I've loved for years, mentioned Wikipedia,
the brainchild of Gel 2005 speaker Jimmy Wales:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Foxtrot_wikipedia.jpg

Visually inventive films and ads:
http://www.globalmechanic.com/

This is a must-see: "Fair Enough", a sitcom spoof based on actual
tobacco-industry documents.
http://www.fairenough.com/

Silliness: click on the pig. (Thanks, Joyce!)
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/~andrew/funny/piggy.swf

What 140-year-old technology, still in use, is a more efficient method of
wireless text messaging than SMS? Jay Leno explains.
http://tinyurl.com/cq7ml

Finally, the coolest site in Web history. Turn up the speakers.
http://www.zombo.com/

The Onion on Michael Beasley's gas bill:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39486

What geeks work on.. real screenshots of their computers:
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000208.html

Hint: press the space bar. Warning: addictive. My high score: 1031.
http://www.sunflat.net/en/games/sfcave3d.html

Defective Yeti on the latest Star Wars flick. Quote:

Conclusion:
Rather to my surprise, The Phantom Menace
was every bit as bad as I remembered. I thought that perhaps it had
gotten worse in my memory, but, nope: it's full-on travesty. The saddest
thing is that the first 10 minutes of the film are very promising, making
minutes 11-138 all the more tragic, like spotting a $100 bill on the
sidewalk, bending over to pick it up, and having a piano dropped on
you.

The funniest little video clip I've seen in months:
http://waxy.org/random/video/Tom_Cruise_Kills_Oprah.mov

A little "spicy", but funny as all get-out: a full-on parody of the
latest Star Wars debacle.
http://www.sequentialpictures.com/moviestarwarsepisode3.html

One more Star Wars-related video: several readers pointed me to...
http://www.storewars.org/

Gel 2004/2005 speaker Digital Dan Dubno goes two miles under the sea, in
the Galapagos (see right-hand column for the link to video):
http://tinyurl.com/agu57
"Experience the experience":
http://www.monochrom.at/experiences/party.htm

When bad bands dress up.
http://www.nyheter.nu/kultur/

Oldie but goodie - bridal fashion embarrassments:
http://www.visi.com/~dheaton/bride/the_bride_wore.html

How to build R2-D2:
http://www.astromech.net/Lists/Tutorials/Default.htm

Logo trends 2005. I still say that most logos I see include either a
swoosh or a stylized person-figure:
http://www.gdusa.com/issue_2005/04_apr/feature/feat_01.php

360-degree views of NYC:
http://www.nycpov.com/

Fun experimental Flash stuff:
http://www.actionscript.cl/

Surrealist Stella Artois ad:
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/1774/

Creepy Robocop-like ad, I think from South Africa:
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/670/

Another robot video, this one funny, not creepy:
http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=voltron20

Here's Vienna without ads:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8233615

And this is the artists' conception of Manhattan without ads:
http://www.steinbrener-dempf.com/

Lots to explore on these three sites...
http://www.dontclick.it/http://www.boardsofcanada.com/http://www.gorillaz.com/

20 things that happen only in movies:
http://www.nostalgiacentral.com/features/20moviethings.htm

Everyone's favorite words.
http://www.myfavoriteword.com/

Make your own pizza:
http://www.billyreisinger.com/pizza.php

Online generators of nearly everything:
http://uzful.org/generators_online/on_line_generators.php

Writing tips for geeks (more useful than fun, I guess):
http://www.ai.uga.edu/mc/WriteThinkLearn_files/frame.htm

A pro-Mac rant about programming and entrepreneurship that's well worth
reading:
http://wilshipley.com/blog/WWDC_Student_Talk.pdf

Good special FX in the Portfolio section of this design shop:
http://www.theembassyvfx.com/

If you missed them, (perhaps) consider yourself lucky: the top ten Web
fads over the past ten years.
http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6268155-1.html

Another ten-year retrospective, this one by Kevin Kelly:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

The perfect gift for the person who has everything except a full-sized
working Star Wars-themed desert tank:
http://tinyurl.com/9y9jm

This TGIFriday's menu prank would make Charlie Todd proud:
http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/menu/menu01.html

Excellent interface for a fun flipbook app:
http://www.fabrica.it/flipbook/

The 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest shows awful first lines:
http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm

The power of simplicity: how Stonehenge could have been built by one
man:
http://www.fungod.com/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=15&pos=46

Logo-making app:
http://logo54.com/

Interesting tool - convert any units - thanks to Bryan Mazzarello.
http://www.megaconverter.com/mega2/

Ever wonder who does the voiceovers during movie trailers?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=imwl0Be0Y38&search=voiceover

Well, maybe it's fun now, years later: top 10 dotcom flops.
http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html?tag=cnetfd.sd

I had a quick quote in this New York Times column:
http://tinyurl.com/9qq7e

Brian freeze and "The Final Countdown":
http://thebrainfreeze.com/

Stare at the plus.
http://photos32.flickr.com/37017144_072d69c441_o.gif

Poorly selling t-shirts (thanks, kottke):
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/19JoshKnisely.html

The faces in everyday things:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimwich/sets/796304/

A very creative billboard:
http://archives.canneslions.com/images/p_p/high/2005/01799.jpg

The international database of corporate commands:
http://www.ikatun.com/institute/infinitelysmallthings/corporatecommands/

Good party game: telephone pictionary. Only pen and paper needed!
http://www.mbinde.com/games/telephone-pictionary/

Dogs in bee costumes:
http://beedogs.com/index_files/page0001.htm

A must-see... the retro-encabulator! (Thanks to Ron Lichty.)
http://media.ebaumsworld.com/retro.wmv

Matthew Baldwin scores again:
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001428.html

A must see: Shining Redux. An example of how a clever edit can
dramatically change the promise of a movie trailer. This has a good
chance to top the Fun Stuff of the Year list...
http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov

...and the NYTimes story about the creator:
http://tinyurl.com/dkgxt

A real Webcam on a real African watering hole... live.
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html

Thanks to Ron Lichty for this Sony Revolution demo pointer:
http://gprime.net/video.php/sonyrevolution

Cool designs in espresso:
http://www.roytawan.com/artgallery.php

My brother pointed me to these home improvement tutorials - they're easy
to understand for non-handymen like yours truly:
http://www.easy2diy.com/

For example, see this description of how to unclog a sink drain:
http://www.easy2.com/tutorials/diy0247/index.asp

Photoshop + frogs = a lot of very creative, froggy images:
http://tinyurl.com/8dmrg

Great shot of the NYC skyline:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Skyline-New-York-City.jpg

MIT lecturer extraordinaire Walter Lewin, my old 8.01 professor,
on "the mystery of light":
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/291/

MP3s of classic New Orleans music:
http://aurgasm.us/2005/09/music-of-new-orleans.html

(Did you know there are MP3s of blog posts now? Example below.)
http://www.talkr.com/audio/s/o/m/e/392738.mp3

Interesting performance with sand.
http://extra.waag.org/users/aske/moviez/sicaf_sand.wmv

Jello San Francisco:
http://www.lizhickok.com/assets/portfolio/pages/01city.html

From a dorm in China, an outstanding short film - the new video you'll
forward to (and get forwarded by) all your friends. Somehow this reminds
me why I love the Internet.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6739710473912337648

Napoleon Dynamite sound clips. (Thanks, boingboing.net)
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/napoleondynamite.html

Photoshopped corporate logos on famous and unusual places:
http://tinyurl.com/87lfe

Nice interface to explore old Mad Magazine covers:
http://www.coverpop.com/index.php?pop=mad

The original "Star Wars" in a tiny animated graphic:
http://x2.putfile.com/10/29405035849.gif

And "The Empire Strikes Back":
http://x2.putfile.com/10/29700173131.gif

Several nice panoramic pics from American national parks - drag the mouse
to see the scene swivel:
http://www.virtualparks.org/html/gallery.html

Lots of purty pictures of Iceland:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigempty/sets/1126474/

And finally, the expressionless girl:
http://www.luckykazoo.com/media/2005/05/expressionless-girl.html

Meatscapes! (Landscapes of meat, of course.)
http://machineanimalcollages.com/Menus/MeatScapesMenu.html

Singing with no visuals: aye aye aye aye!
http://www.iiiiiiii.com/

Visuals with no singing: all the "Back Dorm Boys" acts:
http://www.tian.cc/2005/10/asian-backstreet-boys.html

And both... I'm a hippopotamus with noodles on my back:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/hipponoodles.html

History of "dazzle painting" on old Navy ships:
http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html

Hats of meat, the Japanese girl band Morning Musume, and a large lizard:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4vfNiPa54_8&search=musume%20lizard

Hats of tinfoil, at MIT (thanks to several readers):
http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

And here is the beanie version:
http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

Blue ball machine at work:
http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

Just what it says. (Thanks, Dayna)
http://www.cryingwhileeating.com

How to make a river rock doormat. (Or you can buy them in New Zealand
pre-made.)
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=37218.0

Horrible corporate theme song (thanks, Danny):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/28/drupa_country.mp3

All Super Mario fans need to watch this:
http://tinyurl.com/ddjyn

Talking frogs review Ticketmaster:
http://www.frogreview.com/m/05/11/ticketmaster/

Video of Panama Canal locks:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9040875966564826702

Good picture-taking tips from Kodak:
http://tinyurl.com/eyxrb

Nice big pictures of Wyoming:
http://www.atpm.com/11.12/wyoming/

Funny picture of huge SpongeBob absorbing puny humans:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markhurst/68391237/

Speaking of huge, here's a science-oriented "powers of ten" look at scale
(thanks, Mark C):
http://www.falstad.com/scale/

This is the Christmas-light display everyone should have...
http://www.houseblinger.com/bling-rock.php

...and here's the scoop on the guy who did it (thanks, Cheryl Cross):
http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/xmaslights.asp

Oh, but this one... this is without a doubt the best holiday light
display I've ever seen:
http://www.msftlabrat.com/funstuff/jingle.wmv

Exactly what it sounds like. Nicely done.
http://cuteoverload.com/

More than swirls in the Latte Art Championships:
http://www.latteart.nl/fotos_etching.asp

Here's what may happen if you keep pouring your lunch in the cracks of
your keyboard:
http://www.nada.kth.se/~hjorth/krasse/english.html

Best online children's books, with full texts online:
http://www.mainlesson.com/displaybooksbytitle.php

Pretty amazing paper creations
http://oncotton.co.uk/peter/paper/paper.html
All my picks on Good Experience Games:
http://www.goodexperience.com/games

If you missed it, a roundup of all the Fun Stuff from 2004:
http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000090.php

Remember, if you're planning a meeting or party, use...
http://www.goovite.com

If you watch one thing on Google Video this weekend, make it this extraordinary hour of Charlie Rose speaking with Warren Buffett (pictured at left) and Bill and Melinda Gates.

Watch the video

This was the only TV appearance of the three of them to discuss Buffett's historic donation to the Gates Foundation.

See also: Warren Buffett gives to Gates Foundation and Hats off to Bill Gates

What's more likely to change your opinion of the Comcast brand... an expensive ad campaign, costing millions to produce and force onto TV networks?

...or this video, made and distributed for free by customers?

One costs a ton, promises very little, and hooks on a meaningless phrase - "It's Comcastic" - that tries to be the brand.

The other is free and (meaningfully) shows the reality of one customer's experience. The customer experience doesn't try to be the brand, because it already is the brand.

What's a better investment: an exercise around a meaningless phrase that costs a ton and delivers ambiguous results, or a meaningful exercise (fixing the customer experience) that both treats customers properly and improves the entire business?

From a Satmetrix release:

The "Net Promoter Industry Report 2006: Financial Services" report "identified the best and the worst Net Promoter rankings of the consumer banking industry.... Commerce Bank topped the inaugural report, with a Net Promoter Score of 54%."

If you saw Dennis Diflorio speak at Gel :'06: (he's the head of all retail operations), you'll know how they did it and why they got such a high score.

See also: my column on "net promoter" ratings, May 2005

Charles Gibson from ABC News spotlights the creator of the Bubble Project... in disguise. Who is that wooly gentleman, anyway? (He spoke at Gel :'06: but I can't place him, in that disguise!)

Watch the ABC News piece on the Bubble Project.

Also see my announcement of the book.

Business Week runs a nice counterpoint to the hype about innovation. From The Myth Of Creativity:

What society needs is not more creativity or suggestions for change but better ways to encourage people to focus on important issues, identify the most promising ideas, and tell the right people about them. But our deification of creativity gets in the way.

(via Zimran)

Just added to the Good Experience Games list: this Flash app created by a designer in Iran appears to read your mind. (Thanks, Shaun)

Link to game

Like customer experience, information architecture is usually more about people and their wants and needs, and less about lists of rules and guidelines.

Here's a good example from yesterday's Times, 9/11 Memorial Faces Setback Over Names:

Most relatives of those killed on 9/11 will not endorse the World Trade Center memorial plan, even in its revised form, until officials give up their insistence that the names of the dead be randomly arrayed... They want the 2,979 names arranged by the towers in which the victims worked and died, by affiliation (their employers, typically), and by floor, with their ages next to their names...

The folks at the TED conference have begun posting TED Talks, video and audio streams of past presentations.

(Don't miss the Gel 2005 video clips, while you're at it.)

In other news, Al Gore hits Bender the robot with a baseball bat.

Over at This Is Broken, the Veniero's customer experience.

...When I left, I saw why nothing was happening there. The two waiters were glued to a TV set, watching the World Cup. I understand it's an important game, but do customers matter? Does your job matter?

Warren Buffet is practically Phil's and my patron saint at Creative Good... so this is nice to see. From Bulk of Buffett money going to Gates fund:

The world's second-richest man, Warren Buffett, became one of the world's biggest philanthropists Sunday with the announcement that he would bequeath the bulk of his roughly $44 billion fortune to the foundation established by billionaire Bill Gates and his wife.

The decision to start giving next month through annual stock donations represents a stark reversal for the investment wizard, who for years had said his wealth would be pledged to philanthropies after his death.

See also: Hats off to Bill Gates, which I coincidentally wrote just a few days ago.

Ji Lee :'06: has published a new book based on his speech-bubble project.

Talk Back: The Bubble Project documents the many captions New Yorkers put in the speech bubbles Ji pasted onto advertisements in the subway and on the street. Gel :'06: attendees will remember that the entries range from poignant to lewd to hilarious. Recommended.

NYC event announcement from the great MUG newsletter:

Jane Jacobs: A Public Celebration

On Wednesday, June 28th, 5-7pm, the late, great Jacobs will be celebrated in front of the Washington Square Arch, site of her first victory over Robert Moses. The program will include speakers from the fields of urbanism, journalism, environmentalism, economics, publishing, civic activism, the arts, and local business on Jane Jacobs' impact and legacy.

We're Jane Jacobs fans here at Good Experience, so I thought I'd point it out to our NYC readers.

David Pogue gets it exactly right about Bill Gates. His software isn't that great, and neither is the way he often did business to sell it; but I respect and admire the work he's doing now.

Pogue's entire column is a delight to read, but here's an excerpt:

It'd be one thing if he were retiring to enjoy his fortune, or if he were using it to buy football teams or political candidates. But he's not. He's channeling those billions to the places in the world where that money can do the most good. And not just throwing money at the problems, either - he's also dedicating the second act of his life to making sure it's done right.

I have some ties to the foundation/nonprofit world, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a very good reputation - it's well-run and is having an impact on the world.

I'd only add one thought to what Pogue said: it's too bad that the foundation money came from selling software that didn't make users nearly as productive as they could have been. (More thoughts on productivity here.) Nevertheless, as I said, I admire Gates for what he's doing now and wish him great success with it. We all should.

Jim Buckmaster, business partner to Craig Newmark (Gel :'06:), explains one secret of Craigslist's success. From WSJ.com - Zen and the Art of Classified Advertising:

Mr. Buckmaster figures that Craigslist employs 21 people, and starts to count them on his fingers. It never brought in venture capitalists with their grand designs and exit strategies. "We didn't want to have those voices at the table," he says. So Craigslist has remained beholden to no one -- except, as Mr. Buckmaster constantly intones, its "users," who pay nothing for the privilege of posting or searching the millions of pages of apartment listings, moving sales and personal ads that make up the Craigslist ecosystem. "If it's not something that users are asking for," he says, "we don't consider it."

(via kottke)

Phil Terry points out that The Wall Street Journal reported today that startups offering multimedia content in the cellphone industry are having trouble.

From the article: "Cellphone start-ups that were counting on TV, music and other premium services to attract users are floundering..."

One research firm in the article ran a survey of 35,000 cell phone users, asking them which mobile services they use. Unsurprisingly, only about 1% - one percent! - of cell phone users download or stream music or video.

As our own past client research has shown, customers still care primarily about the quality of the phone calls. They want reliable phone service on their cell phones; cost and simplicity of subscriber plans are also very important.

(If you have a WSJ.com account, see: Cellphone Start-Ups Struggle)

Speaking of BP in Customer experience and gas prices, if you have a wsj.com account, here's a followup to read about BP. From WSJ.com - BP's Accidents Put Its Celebrated CEO On the Hot Seat:

[S]o-called socially responsible investors -- a growing group who makes investment decisions by gauging a company's track record on everything from environmental to social issues, like inclusive hiring -- are starting to ask tough questions of a chief executive officer they have long admired.

The CEO is embattled but seems to be making some positive moves.

(Thanks to my biz partner Phil Terry for the pointer.)

Following up on yesterday's Customer experience and gas prices, which got quite a response - today's New York Times reports that Citicorp is embarking on a major rebranding initiative. One question to answer, naturally, is what to do with the logo. The red umbrella has been the visual symbol of the company, and even a part of the New York City skyline, for years.

From What's Red, Familiar, Ubiquitous and May Be on Its Way Out?:

No decisions have been made, and the brand management committee is still in the middle of a broad review. A range of topics - everything except eliminating the Citigroup name - is on the table, the executives said. Shannon Bell, a Citigroup spokeswoman, said that the company would not comment. "Our branding initiative is an ongoing process and we don't expect to see an outcome for months," she said.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the city and all over the East Coast, a competing bank is eating up all of Citicorp's consumer business. Commerce Bank's brand is its customer experience: hours on weekends, free change counting, friendly service, no hidden fees. Oh, and what about its logo? It's a "C". Someone took five minutes, drew a red C, and moved on. The brand is the customer experience.

(Those of you at Gel 2006 saw Dennis Diflorio speak and tell us how they do it.)

So, Citicorp - if you really want a better brand, then get out of the board room and get out to talk to some customers. You'll learn that it has nothing to do with the umbrella.

Take a look at this photo of the BP gas station located in Manhattan's Soho district. I took the picture last week as I walked by, because BP had come up in conversation at a branding conference I had spoken at.

My fellow speaker at this branding conference was a very experienced consultant in traditional forms of marketing and branding. His talk focused on the top-down approach to branding: "It's the brand promise," he said in his talk. "Executives have to determine the brand promise and then spread it consistently across all channels."

When one attendee asked for an example of a company that does branding "right," according to his definition, he pointed to the energy company BP. It has everything: a nice, new, clean logo; a brief but intelligent tag line; and a global advertising and marketing campaign to spread it to customers worldwide. The same brand promise is being shouted everywhere, globally, by BP.

When I walked by that gas station last week I was tempted to ask the cab drivers why they were all fueling up there. Which element in the brand could it have been that drew them inexorably to the corner of Houston and Lafayette to do business with the BP brand? Could it have been the logo? The tag line? Perhaps the print ads in the New Yorker?

Or maybe it was the location and price?

"Wait a second," I can imagine my fellow speaker saying. "Don't underplay the importance of the brand. It takes a tremendous amount of work to get a clean-looking brand, presented consistently across all media. Plus, the executives believe in the brand promise."

I'm either naive, clueless, or really onto something, but I see the equation totally differently. The executive-only, top-down approach is going at it backwards. To really understand - let alone lead - any established business, you have to include the customers.

If we chatted with the drivers fueling up at that gas station, what do you really think they would say about BP? Logo and brand promise, or location and price?

Now let me ask all of you, dear Good Experience readers: how do you choose the gas station you fuel up at? Is it the happy mission statement of the global oil company that interests you most, or is it the most convenient and cheapest source of the gas? ...i.e., location and price?

Or perhaps one station has better bathrooms; or a better-stocked quick-mart; or a personalized pass system to pay more quickly. All of these are improvements to the customer experience - not part of a traditional marketing strategy.

Do you see the difference? One is a top-down approach that puts the emphasis on the executives - what they want, what they agree to, what their concerns are - instead of the customers.

The other approach is what I'd call the customer experience method: after briefly getting some business context from the executives, go straight to the customers and understand their real-life experience with the business: what's good, what's bad, what are the opportunities for improvement and growth and innovation. If you listen hard enough, you'll hear the customers tell you the strategy straight out. Take that back to the executives and then help them build some action around it.

Customer experience requires a top-down AND bottom-up approach that brings customers, and executives, to the same table. The top-down-only approach is no longer effective or, I'd venture to say, even ethical in some cases.

Finally, to be clear (don't start writing the letter yet!)... yes, visual consistency is important, for what it's worth; yes, it's good for executives to all agree on the same strategy; and most of all, yes, I wish oil companies would invest more (as BP boasts it's doing) in alternate energy sources. While some of the top-down work is helpful and even necessary, it's a question of degree. My point is that it's not enough just to go to the executive suite and dream up a new look and feel.

In the end, the work we do - call it branding, innovation, customer experience, or anything else - has to improve the lives of customers (remember them? the people who pay your salary?) or it doesn't mean anything. And you can't improve someone's life without getting to know them first.

Given a competitive market, in the long run, the most customer-centric companies will win. Remember that, the next time you're invited to the executive branding retreat.

Ze Frank Gel '03, at long last, has gotten a properly attentive profile in the New York Times. He's been doing some interesting work at zefrank.com - check it out, if you haven't already.

From And You're So Funny? Write My Script:

With help from a programmer friend, [Ze Frank] set up the comedy-writing equivalent of a Wikipedia page - an online site where anyone could write a joke and edit or even delete the jokes of others - and told his viewing public that if they were so brilliant, they could collaborate to write a script for his show. If they did so, Mr. Frank promised, he would faithfully execute it, no matter how absurd, and post the resulting video on his site.

See also my interview of Ze Frank back in December of 2002. (It's about time, NYT!)

Jimmy Wales Gel '05 is profiled in a New York Times story this weekend. It doesn't quite live up to its headline, but a good profile otherwise.

From Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy:

From the start, Mr. Wales gave the site a clear mission: to offer free knowledge to everybody on the planet. At the same time, he put in place a set of rules and policies that he continues to promote, like the need to present information with a neutral point of view.

The system seems to be working. Wikipedia is now the Web's third-most-popular news and information source, beating the sites of CNN and Yahoo News, according to Nielsen NetRatings.

Also see my interview of Jimmy from March '05.

My friend and past Gel speaker Stephen Bauman Gel '03 has just published Simple Truths: On Values, Civility, And Our Common Good, a timely book about simplicity and mindfulness in this age of information overload. I hope it does well.

From a Chicago Sun-Times article interviewing Steve:

"There are simple truths to which we all have access and these truths are lost in the clutter of our day and age, in the clutter and content of our information and everything that bombards us," Bauman told me. "People are exhausted from it."

I'm overwhelmed, I told him. And not just with tasks to do. The sheer volume of ideas and issues and urgent needs -- personal and societal -- and incessant conversations and noise of this American life are simply draining if you attempt to engage them intellectually, emotionally or spiritually. People are looking for a restful moment. They're searching for something simpler than this.

More info, and audio excerpts of the book, at stephenbauman.org.

(For New York readers, note that there's a book signing on this Wednesday, June 21 at Borders at Park Ave and 57th Street, 7pm-9pm.)

Some bit literacy-related clips.

From Emails more damaging than cannabis - vnunet.com:

Researchers at the University of London Institute of Psychiatry have found that the constant distractions of email and texting are more harmful to performance than cannabis.

Those distracted by incoming email, phone calls and text messages saw a 10-point fall in their IQ, more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking cannabis, according to the researchers.

Contrast that with recent comments I've gotten from people who are using the bit literacy method from the Managing Incoming E-mail report or Gootodo.com.

Mark, I just wanted to let you know that yesterday I managed to get my inbox empty. It's been a six month long process. I had spent the last two months hovering around 10 emails in my inbox, unable to let go of the idea of my inbox as the urgent end of my todo list.

How does it feel?

* Strange - it's never been like that before so takes some getting used to.

* Freeing - I open Outlook and sometimes there's this big white space. With nothing to distract me I can focus on the things I want to focus on.

* Efficient - I certainly feel as though I can respond to email more efficiently. Again, with nothing to distract me from new email, I can focus on responding to that mail more effectively.

...and...

Your paper on managing your inbox may have changed my life. It's so simple but I'm back in charge again! I printed it out for my whole team.

...and...

I think the concept of emptying my inbox has been extreemly valuable for me to pick-up and gootodo helped me do that. Thank you for that!!

...and...

I just wanted to tell you how thrilled I am to have found Gootodo. I have forwarded it on to several people, as well. I get tons of emails and have been using my inbox as my scheduler and to-do list, for all intents and purposes. Your site has freed me from that and I am working much more productively. Thank you so very much. I love it!

...and...

before gootodo i relied on a paper notebook, palm desktop on my treo and palm desktop on my mac and email to manage my todo list. i'd write things in a notebook or jot a memo in my treo at meetings or i'd add a to-do in the palm desktop to-do file in my treo or on my mac. it meant things were never synchronized between paper and email and palm and things were only available in a couple places (palm desktop on treo and mac) -- with gootodo i can access my todo list from anywhere (i almost always have web access via pda or computer)

my todo's are usually short and fit in the summary in gootodo but i also appreciate the description which is easy to access if i have a lot of detail. with palm desktop that sort of description was always hidden in some sort of attached note or memo that required extra clicks into a separate window to find.

Try it for yourself: Gootodo.com.

If you're here from the Business Week piece, welcome!

Some past columns on Good Experience dealing with innovation and customer experience...

• Interview with Marissa Mayer on Google's customer experience

• Pointer to an innovation column

• Explaining good experience

• Some business effects of customer experience

• Interview with Andre Haddad, eBay

• Gel 2006 recap (showing real-world learnings and comments on innovation and creativity)

Marissa Mayer Gel '03, Google's VP of search products and user experience, is featured as one of BusinessWeek's "25 Masters of Innovation".

From Marissa Mayer: The Talent Scout:

An enormous global talent hunt is under way, with companies shifting from process and quality control to creativity and empathy as the key competitive edge. Mayer gets this. She still personally approves every hire for the products group at the 6,000-plus person company.

She also lists goodexperience.com as one of her picks of blogs and books.

(See also: my interview of Marissa, about Google's customer experience, from October 2002)

- - -

Thanks to Joyce pointing me to this and two other key items from the BizWeek article: "Peer Insight has developed an index that correlates quality of consumer experience to stock price"... and this bit about Patrick Whitney, Director of the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago...

Whitney believes that companies today face an "innovation gap". They have the tools of technology to make virtually anything, but lack the tools of empathy to understand what consumers really want. Filling this gap is the task at hand. It is also the sweet spot for top-line growth and high-margin profit.

(For more thoughts on empathy and customer experience, see the Good Experience worldview.)

From CNN.com:

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- BlackBerry addicts have a crack at freedom when they check into one Chicago hotel: the manager will put the communications devices and others like them under lock and key for guests who want a break.

Don't just let the bits go when you stay at the Chicago Sheraton... make it a discipline.

Mitch Hatscher writes about my video chat with the Usability Professionals Association group in Hamburg, Germany. The photo is funny - I guess I looked like the talking head from the 1984 Apple commercial. Mitch writes at user-experience-design.com:

GEL (Good Experience Live) is a conference that's a bit different from other usability conferences. It's not about teaching people usability methods or exchanging the latest research results. Its approach is: make people have a good, rich, inspiring experience, make them enjoy themselves and get them thinking about what it is that is different from other, less inspiring situation, and let them carry over this feeling of richness, of enjoyment, of the good experience into their daily work. GEL has taken place annually in New York since 2003, and euroGEL is this first of its kind on European soil.

Geoffrey Canada :'06: was profiled yesterday in the New York Times:

Mr. Canada is president and chief executive of Harlem Children's Zone, an organization that helps youngsters from birth through college. "If we can do it here in Harlem, we can do it from one end of America to the other," he said. In a 60-block area of Central Harlem, the poverty rate is nearly 50 percent and foster care placement rates are among the city's highest. "What I want for my kids is fairness - just give my kids a fair shot," he said. "Once they're through college, they're as equal as anybody else, and they'll be able to fend for themselves."

euroGel 2006: Who you'll meet

Here are a few of the organizations that are coming so far to euroGel:

AmCham Denmark, AXANCE, Bang & Olufsen, BBC News Interactive, Credit Suisse Financial Services, Crossroads Copenhagen, Danish Design Centre, DPA Microphones, Engineering College of Copenhagen, EOS, INNOVATOR, inUse AB, Making Waves, Momentum Worldwide, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, ReTeam, Sony Ericsson, Valtech.

And here are some of the titles of those attendees:

CEO, Chairman, CTO, Director, Executive Director, Group Account Director, Head Of Design, Partner, Project Manager, Sales & Marketing Manager, UI engineer, VP Customer Experience.

Don't miss this chance to help us grow this community from day one: sign up for euroGel.

Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis makes pizza with a thought toward good experience - integrated, positive effects in many directions.

Quoting from their website:

- - - - -

By incorporating a concern for the community -- local, national, and global -- our restaurant can make positive impact on the world in which it operates.

• Weather permitting, our food is delivered to your door by 100% electric vehicles.

• All of the power purchased to run our restaurant is renewable wind energy.

• We have the Second Harvest Heartland pizza, where $1 is donated to this hunger relief organization every time the pizza is ordered.

• In season, we try to purchase all of our produce from farms here in Minnesota or in nearby Wisconsin.

• 5% of our after tax profits are donated to charity.

Just take a moment and imagine what the world could be like if every restaurant, store, corporation, etc., were run this way.

- - - - -

Wow. My question is, if a pizza shop can be this enthusiastic, what if every corporation had such a vision? How would customer experience change across the business world?

(Found them via BB, btw.)