Archives / December 2006

New York City is installing moats to keep out the bad guys.

From A New Idea in Security Would Put Vehicle Barriers on a Pavement-Level Turntable:

It functions like a moat but looks like landscaping. In the Tiger Trap system, which has been installed at Vesey Street and North End Avenue, a threshold made of compressible concrete extends in front of a low wall. The concrete bed is covered with plantings (sedum, in the case of Battery Park City) or paving. It is strong enough to bear the weight of people on foot.

But if a truck tried to cross it, the concrete threshold would collapse, sending the truck into the barrier wall, which extends several feet below ground. It has been shown to stop a 15,000-pound truck hitting it at 50 miles per hour. Compressible concrete is also used to stop aircraft that overrun the ends of runways.

Visually this is a better design than a set of posts, or bollards, all around the building. So why don't more buildings go for it? The internal stakeholders resist it:

“You know what the obstacle is?” Mr. Cavanaugh [president and chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority] continued. “When you talk to corporate security people, they like the look of being protected. They like the idea of bollards because it sends a signal to would-be terrorists.” However, he added, “anyone who’s going to look to breach security at a building is going to do their homework and find out who’s protected and who’s not.”

One other downside of the Tiger Trap moat is its complete lack of sharks or piranhas, but I guess that's another issue entirely.

The New York Times has written another article about our beloved Cuban restaurant, La Rosita, closing this week.

From On Upper Broadway, a Caribbean Sunset:

Over the years, La Rosita's following has come to extend beyond Latinos. As the neighborhood has changed, legions of Columbia students and others in search of a good meal at a decent price have discovered the rice, beans and sheer soul of the unassuming place, which has tattered menus and a decor that features wood paneling and mirrored walls.

The Clarks [as loyal customers] had gone so far as to pull their 6-year-old son, Ben, out of school that day to make one last pilgrimage to La Rosita for Ben's favorite mango milkshake, and to say goodbye to Carmen Cruz, the waitress Ben calls abuelita - grandma.

All good things come to an end, but it's still sad. This restaurant brought the community together like no other I've seen.

Spotted at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia: an old Linotype machine, a high-tech device in its day, that helped create newspapers. The keyboard helped put metal rods in the right place for inking text; metal plates were used to create half-tone images with variable-width dots - an early version of pixels.

Information was hard to distribute back in the old days (fifty years ago), so it was a big deal for newspapers to offer both morning and afternoon versions.

See also: Wikipedia entry on the Linotype machine, which includes this gem:

The Linotype may be best remembered for the layout of its keyboard, which had letters arranged in decreasing order of frequency in everyday English. The first two vertical rows were usually ETAOIN SHRDLU, a phrase that occasionally appeared in print because Linotype operators who made mistakes would run their fingers down the keyboard to fill out the line with nonsense, and sometimes the slug of type would accidentally get used. This phrase is in the Oxford English Dictionary and has been used as a character name by a number of authors.

It's time again to review all of the Fun Stuff entries of 2006. (Note that these come every week, throughout the year, in e-mail only. If you don't already subscribe to Good Experience via e-mail, sign up here.)

Fun Stuff 2006 winner: I'm happy to announce my pick of the year:

Who let the cute-Japanese-dogs-with-afros-and-a-catchy-song out?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIYMVaiHFs

(OK, I'm a sucker for catchy music and cute cartoons, just like "I Love Egg", which won Fun Stuff 2004.)

Honorable Mention: Brilliant start-and-stop funk dancing:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8906066569526344287

And now, on with the entire year of Fun Stuff.

- - -

All 2006 Fun Stuff entries, from January through December 2006:

World's largest ball of paint:
http://ballofpaint.freehosting.net/

Simulation of a bike ride at near-light speed:
http://www.spacetimetravel.org/tuebingen/tue0.html

Dayna A writes: "In a similar vein of www.cuteoverload.com ..."
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/

Good Experience Games, my list of good online games:
http://goodexperience.com/games

Some of my favorite games...

- Doom Funnel Chasers:
http://www.bigideafun.com/penguins/arcade/doom_funnel/

- Grow:
http://www.kiteretsu.jp/on/grow3/grow.swf

- Blix:
http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/blix.jsp

- Fishy:
http://www.xgenstudios.com/play/fishyclassic

- Maxwell's Demon:
http://www.collegemix.com/content.php?q=2&id=592

...and now back to regular Fun Stuff entries:

"A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem":
http://www.bioteach.ubc.ca/quarterly/?p=108

One family through the decades:
http://zonezero.com/magazine/essays/diegotime/time.html

Timeline of art history (especially interesting in that art history is the most popular major of all the employees we've ever hired):
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm

World's largest gumwrapper chain:
http://www.gumwrapper.com/

** Who let the cute-Japanese-dogs-with-afros-and-a-catchy-song out?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIYMVaiHFs

Make an origami envelope:
http://flying-pig.com/pagesv/envelope.html

Not so much "fun" as important - kids under four foot nine inches (145 cm) need a booster seat. National Child Passenger Safety Week is on now, Feb 13 through 19:
http://www.boosterseat.gov/

An oldie but goodie - the Rube Goldberg-inspired Honda ad:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W3tzgCX41uE

Draw one, get one. (They approve all entries before sharing them.)
http://www.sketchswap.com/

This makes cuteoverload.com look like C-SPAN:
http://cuppycake.ytmnd.com/

All aaaaa!, all the time. Aaaaa!
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/AAAAAAAAA!

Aaaaa, the chewing gum and the drooling brain sundae:
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/aaaaaaaaaaaaahaha/

Of course, in Nethack, aaaaaaa is a line of ants:
http://nethack.org/

This has made the rounds, but go to
http://www.honda.co.uk/civic/ and once it's loaded, click on "Watch Civic".

A 4-D Rubik's Cube. Weird and neat.
http://www.superliminal.com/cube/applet.html

Brain teasers from Richard Feynman:
http://varatek.com/scott/feynman_problems.html

Two geeks' light sabre duel:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=672422470842718521

Two other geeks' race to finish Super Mario Brothers:
http://tinyurl.com/rqp5t

Untold film geeks recreate The Simpsons intro in real life:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw

Get your profile carved in the negative space of a wooden something:
http://tinyurl.com/r6swr

Two talking frogs review Home Depot (thanks, Ze Frank):
http://frogreview.com/m/06/0323homedepot/

Lip-syncs and others to vote on (thanks, Seth Godin)...
http://www.bopsta.com/

...I especially like this version of "Respect":
http://www.bopsta.com/video.php?VideoId=1736

Pictures of surprisingly overloaded vehicles (thanks, Boing Boing):
http://www.ezprezzo.com/crazypics/overloaded.html

Colorful and inventive coffins in Ghana (click the right arrow):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4215923.stm

Curious properties of the number 153:
http://www.shyamsundergupta.com/c153.htm

(Also see his "do you know?" section... so there, now you know:)
http://www.shyamsundergupta.com/doyouknow.htm

Fingers breakdance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIAjoNYgXHU

Mysterious number 6174 (and you thought 153 was cool):
http://www.plus.maths.org/issue38/features/nishiyama/index.html

History of a famous drum loop:
http://nkhstudio.com/pages/amen_mp4.html

Surreal game that doesn't play by "the rules": How Much?
http://www.rrrrthats5rs.com/games/how-much/

Gel conference videos:
http://gelconference.com/videos.php

Super cute kitty pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyc/sets/72057594097798552/

Speaking of super cute, here's a remix of an oldie but goodie - the original won my award for best fun stuff item of 2004:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/eggsong

Speaking of oldies-but-goodies... (Geek tip - double your fun by opening two browsers at once):
http://zombo.com/

A web-based iPod.. click a song, drag the volume up and down, etc.:
http://www.search-this.com/tools/webpod/

Einstein the bird:
http://www.killsometime.com/Video/video.asp?ID=103

Turducken with peeps. Man, I love the Web.
http://asteroid.divnull.com/?p=70

(If you don't know, Turducken is sausage stuffed in a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey.)

Very old comic tour of New York City. (Thanks, boingboing.net)
http://tinyurl.com/mme9p

Offices from the old days, before all these new-fangled computers: (See links on top of page.)
http://www.earlyofficemuseum.com/exhibits.htm

Back to reality. Yikes - that senior chief cat is really creepy:
http://www.petsinuniform.com/gallery_of_pets.php

Compose a modern piano masterpiece by banging on the keyboard:
http://www.typorganism.com/visualcomposer/index.html

Vote for the world's ugliest dog:
http://www.sonoma-marinfair.org/uglydogvote.shtml

Sp.. well, I won't say it. Monty Python did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODshB09FQ8w

How to read the numbers on fruit stickers:
http://www.megnut.com/2006/03/read-the-numbers-on-your-fruit

Bizarre animation... actually, real plants:
http://www.1st-ave-machine.com/video/anime.htm

Thanks to my fabulous friend Dawn for the beautiful bulldog link:
http://petistic.blogspot.com/2006/04/beautiful-bulldog-contest.html

Unusually good origami:
http://www.langorigami.com/art/whatsnew/whatsnew.php4

Real-life Super Mario Bros re-enactment...
http://gorillamask.net/mariolive.shtml

...they might have used this Super Mario Brothers audio page:
http://redruth.greenbean.org/~ben/4CR/smb_super_synth.swf

TV in Japan:
http://tvinjapan.blogspot.com/

Total geek humor... Web browsers personified:
http://www.ariped.com/archives/001833.html

Funny Wes Anderson Amex commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spCknVcaSHg

Betty Boop cartoons:
http://drawn.ca/2006/05/10/vintage-cartoon-round-up/

62 optical illusions:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Random company-name generator:
http://www.noemata.net/nbng/

Stacked-can art:
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/1305/

Know your money (and counterfeit money):
http://www.secretservice.gov/know_your_money.shtml

The Internet Home of Weird Records:
http://franklarosa.com/vinyl/

Boss alert (the buttons up top work, too):
http://www.ezprezzo.com/worksheet.html

Sand animation (thanks, kottke):
http://sandfantasy.com/videoclips/videoclips.htm

"Ten Commandments" as an irreverent teen movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1kqqMXWEFs

Cameron's experience at "The Price is Right":
http://www.camworld.com/archives/001369.html

Infinite photo-collage zoom - very cool (thanks, BoingBoing):
http://interact10ways.com/usa/information_interactive.htm

Spooky dancing rice (thanks to Douglas Campbell)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkox6niJ1Wc

...found via this interesting music-related site:
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/

All about "the Lohan wink":
http://www.posterwire.com/archives/2006/05/10/the-lohan-wink/

Remote-controlled plane video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gulv_bvZS94

Music for one apartment and six drummers (thanks, viaspire):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8000409016826512649

"First lines: a sort of literacy test":
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/jad22/plain/index.html

Watch the four-fingered DJ in action:
http://www.lejo.nu/dj.html

Watch the car-shredder in action:
http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/bmw.htm

Quickly create graphs (bar, line, area) and output them easily:
http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/

Time lapse of the first day of New York's new 5th Avenue Apple Store. Keep an eye out for the guy holding the sign.
http://www.apple.com/retail/fifthavenue/gallery/timelapse.html

Wedding vows based on mathematical constants:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/08/hackers_wedding_vows.html

Amazing sand sculptures:
http://www.greatervancouverparks.com/HARRISONSandCastles01.html

"Classic examples" printed at bottom are quite funny:
http://www.tashian.com/multibabel/

Bizarre 1960s Indian version of a Beatles classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ky5ClIjL8

Stare at dot in the the weirdly colored photo for 30 seconds, then move the mouse into the frame.
http://johnsadowski.com/big_spanish_castle.html

Diet Coke + Mentos = outrageous fountains.
http://eepybird.com/dcm1.html

Cool cartoon panorama of Soho (in QTVR, for geeks):
http://www.kozyndan.com/_qt/nudabranch_love_large.mov

Huge flocks of spring birds in Denmark:
http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=309856

My friend Thomas, the Reboot founder, opens a beer in Denmark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG4ztixR2KM

Expensive coffee you might not want to drink:
http://tinyurl.com/nvarm

List of problems solved by MacGyver:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_problems_solved_by_MacGyver

Flaming tuba video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nd_gvR06j6s

Al Gore hits Bender the robot with a baseball bat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BjrOi4vF24

Charlie Todd's latest MP3 Experiment:
http://www.vimeo.com/clip=84812

The misguided investment I love to hate: expensive new logos with lots of swooshes!
http://tinyurl.com/ebbzj

The mother of all complex, info-rich diagrams. Beat that, Tufte!
http://www.linkoln.net/complex/

Bananaphone: don't miss watching this one.
http://www.allmedia.com.au/bananana/

The size of our world - a bit like Powers of Ten for planets:
http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

Awesome 80s videos (don't miss "A-HA: take on me"). Thanks, Doug!
http://www.dvdsmusicvideos.com/

Reality dot appreciation - watch the dots disappear:
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/rotating-dot.html

Speaking of disappearing acts, can you change clothes this fast?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB-wUgnyGv0

"Tin foil hats, for the discriminating lunatic":
http://www.ericisgreat.com/tinfoilhats/index.html

The long-awaited sequel starring Moofeus the cow, viewable online:
http://www.meatrix2.com/

Along the same lines: hybrid cars are "bettah":
http://www.calcars.org/bettah/

Human Tetris:
http://videos.somethingawful.com/mega64/tetris.mpg

A score of old-timey songs to download:
http://tinyurl.com/nt2sn

Inventive images of everyday items mashed up with unusual materials:
http://tinyurl.com/l33a4

Old Pole Position commercial: ahh, the carefree 80s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om84Zc4-KcQ

Beloit, Wisconsin is officially cool. (Live remake of Seurat)
http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/07/first_impressio.html

Just what it promises.
http://www.strangenewproducts.com/

Paint like Pollock.
http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Weirdo Music (thanks, manhattanusersguide.com):
http://www.weirdomusic.com/downloads.htm

Click "The Supercomputers" (just above the Books heading, about 2/3 down the page), then click "photographs". It's worth the trip.
http://www.simonnorfolk.com/ All the photos here are good, actually.

Classic Canadian animated short films:
http://www.nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/films/index.php

Grinning gremlins:
http://tinyurl.com/f84m4
http://tinyurl.com/gbk8u

Human space invaders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyzStoxnTKs

Insects waaaaay up close:
http://pishmo.com/macro/

Robo-kitty:
http://www.necoro.com/theater/broad/vp.mov

Here's some shimmering ear candy: Lux Aeterna, by György Ligeti. (Click Menu for many other musical options.)
http://www.wwnorton.com/enjoy/shared/jukebox/ligeti_lux.swf

Eye candy you didn't even know you wanted to see: circle packings:
http://www.josleys.com/show_gallery.php?galid=281

787 clip arts, rapidly shown, make one neat movie. Sort of an overview of all the different things people can do.
http://oliverlaric.com/787cliparts.htm

How the Death Star works...
http://science.howstuffworks.com/death-star.htm

...and "On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor":
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/01/10deathstar.html

Darth Vader working the day shift:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CiW838wNiM

Seth Godin's Gel 2006 talk, in its entirety:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4101280286098310645&hl=en

Cute animation with an actual conversation about a snail (thanks, JD):
http://www.mikeadair.com/David%27sNewSnail.swf

Music composed by volcanoes:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/08/volcano_music_m.html

Llama llama... llama llama... make it stop!
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama.php

If Microsoft designed the iPod packaging. (Yes, this has made the rounds.. I meant to show it at Gel '06 but ran out of time. Ahh.)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0

History of speech balloons in comics:
http://bugpowder.com/andy/e.speechballoons.evolution.html

Big Lego creations:
http://brickartist.com/largegallery.html

Wikipedia fans, please help expand the Gel conference entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_conference

Great treadmill choreography:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

House for sale with a subterranean fortress:
http://www.oneofakindhouse.com/fortress.html

Panorama of suburban CA sprawl:
http://www.exuberance.com/photos/panos/Sprawl-SanRamonCA.html

Animated vs. animator:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/34244097/

I'm shocked anyone would say this about the "Web 2.0" trend:
http://tinyurl.com/prvu9

Sam Brown's elegy for his late PowerBook (he draws all our Gel conference logos, btw - thanks, Sam!):
http://www.explodingdog.com/powerbookg4/

40 minutes with Richard Feynman:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6586235597476141009

Translate anything into "pirate speak":
http://www.talklikeapirateday.com/translate/index.php

Great anime mashup movie (thanks, boingboing.net):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7381049223766054715

Child drummer prodigy (thanks, boingboing.net):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE_PFpWPQ5Y

Amazing papercraft:
http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/28261/Amazing_Paper_Images_

Unusual clouds (thanks, kottke.org):
http://pic1.funtigo.com/valuca?g=25544746&cr=1

Margaret Thatcher like you've never seen her before:
http://tinyurl.com/ga34m

Bizarre project: screen captures of CNN, Fox, etc. reporters:
http://www.reportercaps.com/

Bizarre but attractive urinal sculptures (take that, Duchamp):
http://www.clarkmade.com/urinals.html

Which superhero are you?
http://www.thesuperheroquiz.com/

Downloadable classical music from the great ISG Museum:
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/library.asp

Bananas vs. cats:
http://gprime.net/video.php/bananasvs

Weatherman vs. cockroach:
http://www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=2232

Very well designed animated map:
http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html

Info-visualization winners:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5794/1730

Neat tool - search Google via cell phone text messages:
http://www.google.com/sms/

** Brilliant start-and-stop funk dancing:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8906066569526344287

Catchy dance video, "Tunak tunak tun":
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5995556455415798282

I couldn't possibly omit Napoleon...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5349997277616358646

...or the inevitable Numa Numa/Napoleon mashup (surprisingly good):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3479565620590917298

Sing along while the leek spins:
http://leekspin.info
(see also the Wikipedia entry)

Cool down by creating your *own* chill-out tune with this:
http://pickledonion.com/phase/index.htm

Funny rant on naming suburban developments:
http://tinyurl.com/hoyky

Online instrument museum - see videos of even the obscure ones:
http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/

Interesting ads: some creative and cute, some a bit risque, and some "crying wolf" in a harmful way, in my opinion (thanks, KL):
http://tinyurl.com/ye3aem

A hugger's story (thanks, Michael M)
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/free-hugs-p1.php

For everyone who loves spirals:
http://spiral.gallery.sytes.org/

Volare, karaoke (thanks, manhattanusersguide.com):
http://www.capitalemocional.com/Sonidos/volare-karaoke.swf

Just in time for Halloween... handbags of horror:
http://tinyurl.com/yabw55

Texas's own Skidboot, the fine canine Einstein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4VMntSUskg

The reality of fashion photography:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6915842737034217262

Map of Springfield, the Simpsons' home town:
http://www.mapofspringfield.com/map/index.html

Outstanding site teaching knots (thanks, Kevin Kelly):
http://www.animatedknots.com

Solve your e-mail overload problem, right now - useful and yes, fun:
http://goodexperience.com/blog/archives/001019.php

Romance novels with their cover titles rewritten:
http://www.worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/

"The first programming riddle on the Net":
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/

What it looks like under New York City streets:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/nymain.html

Visual examples of the golden ratio:
http://tinyurl.com/jkcly

The Mario theme song on electric guitar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH2JX32l9Uo

The longest Mozart music box in the world, with rollerblades:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KePjkCySBCs

Is it just me, or does this diagram negate itself?
http://www.idiagram.com/CP/cpprocess.html

Birth of an island (thanks, Patrick):
http://tinyurl.com/ydoaze

Palindromes and anagrams:
http://palindromes.hobby-site.org

Penn & Teller take on recycling:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7734998370503499886

Steve Jobs saying "boom"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8L39UwOS-Y

...and Sammy Davis, Jr., too:
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/CM/Embraceable_Boom.mp3

Mix your own music. (Thanks, Ji)
http://infinitewheel.com

Animator vs Animation II: the rematch.
http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/animator_vs_animation_2

Jack Black, Gollum, Grease, and scat singing, all in one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2FzHjzJj8

Interesting clock (thanks, Michelle R):
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf

Silly pool tricks done on the street:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw4bQKiLkQ4

Silly card tricks done in the pool:
http://www.improveverywhere.com/mission_view.php?mission_id=66

Octopus, escape artist:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4007016107763801953

Great movie footage of "the Wilhelm scream":
http://www.panopticist.com/archives/215.html

Classical music that you can download right now:
http://www.musopen.com

Silly game: Asteroid's revenge:
http://www.gamescheatcodes.co.uk/newgames/asteroidsrevenge.htm

Very cool - make your own dot-to-dot puzzle (nice work, Mark C!):
http://www.picturedots.com

Best wedding dance ever:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r7oCDbDebDA

An unusual Japanese drum machine:
http://newathens.org/files/drummachine.swf

Finally, a way to tell palladium from rhodium:
http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Posters/Poster2.2000.low.JPG

Not really "fun", but interesting - an Implicit Association Test:
http://implicit.harvard.edu

Scared of Santa:
http://tinyurl.com/3nlf3

- - -

You still want more?? OK, here are past years:

Fun Stuff 2005:
http://goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000819.php

Fun Stuff 2004:
http://goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000090.php

- - -

And I also recommend my...

- Online game picks:
http://goodexperience.com/games

- Gel conference videos:
http://gelconference.com/videos.php

- Uncle Mark Gift Guide & Almanac:
http://unclemark.org/unclemark2007.pdf

Speaking of regurgitated content, the New York Times ran a keeper today. From Please Let It Be Whale Vomit, Not Just Sea Junk:

"Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000."

Funny post from December 5 about Hollywood versions of computers and user interfaces. From What code DOESN'T do in real life (that it does in the movies):

4. Code is not three dimensional. Remember in "hackers" when the gibson is depicted as a three dimensional city that the hackers must navigate through? Bulls--t! We may use a dash of color in our shell to make things a bit clearer, but last I checked my terminal app doesn't require OpenGL.

Strangely, Jakob Nielsen runs an a very similar top ten list today, over a week later, without referencing the above post.

Kudos to Google for their new patent search. I'm partial to US Patent #5,048,839:

Disclosed is a method and apparatus for the playing of a mediated war game by two or more players...

(via boingboing)

Kudos to Clay Shirky for asking for metrics... in his column about the latest round of media hype - SECOND LIFE: A story too good to check - Valleywag:

Someone who tries a social service once and bails isn't really a user any more than someone who gets a sample spoon of ice cream and walks out is a customer.

So here's my question -- how many return users are there?

Today, Tuesday Dec. 12, is the last day to get early-bird tickets to both Gel events next year: Gel 2007 (April 19-20 in NYC) and euroGel07 (September 6-7 in Copenhagen).

The initial Gel 2007 speaker list is now posted: the composer, the technologist, the farmer, the dancer, the boat builder, and others... join us!

You can also watch Gel videos, for free, online.

I came across a provocative quote a few days ago about how to make
a product that sells well. From Simplicity Is Highly Overrated:

Make it simple and people won't buy. Given a choice, they will take the item that does more. Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity. You do it too, I bet. Haven't you ever compared two products side by side, comparing the features of each, preferring the one that did more? Why shame on you, you are behaving, well, behaving like a normal person.

More features, more sales: seems to be a pretty strong case for making complex, hard-to-use products that promise the world, even if they don't deliver much.

You might be surprised to find out that the author of the quote was Don Norman, the author of the influential book "The Design of Everyday Things", a favorite of many usability practitioners. Norman has made a career of pointing out how to improve design, so it's especially provocative for him to make the counter-argument.

And while his comments are based in experience - from a recent trip to Korea - they're not entirely accurate. He misses two main points:

1. The overall business context - admittedly, not his focus as a usability practitioner. If simple doesn't sell, why is Nintendo doing so well?

There are endless examples of companies that measure increased business metrics when they abandon a short-term focus on "more features" and provide a simpler, more user-centered design. (Some of them are here: http://creativegood.com/casestudies )

2. The decreasing power of traditional marketing (in this case, features packed tight on the showroom floor) in the face of increased customer connectivity. Guides like Uncle Mark will (I hope!) continue to gain in popularity, bypassing what the marketers want everyone to buy.

Don Norman is technically right that simple doesn't sell, because what people are really buying is a good experience. Sometimes simple is good, and sometimes complex is good, depending on what a good experience is in a given context.

For example, people don't go to the movies, or nice restaurants, or live concerts because they're simple; they go because they're complex - with emotions, story, texture, or feeling. But can we say that "simple doesn't sell"? Hardly. In transactional contexts, people want simplicity - view the popularity of Google and other easy websites. In a utility-oriented context, like air travel, people want simplicity - view the success of no-frills carriers like Southwest and JetBlue.

The challenge for designers, and executives, and other practitioners is to consider what's a good experience in their context. But it's broadly inaccurate, and more than a little silly, to suggest that "simplicity is highly overrated."

- - -

See also:

- Problems of complexity and choice (my column from October 2005)

- Joel Spolsky writes in favor of Don's piece, by the way.

Update: Various commenters are bringing up other related resources:

- Scott Berkun's take

- The Sweet Spot on the Curve

- The Goldilocks Principle

- Zimran's take

- Joshua Kaufman's take

- Good Experience interview with Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice

- Good Experience interview with Google's Marissa Mayer

- The Service-Profit Chain

- Attribute-Task Complexity as a Determinant of Consumer Preference Reversals

Happy reading!

Steve Berkowitz, Microsoft's new online chief, tells why Microsoft has so far lost online. (Emphasis mine.)

Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.

“A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the consumer,” he said. “It isn’t always the best technology that wins. It is the best experience.”

Seems Mr. Berkowitz could get some value by pointing his people to Good Experience resources. (And bringing them to Gel - but I'm biased.)

Link to NYT story

See also how this same story is playing out in the video game industry, in Nintendo: success with simplicity

Good NYT piece today on "user-generated content" looking more and more like the mainstream media.

The most-played songs from unsigned bands on MySpace — some played two million or three million times — tend to be as sappy as anything on the radio; the most-viewed videos on YouTube are novelty bits, and proudly dorky. Mouse-clicking individuals can be as tasteless, in the aggregate, as entertainment professionals. ... [G]enius has a bigger junk pile to climb out of than ever, one that requires just as much hustle and ingenuity as the old distribution system.

Ahh, the proper manners of online invites. From the New York Times, Online R.S.V.P.’s: A Simple No Just Won’t Do:

Each month, more than 10 million invitations are sent through Evite.com, and a significant number of them encourage people to not only reply, but to also write a personal comment that can be viewed by everyone on the guest list.

10 million invites? Think how many banner ads, promotions, and registration requests that serves up.

People should use Goovite.com instead. It's free, there are no ads, and yes, you can choose whether to display your comments to the entire guest list or just the organizer.

Carrie writes about needlessly electronic games and devices.

Zimran gets it exactly right about blogging. From winterspeak.com:

1) when blogging gets easier, more people blog; and 2) probably, most people will never blog. Blogging was around long before Blogger launched, but Blogger made the process so much easier that it's not surprising it heralded the great blogging boom. Also, given that blogging is time intensive, and most people are short of time, you'd expect blogging to be rare in general, and perhaps common amongst those who have time to spare (students, academics, eventually retired people).

Behavioral economics would say that bloggers will overestimate the importance and ubiquity of blogging, by confusing their own experience with the medium, to the average experience with the medium.

Now, bloggers, go and blog that I blogged a blog about blogging. Everyone else, go out and get some fresh air.

Now on the Gel site: clip of Ted Dewan, from Oxford UK, talking about his Road Witch project.

Buy your Gel tix by this Tuesday, December 12, before the price jump, to Gel 2007 and euroGel07.

Bit literacy is really beginning to pop in the technology media. The Economist reports on the coming "life bitstream":

From The phone of the future:

[S]tudies show that people read around ten megabytes (MB) worth of material a day; hear 400MB a day, and see one MB of information every second. In a decade's time a typical phone will have enough storage capacity to be able to video its user's entire life... such "life recorders" will be used for everything from security to settling accident claims with insurance firms.

Then in Tracking your every move, the Economist reports on a new wireless service:

For $10 a month, parents can call up the location of their child's handset from their own mobile phones, or from a PC. The child receives a message saying that the handset's position has been requested, and the parents receive an address, or a marker on a web-based map, giving the child's location.

For an extra $10 per month, they can sign up for Child Zone, a service that, among other things, fires off an alert when a youngster (or, at least, the youngster's handset) strays outside a specified area.

Finally, the New York Times wonders in Open-Source Spying how the US's spy agencies should engage the increasing "information glut":

Intelligence hoarding presented one set of problems, but pouring it into a common ocean, Meyerrose realized soon after moving into his office, is not the answer either. “Intelligence is about looking for needles in haystacks, and we can’t just keep putting more hay on the stack,” he said. What the agencies needed was a way to take the thousands of disparate, unorganized pieces of intel they generate every day and somehow divine which are the most important.

My own response to all this is coming, soon, in book form. I'll be done writing Bit Literacy soon.

The New York Times reports that Microsoft is finally shipping Vista, the new update to Windows.

Various corporate buddies gave quotes at a press conference, including a particularly honest one: “Our people are addicted to Outlook,” said Michael Wolf, chief executive of MTV Networks.

That's great for Microsoft - one analyst comments on improved "lock in" by Vista - but I'm not sure that's great for the people. Who wants to be even more addicted to e-mail?

Read the NYT piece.

See also: Solve your e-mail overload.

The Wall Street Journal has a nice profile of the creator of Flow, an outstanding game that I linked to awhile back in Good Experience Games. It's good because of everything it doesn't do... it's a quiet, subtle experience that invites you in, but doesn't boast or strut with overblown graphics and features.

From the WSJ piece:

What makes flOw addictive is its intuitiveness... [it] eschews navigation menus and how-to-play instructions, instead forcing players right into the action. Adrift in a blue expanse, players meet their unusual avatar: an abstract sea creature with an oversized U-shaped mouth and short tail.

Read the WSJ piece, or play the game.