jaacob.com

My favorite from Michael Bierut’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface

10. Because it’s boring.
Tibor Kalman was fascinated with boring typefaces. “No, this one is too clever, this one is too interesting,” he kept saying when showed him the fonts I was proposing for his monograph. Anything but a boring typeface, he felt, got in the way of the ideas. We settled on Trade Gothic.

(Read the rest of the list over at Design Observer.)

• A Google Maps mashup I probably don’t need to know about: Mappy Hour (find the nearest happy hour)
• I really want to try the Glossophobia Sim at Hofstra University—practice public speaking in front of “the rudest audience ever.”
• MobileIris sure sounds nice, but right now I’d settle for my cell just giving me clear calls all the time, ringing everytime someone calls, you know… the basic stuff. (Although the Bluetooth modem did work out nicely at Webvisions when the Convention Center’s internet went down. Average speed, 24k/sec on Cingular EDGE.)
• Sport Beans. Way to find a new niche, Jelly Belly.
• Jayisgames.com—I think I’m the last person to hear about this site.
• To read: Why Beauty is Truth
• The Urban Cactus—holy shit. Although I bet the BoKlok is cheaper.
• Computerized Sewing Machines: I’ve wanted an embroidery machine I could hook up to Illustrator for a few years now, but never had any luck finding the appropriate kit online. Didn’t expect to see a comparison review in Wired!
• Inspired by the story on transparent CEOs, even though I’ve heard the same rhetoric plenty of other places. The Redfin story was a nice example, since real estate is such a black hole of a process to most people. As a small business owner, I know this is one place I need to increase my efforts 100x.
• Shot Spotter—these articles are the reason I read Wired. Triangulate murder scenes based on big brother-esque realtime recordings of the gunshots? Wish I thought of it.
• Remapping / “growing” new senses by plugging them into our existing 5(.5)—fascinating. Seems like just the start though, I wonder what they’ve got that they aren’t showing us.

[index archive for issue]

I’m having trouble seeing the value in Highrise, but maybe I’m just using it “wrong”. I was excited for months prior to launch because I need major help with CRM and tracking business development, but right now my Highrise is basically a glorified email archive that I can segment and group. While the very well-done email parsing stuff is slick, I don’t need another to-do task list, and sending a task via email isn’t near as quick as just adding it to my phone (which syncs with iCal). (Will the email parsing feature move into Basecamp? Pretty please? Messages and To-Dos via email!)

For the $29 a month, I’d rather put that money into a more powerful tool.

Any suggestions or help? Inspiring links on how others are using Highrise to take over the world? Or should I just seriously consider Studiometry? (Or something else?)

no expectations
my predictions were correct
left uninspired

Ok, that’s a bit one-sided and unfair. (Although not off-base.)

• Casual Gaming: Blah. Nothing against Phillip Kerman, he was engaging enough, but the entire topic focused on what he does (to be expected), which was games for MSN Messenger (not what I’m interested in).

• The User is Always Right: Really well executed presentation. Lots of good tips, but mostly just covering the intro level.

• Pescovitz keynote: Totally in awe of the man (Institute for the Future, BoingBoing and Make magazine—applause) but found the keynote lacking in that special boost that makes me want to run out of the convention center and take on the world. Perhaps not the intent, but it felt like it was supposed to be.

• Secrets to Project Management: Entertaining speaker, good slides and the worksheets are much appreciated. I found it hilarious the questions kept coming back to estimating and new business development (since he was talking about proposals/deliverables) but he kept sloughing it off with the vibe that “another department” handles that. Felt like half (at least) the audience was a bit deflated at that point—for a lot of us, we are the business development team. We’re also the designers and the developers and the project managers. Good ideas to incorporate into BePrivy though.

• What Makes Great Indie Media? (roundtable): Interesting enough conversation I guess, but the only thing I took away from it was “the ums are what making you interesting”. Very intro feeling.

• Web App Page Hierarchy: Caught the last 75% of this. Pretty intro stuff but Luke Wroblewski was a great speaker and kept everybody interested. Didn’t really learn anything new, but it was still worth it just to see a different style of presentation.

• Videopodcasting 2.0: Lots of heart and definitely passionate about video and her site, but overall I was pretty disappointed with this one. Way more intro-level than the description said it would be.

• Ask A Ninja keynote: Enjoyed the business talk, spiced with their banter. Was afraid it was going to be the other way around, just a bunch of fluff. (although that would have been entertaining so…)

Overall—the future of the web felt more like intro to the web.

There’s more in-depth reviews of Webvisions07 over at the PDXWI site.

If you’re in the downtown Portland area tonight, stop by ISITE Design, they’re gracious enough to host tonight’s PDXWI meeting where Dietrich Ayala is going to be speaking about Firefox 3. RSVP on Upcoming and come say hi!

UPDATE: Big thank you to ISITE for hosting (Will, you’re a hell of a host), Adam for organizing and stepping into the role of de facto leader and Dietrich for speaking – learned a lot about the inside of Firefox plus how Mozilla works as a company, really interesting stuff.

In an effort to remember and record some of the things I read, especially magazines, I’m going to start posting a series called “Takeout”; blips & links of things that caught my eye.

• Grant Makers: allowing employees the freedom to grant cash gifts to other employees as a reward for a job well done. While the $50 is large enough to make some sort of impact, I wonder if the real reward comes from the recognition that your co-worker appreciated what you did. Do you need to pony up $50 to give “thank you” the same weight?
• Dear Microsoft: Do you really think that we’re all going to drop “widgets” in favor of “gadgets”? When will you realize you’re just confusing your customer base?
• to investigate further: Creative Capital
• to read: Then We Came to the End
• “If you want people to like you, first decide who needs to hate you.” – Dan Heath & Chip Heath (I’m about 3/5th through Made to Stick, great read but all these guest spot articles popping up from them are doing a much better job of getting the point across…)
• Only 21% of professionals always feel that search engines understand their queries. 10% always find exactly what they want on the first attempt … 93% of users tend to search again using a new query with similar meaning at the same search engine rather than switch to a new one. (21% always feel…? These people must be googling gods…)
• inspiration: JDK
• to build me a house, an office, an anything: Tom Kundig (”…renowned for his embrace of inexpensive and reclaimed materials (”dirt cheap!” is a term of endearment)…”)

Unfortunately, Fast Company restricts access to the current month’s content to subscribers or people that purchased the magazine off the newsstand, so these links won’t work unless you meet one of those conditions. When the next issue comes out, all of this content will be open to the public. PITA, I know.

“The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity – it is very much like compound interest. I don’t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.” — Hendrik Bode

(Found on John Maeda’s SIMPLICITY)