Toast is now the hottest thing in product design « Collateral Damage
Why I read Constantine von Hoffman and you should too. This is a masterful treatise on a personally favorite topic — toast.
“It’s true. There’s something about turning things that aren’t toast into toast that seems to appeal to designers right now. A thumb-sucking trend-spotter (GUILTY!) might say this is because toast is warm and comfortable which makes it especially appealing in these unsettled times. However what I really say is pass the marmalade.”
Bullshit. Classic piece of sensationalized make-news on the front page this morning.
Synopsis.: Two bloggers died recently and one had a heart attack due to the always-on nature, every-minute-is-a-deadline world of blogging.
First off, as Dan Warner, the nasty editor in chief of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune told a roomful of rebellious reporters (myself included) in 1984: “You want stress? I’ll show you stress. Go work in air traffic control or be a single mother on food stamps.” (He then turned the room over to a “stress consultant” who told us to close our eyes and relax our muscles beginning at our toes, moving up to the follicles of our hair).
I know and knew two of the bloggers in Richtel’s piece. Om Malik is a good friend to me, but not to the gym. The fact the guy had a heart attack earlier this year is not because he ignored the surgeon general’s warning on the side of his blog: GigaOm. Marc Orchant died in December. I knew Marc from our work with Foldera, the SaaS collaboration play. Did his blog do him in? Did it contribute to his untimely death at 50? Cmon.
And Arrington gains 30 pounds. Welcome to the club. I packed on an extra 25 in the last year myself and it was more due to being a fat ass without a bicycle than anything else.
And so some Gizmodo bloggers fall asleep at their desks. Every afternoon half of America’s office rats nod off in meetings about next month’s meeting about the TPS report meeting after they get around a Bacon Lover’s Triple-Pounder and a supersized fries at lunch.
If the point is that life is one constant deadline, okay, I’ll buy that. But this blog-as-sweatshop meme that has been percolating around the Gawker/Forbes.com world of Manhattan indentured 20-something servitude for the last five years is the same crap fact checkers went through in the magazine world in the 1980s: long hours, party till you drop, and nutrition via ramen.
Does anyone care anymore who got it first?
Monday, 4/7: Cotuit
Tuesday, 4/8: Cotuit to RTO
Wednesday-Thursday 4/9-10: RTP
Friday: Miami-Cotuit (~) not confirmed
Welcome to the first week of a new fiscal year. The Olympic Torch is moving, making its way through the EU this week. Lenovo Olympic Bloggers, 09 media plans, and Social Media Marketing monitoring remain top of mind — pretty much my big three: blogging, advertising and metrics …..
I just came off the water from a perfect early morning row around Grand Island, loafing along at a two-breaths-per-stroke pace on perfectly smooth water. I’m fat, very fat, so the poor shell ran low in the water and wasn’t having an easy time running between strokes, slowing down on the recovery like it was dragging a wet sweatshirt. Still, with no one on the water or shore save the owner of the Cotuit Oyster Company loading his skiff for a morning’s work on the beds and a couple unseen carpenters in the woods putting the final touches on a winter project on a summer house, it was nice to be able to row on flat water with nary a morning motorboat to throw a wake in my path or to feel self-conscious as I sculled under the Osterville draw bridge and past the docks of Crosby’s and Oyster Harbors Marine.
Soon enough, in less than two months, mornings will be a lot less solitary, and I hope to then to be rowing in a thinner condition than I am today.
As I circled Grand Island I thought about some interesting stuff I’ve been reading lately about local native history and the Wampanoag tribe. I didn’t know, until last weekend, that Grand Island (Oyster Harbors) was the primary Wampanoag village in the area, Cotachesset, and was located close to the site of the present Oyster Harbors Club, an exclusive country club/beach club. Lots of questions went through my mind this morning about how the Wampanoag’s (led by Poupmunnuck, from which the modern name Pocknett is derived) moved from island to mainland and whydid they establish the village on an island for protection, and if so, from whom.
Cotachesset & the Oyster Harbors Club
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Whatever, nice row on a grey morning (morning rows are nearly impossible to do during the week due to 7 am China Olympic calls) Now to do some paperwork and get ahead of the week to come.
Corporate employee blogs: Lawsuits waiting to happen? | Tech news blog – CNET News.com
Tip of the hat to Chris Kobran for this del.icio.us link to a recent CNET story about a Cisco patent dude getting sued by some patent attorneys after the Cisco guy uncloaked his anonymous authorship of a personal blog about patent stuff:
“Cisco said it still believes “common sense” should be a guiding force for employees sharing information online, but it also added the following rule to its three-year-old Internet postings policy: “If you comment on any aspect of the company’s business or any policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility for Cisco’s engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that the views are your own and not those of Cisco.”
Seems pretty clear to me what the dominant rule is: blog about whatever you want on your own time, but if you talk about the company you identify yourself as an employee. Sames goes for company related comments on other blogs, editing of corporate, competitor or industry related Wiki entries, forum postings, bathroom graffiti …..
I was twittering with Sam Flemming at CIC (Chinese buzz/WOM monitoring consultancy) a couple weeks ago. He was singing karaoke someplace in China, and posted the tweet that he just sang “Sweet Home Alabama” — which sounded like enough of a cultural disconnect that I had to reply that here in Cotuit, I have heard “Sweet Home Clamabama” sung at drunken boatshop parties. Then John Dodge, former colleague from PC Week, send along this beauty.
The Russian Red Army Men’s Choir doing their best Lynryd cover: with the well coiffed Leningrad Cowboys
IOC Exec Warns China Against Internet Censorship During Olympics – washingtonpost.com
From Staci Kramer at Paidcontent.org:
“With the Beijing Olympics roughly four months away, Kevan Gosper, vice chairman of the IOC coordinating commission, is warning organizers that the internet must be open during the games and that restrictions “would reflect very poorly” on China. AP quotes Gosper about raising the issue during the last official organizing meeting before the Beijing Olympics: “This morning we discussed and insisted again. … Our concern is that the press (should be) able to operate as it has at previous games. … There was some criticism that the Internet closed down during events relating to Tibet in previous weeks.” Gosper added: “I’m satisfied that the Chinese understand the need for this and they will do it.””
I remain optimistic that there will be open access to the critical tools need to enable our Lenovo Olympic Blogger program and that is Google’s Blogger and YouTube platforms, both of which have been particularly problematic from time to time due to the capricious nature of the “connection has been reset” phenomenon known as the Great Firewall. With the IOC permitting athlete blogs during the Games for the first time, there will be a great deal of pressure to maintain an open conduit of internet communications. With the world’s press on the scene as well as hundreds of thousands of spectators from around the world, I don’t see a tightening of access, but a relaxation.
Or at least so I hope. Fallows’ piece in the Atlantic Monthly remains the best FAQ on the situation.
