Speech as a Second Language

when you say something nice, be prepared to be met with a rainbow of defenses. but remember...

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:15:02 -0400

when you say something nice, be prepared to be met with a rainbow of defenses. but remember it’s a rainbow.
— zefrank (@zefrank) May 14, 2013

NYC bike share! #citibike #bikenyc

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:17:00 -0400

NYC bike share! #citibike #bikenyc

NYC Cyclist Explains Why "Frightening Pedestrians" Is Important

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:44:04 -0400

NYC Cyclist Explains Why "Frightening Pedestrians" Is Important:

One NYC cyclist argues that bikers need to put the fear in pedestrians.

To make the streets safer for bikers, I don’t think the answer is to terrorize pedestrians. However, I agree that many pedestrians are definitely completely oblivious to cyclists — especially walking out from between cars into bike lanes (would you stroll onto a road with cars without looking?) Pedestrians should be aware of where bike lanes are to avoid those collisions.

I haven’t come this close to hitting anyone, but I know the feeling of someone suddenly appearing right in front of you. It’s both terrifying and frustrating.

NYC’s bike share program should bring biking a little closer to front of mind, but being safe is also about being a defensive biker. I try to have a good sense of the roads I ride to minimize surprises or potential danger.

As someone who walks, bikes and has driven in New York City, this tension continues to amaze me. We should all collectively agree that there are ways to share the roads to make it safer and convenient for everyone. We share this city, and shouldn’t try to decide who the streets are for.

Not everyone’s a bad driver, an irresponsible biker, or asshole commuter. Most of us are just trying to get somewhere and trying not to get hurt on the way. The more cognizant the population is about how to navigate the streets, the better it is for all of us.

NYC is a busy place, and it’s a losing battle to fight the momentum of change.

Media Change

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:43:00 -0400

We are more and more likely to turn to the advice of trusted friends in deciding “what to read, watch or listen to” rather than rely on impersonal and arguably more fallible media kingdoms whose power can give a megaphone to someone like, say, Judith Miller.

That’s why Twitter is fun: you’re hearing from a source.

Is there a point, in other words, when large news organizations, whether a national newspaper like the Times or the Journal, or a network like CNN, become synonymous with corporate sclerosis, as well as unsustainable, in the face of more nimble (and potentially more profitable) competitors?

The bigger you are, the further you get from the beat.

"All diagrams are destined for the garbage."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:40:12 -0400

“All diagrams are destined for the garbage.”

- A shorthand for designing UI flows by Ryan of 37signals

"Ultimately though, the world spins on inspiration, not art forms competing against each other."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:20:30 -0400

“Ultimately though, the world spins on inspiration, not art forms competing against each other.”

- Communication And The Artist | Liisten by Tyler Hayes

"For technologists, it’s all about leveling the playing field, and the art world is a very..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:13:20 -0400

““For technologists, it’s all about leveling the playing field, and the art world is a very structured, hierarchical system,” he said. “There is a conflict there, and it’s probably a good bit of the reason why technology entrepreneurs struggle with the art world.””

- Art and Techology - a Clash of Cultures - NYTimes.com

"What exactly are we storing away in the boxes we cart from place to place? Much of what Americans..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:20:15 -0400

“What exactly are we storing away in the boxes we cart from place to place? Much of what Americans consume doesn’t even find its way into boxes or storage spaces, but winds up in the garbage.”

- Living With Less. A Lot Less. - NYTimes.com

"But if you told us you were bad, if you told us you were insecure, if you shared your hopes, dreams..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:40:06 -0400

“But if you told us you were bad, if you told us you were insecure, if you shared your hopes, dreams and desires, and didn’t just give us opacities, then you might have a chance.”

- Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Getting Lucky

"The example of the Nest thermostat invisibly ‘learning’ your habits to control your home temperature..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:29:56 -0400

“The example of the Nest thermostat invisibly ‘learning’ your habits to control your home temperature is a good one. But the Nest has a highly visible interface that reassures you as to its status, tells you when it is learning, and a large dial for adjusting temperature. Beautiful, legible microinteractions. A Nest without these visual and direct manipulation interfaces would be useless, uncanny and frustrating. Nest wants UI.”

- No to NoUI – Timo Arnall

"If you try to hide it, then you’re playing a game of GOTCHA, and you look bad."

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:20:20 -0400

“If you try to hide it, then you’re playing a game of GOTCHA, and you look bad.”

- http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2013/03/12/the-mila-kunis-interview/

Twitter releases a subtle improvement to the user experience

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:47:00 -0500

I wonder if they can calculate how many clicks this will save? From the Twitter blog:

Links: Click a URL in a Tweet to go directly to that website from any timeline and get to content highlighted on Twitter faster. (Previously, when you tapped any part of a Tweet, it would first expand and then a second click was required to get to the website.)

There are some other nice improvements in this release. More details in the full blog post.

"Get to the limit of what’s possible for you, right now. This class of problem is about not being a..."

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:10:41 -0500

“Get to the limit of what’s possible for you, right now. This class of problem is about not being a martyr, but rather being a scrappy cockroach that embraces the constraints and strives to be the most highly adapted creature in your current environment.”

- Is this your best possible work? | Way of the Duck by Buster Benson

"No, somebody came in 30 minutes ago and left money to pay for drinks until it runs out."

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:20:25 -0500

“No, somebody came in 30 minutes ago and left money to pay for drinks until it runs out.”

Will Facebook succeed or fail? Too early to tell.

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 12:40:00 -0500

Quartz put together two analyses discussing both sides of a popular issue: why Facebook will succeed, and why Facebook will fail.

In discussing why Facebook is doomed, the following stood out to me:

Unlike traditional web search, which is something we often do when we’re looking to spend money, time spent on Facebook does not appear to be time when we’re particularly open to advertisers’ messages.

This tries to pin Facebook’s demise by pointing out a fundamental lack of purchase intent from Facebook users. I find this to be shortsighted.

Consider this, from Quartz’s counter-argument in favor of Facebook’s success:

“We made the decision to continue to grow our headcount quickly in 2013, particularly in product development,” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

By investing heavily in “product development.” this means that Facebook is hiring some really creative, smart, talented and ambitious people to come up with news ideas for how we interact with Facebook. All of Facebook’s innovations that seem commonplace now (think of the Activity Stream) are created by people tasked with innovating on the Facebook experience.

I agree with the sentiment that placing an ad in my timeline would be disruptive to my experience of reading friend’s political rants, family photos and wedding announcements. But that’s based on the current model of how Facebook is presented to me. When Facebook launches Feature X — where X is something really cool that alters my perception of how to use the platform — that could change.

Furthermore, peer pressure is a huge motivator for purchase. What better place to put that peer pressure to good use but a place where people share and consume each other’s personal lives en mass? Don’t think adds, think organizational tools:

So the ads Facebook currently runs, and which make up its lackluster revenues, are just a sideshow—a first step into an industry of buying, selling, and planning that only Facebook is currently positioned for.

For me, the counter-argument in favor of Facebook’s success suffered by introducing comparisons to Google+, Google’s widely misunderstood “social” product:

But there’s a good reason why Google, the social network it launched publicly 14 months ago, still trails far behind Facebook. There’s not much you can do on Google that you can’t do on Facebook, and people don’t have much incentive to make the switch.

For better or worse, Google+ is a more complicated product that just a place to post cool links and share photos. Google intends Google+ to act as a kind of underlying, connective tissue that ties all of it’s service together. Google Ads aside, Google Search leverages a huge amount of engineering power to crawl the internet and interpret human search queries to provide results. Google+ is designed to eventually help you find what you want — sometime before you even need it! — based on who you are as a unique user.

This probably sounds totally creep, but Google seems well aware of this, and it’s their burden to get users to buy in without freaking them out.

Comparing Facebook to Google and Google+ suffers because Facebook’s suite of products is different. It’s better to discuss the things like switching costs — how painful it is to stop using one service and move to another — and change in each service’s market share. These are better indicators of how Facebook’s product might convince it’s users to spend money or not.

For now, I’m picking sides because Facebook’s playing a longer game. As Zuckerberg states, money isn’t a priority:

…we aren’t operating to maximize our profits this year.

Instead they’re focusing on what cool things they can do to develop and differentiate their product to get more people on board, spending money.

We just can’t forget that there are a lot of other really smart people trying to do the same thing.

"The most essential service of the next decade will be the one that keeps you the best informed in..."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:18:51 -0500

“The most essential service of the next decade will be the one that keeps you the best informed in the least amount of time. There’s more to life than staring at screens all day.”

- Mike Davidson, VP of design, Twitter, and founder, Newsvine

"She heralded the power of the ‘grey zone’ and suggested we add more commas to our..."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:50:00 -0500

“She heralded the power of the ‘grey zone’ and suggested we add more commas to our identities (‘I am a mother, I am a Christian, I love traveling, etc.’) instead of exclamation marks (‘I am a Christian!’).”

- Elif Şafak, Turkish bestselling author, discussing shifts in how we cooperate and define ourselves

"The Academy is hoping to get interest in the Oscars from young viewers who may be going to bed soon..."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:54:00 -0500

“The Academy is hoping to get interest in the Oscars from young viewers who may be going to bed soon afterward, trying to indoctrinate a new generation.”

- “Animation Basks in Oscar Spotlight” - NYTimes.com

Nordstom exec implicated in shocking game of all-adult tag. As of now, no impact on share prices....

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 08:30:00 -0500

Nordstom exec implicated in shocking game of all-adult tag. As of now, no impact on share prices. nym.ag/WBwwEw

January 30, 2013

This is such a fun idea: playing a game of tag on the scale of an international man hunt!

How much would you pay to back up your memories at full-size?

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:50:15 -0500

I just received an email from the Google+ team with news about the latest Google+ application for Android, and there’s a subtle business model buried in there.

Google+ has an awesome feature called Instant Upload that — as you can see explained in the email above — automatically backs up your photos to the web (and keeps them private).

Before the update, the Google+ app would automatically scale your photos down when uploading if they were above a certain size. While most people won’t nocitice a difference — the max size before was a generous 2048x2048 pixels — I would expect that there are a few die-hards that will appreciate the new feature.

it’s generous for Google to now automatically back-up user’s photos at full resolution for free, but it’s also strategic. As a Google user, you get few gigabytes of Google Drive space for free that’s shared across all of your Google products (Gmail, Picasa, etc.). The few people who take advantage of the full-size upload will use up their 5GB of free storage space, creating justifiable reason to purchase additional Google Drive space to keep using Google’s services.

Overall, it’s a clever approach: offer a useful feature that most people can use for free (full-resolution Instant Upload), but force the power-users to pay a little bit of money to get continued value out of the service.