blog.shrub

Following up on the booking agent and singer, we have the guitar player and entrepreneur.

Jukebox the Ghost’s Tommy Siegel and Citizen Agency’s Chris Messina:

Apparently they have a triplet, Josh Roth.

Your generation had John Kennedy and Pierre Trudeau. My generation has checked out of politics for the longest time. We’re jaded. We’re cynical. We’re tired of spin and sound bites, tired of talking points, tired of being talked at.

We want authenticity. We want an end to corruption. We want inspiration.

In 1961, John F Kennedy said we could put a man on the moon in ten years. Look what happened.

In 2001, George W Bush told Americans to go shopping. Look what happened.

We deserve better. We can do better.

Barack Obama is our generation’s Kennedy or Trudeau, inspiring millions of people to get up and do something. Go look at an Obama office — it’s a hugely diverse group of volunteers — young black
men, twentysomething asian women, 50-something white women, Indians, white kids from the suburbs like me — everyone.

You should be proud to have a child who cares so much — one who’s politically active and not a slacker, stoner, ignorant or a cynic.

Hanlon’s razor tells us that we should “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

I’m still unable to figure which is the case with Facebook’s new promo guidelines. Bad linking policies are nothing new — we’ve seen them from Fast Company, NPR, Starbucks and KPMG.

But these stories are old, man — the most recent is from 2004. Surely an Internet-savvy company like Facebook would know better, right?

Wrong.

According to Facebook, it’s okay to say “Check out the Company X Page on Facebook,” but you MAY NOT (capitals theirs) say “Check out the Company X Facebook Page.”

What, pray tell, is the difference? How does the latter “imply partnership, endorsement or sponsorship”?

Sigh.

In English, when reading numbers out loud, one often “chunks” the numbers into smaller groups. For example, when reading the phone number “555-1212,” one would say “five five five, one two one two,” not “five hundred fifty-five, one thousand two hundred and twelve.”

Similarly, one would call Interstate 280 “interstate two eighty,” not “interstate two hundred and eighty.”

Toyota’s Prius GPS does this. It’s an example of good design — speak the language your customers speak.

However, this falls apart when you switch the Prius over to French. Exit 420 becomes exit quatre (4) vingt (20). The problem? In most parts of the French-speaking world, 80 is also pronounced “quatre vingts” (”four twenties”).

In this case, you have to listen to your GPS and read the screen to be sure you take the right exit.

Apparently some people just don’t read the news. Remember, kids: don’t mess with a marine:

A boy in his mid-teens learned Wednesday afternoon that it is not a good idea to try to rob a former U.S. Marine at knifepoint, even if the former Marine is 84 years old, police said today.
…
The man then put his bags on the ground and told the boy that if he stepped closer he would be sorry. When the boy stepped closer, the man kicked him in the groin, knocking him to the sidewalk, Bair said. The ex-Marine picked up his grocery bags and walked home, leaving the boy doubled over, Bair said.

I love that my airline has a sense of humour:

It’s great that JetBlue lets its people speak in a human voice.

“No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.”
— Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

Here are the tools I mentioned in my Mac Productivity 101 session at the San Fran MusicTech Summit:

Know your instrument

• Inquisitor: Google inside Safari
• Quicksilver and LaunchBar: application launchers

Collaboration

• SubEthaEdit: collaborative text editor
• Screen Sharing: built in to Mac OS X Leopard
• Address Book: built in to Mac OS X
• Teleport: share one keyboard and mouse between multiple Macs
• Adium: multi-protocol instant messaging

Audiovisual

• Audio Hijack Pro and WireTap Studio: record any audio on your Mac
• VLC and Perian: play pretty much any video

Eliminate Distractions

• Spirited Away: hides unused applications
• Writeroom: full screen text editing

Save Your Ass

• DiskWarrior: recover damaged drives

The slides

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Eyeless Writer called Verizon 56 times to ask two different data pricing questions. 93 percent of reps answered at least one question incorrectly.

If you tell it to, Friendster helpfully reminds you when your friends’ birthdays are coming up. This is handy for calling them, writing them, or leaving them happy birthday comments on their wall Friendster profile.

Look at the email itself:

What’s missing? The birthday itself. Instead of building trust with its members by providing them useful information, Friendster, too is nothing but a click whore.