Facebook’s lawyers: idiots or jackasses?

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.

Lost in translation

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.

You fucked with the wrong marine, part II

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.

Mac Productivity 101

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

Know your instrument

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

Eliminate Distractions

Save Your Ass

The slides

Friendster is a click whore, too

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:
friendster birthday reminder

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.

TiVo needs a migration assistant

When you upgrade your TiVo, you lose everything.

Season passes, wish lists, saved thumb ratings, channel configurations — everything. Yes, you can transfer recordings — but only one at a time. It’s a very slow, very manual process.

What TiVo needs is a migration assistant. When you get a new Mac, the Mac OS X setup assistant automagically copies over your applications, network settings, files, user account, password.

After you’ve migrated everything, you log in to your new Mac, just like it was your old Mac. You don’t notice a difference. Just that it’s faster.