Digital Culture Studies

• Design Police. I just saw a blink tag working on a livejournal site last week. Proof enough that we need some enforcement around here. If you scroll through the pages (which is a very elegant design feature), page four has some nice “design stolen from” and “idea stolen from” badges.
• MyMap. Data visualization is so beautiful.
• USB desk vacuum. Hilarious and useful.

If Cuteoverload designed games, this would be their game. Philosophical question - when you remove the Chuzzles, are you saving their lives or sending them to their doom? This is the question that pretty much ruined Snood for me.

• School of ‘tall studies’. Really?
• Faces in Places - once you see this site, you start seeing faces everywhere.

• Future Me. While a fun idea, it makes me wonder how many people have the same email account three years in the future. I know the Gmailers are reading that and laughing, but remember when a Hotmail account was cool? a Yahoo account? Here is what my letter to my future self would read: Dear Kristin - stop playing around on the internet and get back to work. I don’t need an email from the future to tell me that! How necessary is this at all - isn’t this what people blog for - to write letters to themselves in the future (and show of pictures of their cat)?

Many years ago I saw a hilarious comic whose name escapes me, and who my Google-Fu cannot locate, but who made laugh with one line: I am a writer. [sotto voce] I write checks. Mostly fiction.

Twenty years ago, being a ‘writer’ meant publishing - being a professional writer meant sending your work to a magazine, a journal, or a book publisher, having it accepted, seeing it in print, often months after you wrote it. Sometimes years. Or it meant you were that annoying guy that ate all the brie at every party and went on and on an on about your one unpublished but brilliant novel. But one of the things I love so much about the internet is how it makes everyone with a point of view a writer. Even me! Maybe not a good writer, but a published one.

What is even more astonishing to me is how fast the culture has changed to accommodate this shift in communication. In 1995, when I read Carolyn’s online diary, I can remember thinking to myself how big this was going to be - how monumentally huge it would be if everyone had a platform for personal expression. And then they did, and that is a story for another day, the history of online diaries, but she was the first, and I think what she did in publishing her diary online opened the floodgates for the vast scope of personal expression we see today.

One of my favourite categories in that vast scope is what I call in my bookmarks and de.licio.us account “Amateur Experts”.

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I just got a new computer, an early birthday present, to replace my old desktop, itself a birthday present, albeit seven years ago. Seven years! But it was a Hewlett Packard, and they aren’t known for being particularly upgradeable, and it was time. My new box is a big monster, with an nicely integrated media centre, a DVD burner, and enough memory to make my own movies, should I want to. Which I might, given how small and portable digital cameras have become.

I am not particularly brand consistent when it comes to electronics - I buy what works for me, which is why I am a PC user with an Ipod, and why my monitor is made by a different company than my computer. What I do know, though, is that I don’t think I will buy another HP product. And here is why - HP’s new cameras, with a ’slimming’ feature. (found via Bitch, PhD)

First of all, hello - isn’t that what Photoshop is for? :)

But more seriously, I have some issues with this, starting with the fact that the female model used to demonstrate the product is already a slim and healthy size. When I see gadgets, I always wonder who they are being designed for. This past week, I was fortunate to be able to hear Brenda Laurel speak about design (off topic, but do read her rant, Saving It For Good, which is inspiring me to one day work up the courage to serve a meal on my grandmother’s china, which I inherited and that I am too afraid to use). Something that really jumped out at me was what she had to say about getting to know who you were designing for - not what you think you know, not the stereotype about soccer moms and skater bois, but about who the people who are going to use your design really are, what they need, and what they want.

I had started writing this post before I saw Ms. Laurel speak, and was already less than impressed with HP’s new product, but now - now, I am nearly speechless. And I wonder … who, exactly, did HP design this camera for? This camera, that screws up the perspective of one’s photos for the opportunity to stretch subjects vertically in a vain attempt to make them thinner. Who did they think the target market was?
As for Photoshop, if you, like me, spend a lot of time watching it load, you probably know who Seetharaman Narayanan is - his is one of the names credited on the openin screen. But did you know there is a Flickr fan club devoted to him? (Link via Unbeige). I love the internet.

Hmmm……don’t these remind you an awful lot of the original ugly dolls?

At least once a week we end up in a bookstore. I don’t know exactly how it happens, but I do know that being married to someone that reads …. really reads, not just the latest James Patterson and Star Magazine….is, in the immortal words of Thakeray, totally awesome.

Stop writing about books! This is a technology blog! But design fascinates me, and to illustrate something I see far too often online, I want to show you some offline examples.

Take this book:

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