Do sales/marketing folks fall into the trap of convention more easily than anyone else?

When you see enough advertisement, you see patterns emerge. Someone does something which is pretty creative in order to help their message, and thus their product, stand out; soon it’s showing up everywhere as others copy it, looking for the same freshness and appeal.

After a while, certain designs or phrases become almost an institution in their own right: “new and improved”, “this weekend only”, “no payments until January 2008”. I don’t really hear these phrases anymore, and almost missed even thinking about what they might mean. For example, I heard the “no payments…” one since I was a kid, when I had no clue what a payment was. So, I didn’t think about it until more recently, when I finally understood what they were trying to tell me (and trying not to tell me, like you still have to pay the interest on those months you aren’t paying, fool). Did the constant repetition make it invisible or did it finally do it’s job and get me to listen? I don’t know. You decide.

I came across this add in a Fry’s sale flyer. I think this marketer fell into the convention trap, and didn’t think of what the term meant in the context of the product. I know I got a bad feeling when I saw the word and the device, only because the word almost always means something bad when paired with it.

This would make an interesting AI problem to get a computer to understand the inappropriateness of this ad.

Filed under: Metathought

Windows Vista License Terms Shocker

Well, I’m shocked, shocked, to learn of this change. Windows had been slated to allow reinstall one time on your hardware. The usual suspects had a field day trashing this. I was pretty bummed myself…

 

But that changed today:

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/11/02/news-revision-to-windows-vista-retail-licensing-terms.aspx

 

They apparently heard the feedback, and are changing the license terms…. MS changing the license terms to suit customer wishes? Now I am convinced they are trying to change their evil ways.

Filed under: Metathought

Handling stress with stuff doesn’t really work

My friend, Andrew Stitt, reflects on dealing with life’s difficulty:

shove it way far down inside as far as it will go and let it come up in the form of fancy red cars and a mustache later in life

I think that about sums up how men handle stress. This is helped by a recent article in the NY Times about men’s chances in life – including good stats.

 

Filed under: Metathought

I like this new DSL speed

Finally some fast DSL to sustain my downloading habit. As you can see, I need this level of capacity, or I can’t get my fix of betaware fast enough. I download these monstrosities regularly, and gettin’ it done in 1/4 to 1/6 the time helps.

 

Plus, the faster line was cheaper. I’m now saving an extra $15 a month. Figures they didn’t tell me about it… I happened upon it looking at hosting options for DigitalCommons.

Filed under: Metathought

Time accounting in the Baha’i Calendar

I’m writing an implementation of System.Globalization.Calendar to account the Baha’i method of tracking time, and it is an interesting challenge. The big question is how to implement accounting for something that isn’t counted. The 4 or 5 days before the last month in the calendar (the remainder of which is filled up with 19 months of 19 days totalling a full solar year) are considered "outside of time" and not part of the calendar. But yet, they are days, and so they are counted as days… I love it when the mystical and the technical collide – the result is philosophy and reality. Construe _that_ as you wish, I’m not implying any specific causality.

 

Another interesting observation is that the first year of the Baha’i calendar, year 1, which started on May 23 1844 CE, is not a full year, since year 2 began on March 21 1845 CE. I wonder what this says about the last year of the calendar… and, when do calendars end?

 

 

Filed under: Metathought

Brain Age

Brain Age is a total rip off of an idea I’ve had for years but just didn’t execute on. Sure the reasons are all there – no time, marketing channel, blah, de blah, de blah.

 

Fact is, I, like most of all ya all, am much more prolific a producer of ideas and less of product. Product requires execution and, more importantly, commitment. Comittment requires discarding other ideas which are relentlessly generated by my non-linear mind through the faculty of my often caffinated brain (is there a difference? Yes, but before you enage me in dialog, please get some background).

 

This is a naturally disturbing thought for the idea-creator. No more ideas while the commitment plays out. How to resolve this? One thought is that it is a discipline of sacrifice (trading the plentiful for the rarified). Another is that this is the reason teams and organisms exist: specialization. A further is that the world is wack, schrewed up, and needs to just take a flying leap since all I want is to generate ideas and get paid for it, yet the opportunities to be a research shmuck while lacking any kind of degree are, within my experience, non-existant.

 

Well, that’s enough thinking for now. Back to execution – it’s what I get paid for.

 

 

Filed under: Metathought

Lawrence Lessig on InfoCard

Wow –

Lawrence Lessig has some unusually strong words of appreciation for an idea to come from Redmond.

Not that he is a MS detractor, but I haven’t really seen someone with such a well established aura of independence loose such encomiums on any idea proceeding from Corporate America, let alone from the MotherShip. Obviously, his independence is quite secure – InfoCard is a great concept, regardless of the progenitor.

Filed under: Metathought

Interview with Tufte

Tufte speaks about his work and his thoughts about the influence it has. I like the part about rethinking the "think about your audience" approach of writing. I’ve always been frustrated on how it limits my creativity and expression. I connect with his feelings here and how he has the experience and wisdom to break out of it, and then continue to empathize as he moderates it by context. I am especially thrilled about the concepts of "innate analytical constructs" much like innate language or ethical constructs in people. Check out Redefining.Us for more of this thinking, or to speak your mind on this topic.

Filed under: Metathought

Connecting the history of the lover of truth (a.k.a the geek)

 

A dear friend of mine from my local community knows I love (first entry, meaning 7) technology, and I suspect it was a motivation to send me the following excellent transcript from dear Mr. Jobs:

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

It finally struck me that today’s "geek" archetype (and Steve is very much one, regardless of what googlefight says) is a modern replica of those people who throughout humanity’s history have blurred the lines between spirit and matter in the quest for truth and beauty… how many of my colleagues, though not half as well-known as Mr. Jobs, could recount a story with startlingly similar features. It is the pleasure of finding the essence of things and using the knowledge of that essence to create and innovate in seemingly unrelated areas – seemingly, but as they share an essence not so – and yet these seekers of truth are satisfied more with the discovery than the outcome… the ancient Greeks, the Chinese scholars and philosophers, the Arabic poets and scientists, the great thinkers of the Renaissance all seem to be cut from the same cloth.

A recent(ish) post from one of my (soon to be) fellow code crafters put it like this.

 

More to say, but time wears on, with deadlines looming…

Filed under: Metathought