We hold on to stuff we don’t need anymore—in language, design, our closets, and culture at large—because it makes us comfy.

Consider the “remote”.

We still call our—um, control sticks?—”remotes”, because when they were introduced, it was novel to control anything remotely. That was the defining feature. Now it’s a shade anachronistic—where else am I going to change channels from? Go right up there & press the buttons on the side?

This term will probably persist until we use voice & gesture alone to control our devices. Which may not even be ”devices” by then, but ambient technology.

I’ve been known to call my iPhone a “walkman” on occasion. Because you can, you know, walk around with it on.

Skeumorphic language: mental comfort food.

The latest Wired (not online yet, sors!) has a rant against skeumorphs in UI design: those throwback nods to analogue objects like leather address books, rotary phones, and flipping pages.

The ostensible rationale for making new things look like familiar things is that the familiarity will give users a confidence boost that will help them learn the interface. This may have been particularly salient for Apple’s early OSX and now its iOS aesthetics, to welcome users switching platforms.

Not really sure I understand why mags that do digital issues that mimic paper copies with the pages turning, sounds, etc.

January 24, 2012 1:20 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@ianmcc

Ian McCausland

The rally against skeumorphism contends that they patronize us with “horrific, dishonest, childish” sentimentality, and indeed stands in the way of innovation. Clive Thompson posits such in his Wired piece:

When we get to the last week of February, open your Google Calendar and choose the Month view. You’ll see the previous three weeks greyed out. Only the next few days will be “active”. If you’ve want to see what you’ve got lanned for more than the next couple of days, you have to flip forward to March.

Now ask yourself: Why does Google Calendar—and nearly every other digital calendar—work that way? It’s a strange waste of space, forcing you to look at three weeks of the past. Those weeks are mostly irrelevant now. A digital calender could be much more clever: It could reformat on the fly, putting the current week at the top of the screen, so you can always see the next three weeks at a glance.
—Clive Thomspon, “Out With The Old”, Wired Feb 2012 

I see the problem. Modernism—”the rejection of tradition’s reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms”—despises this kind of saccarine fake columns-and-woodgrain atavism.

But in an age of incessant, frantic cultural change and the treadmill of a learning curve that goes with it, maybe we long for the past a little bit. Skeumorphs & skeumorphic language are a bite of comfort food for the overteched soul.

I totally still say I’m “taping” a “show”.

Apple has been trying to address the ongoing Foxconn suicides with increased transparency. Articles are simultaneously appearing that attempt to explain the migration of manufacturing jobs as being rooted less in wages (and the accompanying “cheap” products that go with low cost labour) and more in government regulations that facilitate the industry.

Here’s some of what’s being said.

• 1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?

• Foxconn Is Still a Hard Place to Work

• This American Life Podcast: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory [performance adapted from "The Agony & the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" and investigative report]

• Apple Sheds (Some) Light On Suppliers & Their Working Conditions

• Steve Jobs Freaked Out A Month Before First iPhone Was Released And Demanded A New Screen

• Apple, America & a Squeezed Middle Class: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

• America’s Dirty War Against Manufacturing

• In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

• Introducing the iFactory (How Apple can fix Foxconn)

I have an iPhone, among other Apple products. I’d pay more for the next one so that people don’t have to be woken up in the middle of the night, given a cup of tea, and sent to work on an assembly line. Or maybe Apple—who made $400,000 in profit per employee last year—could kick in a little.

@miguelcarrasco @darrenosadchuk How do we create demand for socially just production if we don't talk about about bad conditions?

January 11, 2012 10:08 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

It’s been damn cold on the prairies lately. Bloggers like Schmutzie & Alyson have written with dismay and defiance about it. #stayinside trended in Winnipeg.

Here’s my contribution to dealing with January—a photo series that’s been forming around smokestacks in the industrial parts of Winnipeg. When you wake up in the morning, you can tell how severe the cold is going to be by the way steam and smoke hang in the air. It’s terrible and beautiful.

Spotted in various locations outside the Walmart in St. Vital.

If you’re a gentle-hearted parent who spots the bear & thinks it’s lost—I know I get stressed about every sodden unclaimed mitten I see lying limp & alone in the snow—you feel pretty dumb when you read the sign.

If you’ve got a child with you & they discover it, you’re stuck explaining why you’re too mean to return a seemingly-wayward teddy to a calculating portrait studio for 10% off your family package or whatever.

Dislike.

All fired up by the SOPA drama yesterday, this piece of direct mail from ING Direct had my eyes saucerous with outrage. How could ING use the famous “Keep Calm & Carry On” slogan? Doesn’t somebody own that?

They do & they don’t, turns out.

A quick visit to Wikipedia—good thing the blackout’s over—revealed that Keep Calm was designed by the British Ministry of Information in 1939 as a propaganda poster intended to reassure the public in the event of war.

50 years later the Crown Copyright expired and the iconic (who knew?) poster passed into the public domain. It resurface in 2000 & has been widely t-shirtified since.

Just how did this iconic design bubble back into the stream of consciousness, & who’s profiting from it?

Well, here’s the story.

In 1997 Dr. Bex Lewis, taken with a youthful visit to a museum’s propaganda collection, wrote an authoritative dissertation on the poster. This research is oft-copied but rarely cited (boo).

In 2000, Barter Books in England reprinted it from a rare original they discovered, and it sold merrily.

In 2006 a one Mark Coop bought the domain KeepCalmAndCarryOn.com, whereupon he sold many a calming product. (Snarky design aside: There’s also a Canadian version of the site that may also be his; I can’t tell, but the difference in design between the 2 will put you in mind of the now-defunct Canadian Zappos). (Suspicious copyright-crazed aside: doesn’t the Thoughtful Gardener brand on Coop’s site look an awful lot like Kal Barteski’s You Are Awesome posters? I hope it’s a coincidence; Kal’s no stranger to being ripped off).

Anyhoodle, around the same time San Francisco designer Victoria Smith put Keep Calm silkscreened posters on Etsy, which is where I naively thought they were born.

Last year, Cooper snatched up the copyright and has been enforcing it. British history lovers & eBay knockoff peddlers alike are incensed.

So where does that leave ING Direct?

At first, thinking the design was a 6-year-old inside Etsy joke, I wasn’t sure who’d be the audience for this “played out” slogan.

Now with an understanding of the history, I appreciate what ING’s doing in terms of assuring investors that saving still makes sense, even at the low interest rates the bank is giving. It works because it makes you feel mildly foolish for doubting the banks. The message is “be resolute & continue sending in your money.”

In fact, the New York Times suggests the recessions of the late 2000′s were probably what made Keep Calm resonate.

The banking crisis brought a wave of orders from people working for American financial firms (and, more recently, advertising agencies). In fact, the travails of the global economy seem to have given the slogan fresh relevance to many.
—Remixed Messages, New York Times 

So ING’s message is one that financial planners worldwide embrace. It’s a chipper little piece of well-placed propaganda in a bleak financial winter.

January 18th (#J18) is a day of global blackouts for many websites in protest of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act (& PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act). Participating sites include Reddit & Wikipedia, and many people are avoiding social networks or taking down their own blogs in solidarity.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo called the protest “foolish”.

That’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish,
—Twitter CEO Dick Costolo

The protest goes beyond symbolism when big guns like Wikipedia participate, and in a very real sense it has many appropriately chilling effects:

• Demonstrates what the web would be like without your favourite websites
• Highlights the disruption in communication when decisions to block content are made unilaterally or arbitrarily
• Makes clear that the web is global & that legislation issues in one country affect everyone
• Brings the issue outside of the tech & media world by affecting widespread users in many countries

Do you feel informed enough to protest? Here’s a technical breakdown of the proposed laws, one perspective on why Canadians should care, what the tech-forward White House thinks about the legislation, and why Pirate Bay aren’t worried about their business model.

Social media folks are saying that Facebook’s news feed favours everything but brand page content, and even suggesting that brands bump up the prominence of staff’s personal profiles through subscribers.

Does it make sense that Facebook would deprecate page updates, when surely the bulk of these brands are, have been or potentially will be advertisers on the platform? The argument I could see for that is that people prefer updates from their friends over brands, but since when does Facebook favour usability over dollars?

If that’s the way things are gonna be, Facebook needs to throw page admins a fan engagement bone. One almost universal wish in the hearts of social media managers is the ability to tag fans in our status updates. We obsess over it.

@ericaglasier Looks like this nonprofit is able to tag likers in their status updates https://t.co/CwsmfnfH

January 9, 2012 10:19 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mikeduerksen

Mike Duerksen

@mikeduerksen I wonder if those 2 guys are admins (being founders).

January 10, 2012 7:43 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

@EricaGlasier Probably, but can you tag admins? I can't.

January 10, 2012 8:10 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mikeduerksen

Mike Duerksen

Days elapse…

@mikeduerksen Finally figured this out, because it was bugging me: the founders they tag in the update are Pages, not profiles.

January 16, 2012 8:27 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

Facebook did start allowing brands to tag people in comments when those users were already on the thread, but those people were notified of comments anyway. Small victory. Brands can also tag other brands (useful in the case of a nonprofit with corporate donors), but individuals would get a big charge out of being singled out, IMO, and benefit practically from potential new followers & rise in “influence”.

Facebook, show brand pages some love. Let us tag people. We promise not to abuse it & treat it like the privileged permission marketing it is!

@EricaGlasier @mikeduerksen *you* would, but think of all the assholes out there: Thanks for liking us-enter our contest, |Erica Glasier| !

January 3, 2012 11:33 pm via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@pensato

David Pensato ★

@pensato @EricaGlasier It'd be a GREAT tool to thank donors, volunteers, people doing something nice for your nonprofit.

January 3, 2012 11:33 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mikeduerksen

Mike Duerksen

@pensato @mikeduerksen We'd use it to thank donors, volunteers etc. To shout them out, not spam!

January 3, 2012 11:30 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

The social web thrives on reciprocation & building other people’s social capital. Twitter bakes in the ability for brands to shine attention on their fans. Facebook, as a larger platform, needs to catch up. Fingers crossed this is in the works.

At a recent blogging roundtable—doesn’t that sound like we should be wearing gorgets & brandishing lances?—one of Kenton Larson‘s Cre Comm kids asked:

“Do you ever just want to take down your blog?”

Yes, sweet innocent. Like, every other day.

If you write a lot, you produce some mighty cringe-worthy stuff from time to time. You put opinions out there that people don’t agree with. You get caught with your fact-checking pants down. You typo. You get hysterical. You get googled.

But despite the blogging ups and downs that frankly had me almost in tears last night—my blog is so ugly/my focus is misplaced/if I start another blog, should I retire this one?/how do you even do that?—I’m astonished to find that I’m shortlisted in not one but t̶w̶o̶ [THREE!] categories in the Canadian Weblog Awards!

I somehow write one the 5 least-sucky blogs in Canada about Careers & Business, and it is one of the top 5 least-suckily written! 

Thanks, CWAs, for this vote of confidence in a time of great blogular turmoil. I really needed your juried, text-based hug.

[EDIT: See? SEE?! I got the info wrong in a post about getting the info wrong! I'm also on the shortlist for 'Best Weblog about Science, Technology & the Internet'. Thanks, jurors. I will endeavour to blow your socks off in the next few weeks of judging.]

The lovely folks at Probe Research sent me a survey they’ve prepared for the Canadian Marketing Association on QR code usage in Manitoba. Here’s the results (sample size: 1000 adults).

Awareness of QR codes

More than half of the adult population (53%) has seen a QR code somewhere in the past month. Those who tend to be more familiar with these codes include:

• Urban dwellers (57% Winnipeg residents, versus 47% of those outside Winnipeg)
• Younger Manitobans aged 18-34 years (69%, compared to 58% among those aged 35-54 years and 33% of those aged 55 years and over)
• Those earning higher household incomes (66% of those earning more than $100,000/year)
• University and college graduates (62%)

How many people have actually scanned a code?

Only 14% of those who recalled seeing a QR code say that they have actually scanned a code with their smartphones.

Younger Manitobans (22% of those aged 18-34 years, compared to 6% of those aged 55 years and over) & men (20%, versus 8% of women) were more likely to have scanned these codes at some point.

14% of the 53% who can recognize a code is 7.42% of the general population who’re likely to scan your ad in Manitoba.

This is fairly close to the number of Manitobans on Twitter but less than a 1/3 of the number with smartphones, so I think we’re seeing a certain niche the format works for—youngish, affluent, educated guys.

Big day for prairie skies & industrial smokestacks!

Just did an interview with @MetroWinnipeg & wasn't as terrified as usual! I hardly threw up at all.

January 4, 2012 12:50 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

The Metro ran a great piece by reporter Shane Gibson about my Winnipeg photoblog, Winnipeg is Beautiful, and Ace Burpee mentioned it on his morning show.

Like. http://t.co/faUdQsRD @EricaGlasier

January 5, 2012 9:30 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@AceBurpeeShow

The Ace Burpee Show

It was the most popular story on the Metro’s site, submissions went up 4600% and we had around 1200 page views since this morning. Thank you, media!

So, Erica, why did you start a Winnipeg photoblog?

I was inspired to start the blog by Instagram’s “popular” page. Because Instagram has a global user base, you get these fascinating little glimpses into daily life around the world.

I thought it would be worthwhile for us to share Winnipeg with each other like that. If you have stereotypes about different neighbourhoods, maybe they’ll be demystified a little by a guided tour from the people who love them.

The more we get to know each other’s spaces, and by extension know each other, the easier it is to think of yourself as part of a collective and to care what happens here.