Why I Don’t Care About A Recession

Subtitled: Why I Should Probably Never Consult On The Economy

So, everyone and her mother is fretting about the American economy lately. It’s of the major issues influencing the Presidential Primaries, and was the main subject of President Bush’s State of the Union earlier this week.

But I guarantee - guarantee - that if you ask people what exactly is wrong with the economy, the median answer will be (verbatim), “It’s bad,” whatever the heck that means.

Well, what does that mean, anyway? Not much. In fact, if you’re like me and actually think about how this (here or not yet here) recession affects you, you’ll see this so-called recession as a positive thing.

Check this out:

• The Fed is lowering interest rates, which means my student loans (all $500 Million of them) are decidedly more manageable. At last, I’m not being screwed into paying more in interest than the actual cost of the loan. Just barely, mind you, but lower interest means I can make a big payment on my loan and not have it all be meaningless. But where am I getting the money to make this big payment at a time when the economy is so “bad?” Well, that’s my next point.
• The government is going to be sending me money. Free money. No strings attached money. Assuming Congress is able to pass an economic stimulus package (which, yes, is a big assumption), most of us will be receiving a substantial check on top of our tax rebates. How substantial? I’ve heard numbers around $500, which isn’t too shabby. That could buy you an iPhone. Or two Zunes. Or three bundles of Rock Band. Or four things that cost $125 each after sales tax. But don’t rush out and spend that money on any of the above (except maybe Rock Band, because it’s amazing, but only one copy and maybe an extra guitar controller if they are ever released). That’s just what they’re expecting you to do. That’s what they want you to do. They who caused this whole mess in the first place. Why in Xenu’s name would you play into their hand? Dumb. Instead, do this: keep the money. Horde as much as you can. Keep your tax rebate, too. And the money your grandmother gives you for your birthday. Put it all in secret locations around your house. Put it in a savings account. Or, take advantage of the low interest rates and use the money to pay down some debts. Whatever you do, don’t encourage businesses and government by giving them the money. That’d just be enormously foolish. Remember: It’s all their fault.
  
• Everything I have any interest in buying still costs the same. I don’t know what other people are buying that is more expensive now. Maybe gas, but if you’re driving a car, I personally blame you for 95.7% of this country’s ills anyway, so I couldn’t care less about your transportation expenses. Apple computers still cost the same, iPods still cost the same, iPhones and the AppleTV are actually cheaper! I don’t usually buy food, so I can’t say anything about those prices, but I can tell you that the Chinese/Mexican restaurant that delivers to my apartment hasn’t raised their prices. And if they did, well, I guess I wouldn’t eat three nights out of the week. Whatever. A sacrifice during wartime for the greater good. Call me a hero. Call me John McCain.
  
• I still have a job. And they still pay me the same amount of money. So, um, some math here - a word problem, in fact: Kevin’s boss pays him $500 a month, and his rent is $125 a month before the recession. Now that there is (allegedly) a recession, he earns and spends exactly the same amount. How little does he care? Please show your work and express your answer to 5 significant figures.
  
• What about those Americans who are out of work, who can’t get hired because the job market is awful? Won’t they be devastated by a slumping economy? Well, yeah, but I have a very simple solution for them: Build up your credit rating by spending every last dime in your possession, and take out a $5,000 loan. Spend $2500 on a new MacBook Pro and a copy of Windows XP, which you’ll install and run using Boot Camp. Spend $100 a month on a Triple Play package (cable, internet, phone). With the remaining cash, buy every single O’Reilly book on Amazon, read them, and learn how to program. If you are artistically inclined, you can instead spend the money on a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3. If you are artistically inclined, but uncharacteristically financially intelligent, then spend the money on the programming books, and pirate a copy of CS3 via BitTorrent. Then call me. I will pay you to do my work. Whoever said nobody is hiring right now obviously only asked Yahoo.
  

See, things aren’t so bad, now are they?

State Of The Union Infographic

The New York Times continues to include amazing infographics along with its online content. This morning, there is a great one - not interactive, like many are - detailing the linguistic content of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses over the last 8 years. It provides an illuminating look at the administration’s perception of the American life and global landscape.

Also interesting is the accompanying graph that plots the percentage of people who “approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job” and “said the country is going in the right direction” since the President took office in 2001. Two guesses which direction the graph is heading, and the first one doesn’t count.

Last year’s look at the State of the Union is here.

iTunes Movie Rentals

Thoughts after my first foray into the world of iTunes Movie Rentals:

• It works really well.
  
• Limited selection (but then, that kind of sums up my feelings about the list of movies I haven’t ever seen - especially when it comes to recent releases. There’s just not a whole lot of great stuff that I haven’t had the pleasure of watching. Disagree? I’d love a list of flicks to prove me wrong!).
  
• Decent price. Cheap enough to cause me not to really think before clicking “Rent.” Good or bad thing? Depends how deep your checking account is.
  
• It is very convenient.
  
• I wish Netflix let me download the movies rather than stream, because it could be cheaper, but I don’t particularly love subscription models (this explains why I left EMusic after about 6 months), so maybe I would still prefer iTunes.
  
• There ought to be a Rent-to-Own service - pay the difference and get the movie for keeps.
• Superbad is better than I gave it credit for when I watched some bootleg copy streaming on some stupid site a few months ago. Still pretty stupid. But better.
  

New Google Reader Favicon

Yes, I am aware this is the nerdiest thing ever.

But it’s cool. And a very nice icon. Bravo, Google Reader team.

And besides, I’m not the only geeky designer to notice this.

William Gibson on Cloverfield

Writer William Gibson on Cloverfield:

I saw Cloverfield last night, and nothing about it bugged me more than those quotes around "Central Park" on the DoD evidence tag that opens the film. It immediately tells us that this film has not been made by native science fiction minds. If Central Park is no longer called Central Park, but is officially referred to as "the area formerly known as 'Central Park'", but the DoD still exists, we know that this is not a *far-future* evidence tag. So if Central Park is now known as "The Killing Fields", or "The Ghastly Black Glass Ocean", then *tell* us. Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing).

I think it’s obvious why the makers of the film did this. Simply put, Cloverfield is not a film made for a science fiction audience. Its audience is the general public ($41 million bucks opening weekend) - people by whom this subtlety is missed, and who benefit from the context provided by the name of a familiar location. While not entirely accurate, this little bit of information immediately says to an audience, “This place you know and which carries strong emotional connotations for you no longer exists,” while “The Killing Fields” just says, “Some place, somewhere on Earth, something bad or weird happened.”

Are the quotes clumsy? Yes. Is the card typographically unconvincing? Certainly. But no more so than *asterisks* around words meant to be emphasized and the use of dumb quotes (which I lovingly call stupid quotes).

MacBook Air Brand Naming

One of my biggest criticisms about the MacBook Air brand naming (as a hypothetical based on rumors - not as a name in and of itself) hinged on the fact that it is bad form to include the word “air” as a non-proper-noun in the slogan, “There’s something in the air.” Apple did this on the banners that adorned Moscone Center, as can be seen here at AppleInsider.

But, somehow proving my point, during Steve Jobs’ keynote (which I just finished watching this morning in podcast form), the slide containing this very quote showed the word “Air” properly capitalized, which is much more appropriate (though still just as nonsensical, if you ask me) from a branding standpoint.

So why would it change? Perhaps a slip up in the initial banner printing that was fixed for the digital keynote. Perhaps the banners were prepared months earlier, before the MacBook Air name had been decided upon, but the concept of wireless and mobile connectivity a sure focus. Perhaps they just thought that capitalizing it would give things away. Who knows? The point is that they fixed it, and my faith in the Apple marketing team is restored.

As a side note, I actually think the name itself is just fine. Better than the new “Skinny” branding used at Starbucks, at least.

8 Ways To Drive A Graphic Designer Mad

Amazingly funny (and tragically true) list that I wish I wrote.

A highlight:

When you have to send a graphic designer a document, make sure it's made with a program from Microsoft Office. PC version if possible. If you have to send pictures, you'll have more success in driving them mad if, instead of just sending a jpeg or a raw camera file, you embed the pictures inside a Microsoft Office document like Word or Powerpoint. Don't forget to lower the resolution to 72 dpi so that they'll have to contact you again for a higher quality version. When you send them the "higher" version, make sure the size is at least 50% smaller.

Check out the whole list. And behave yourself!

Related video. (Inasmuch as it is about torture.)

TV On The Internet Continued

Hulu is decent, but uninspired.

Fancast has a bigger selection (and helps you find whatever they don’t have).

ABC does great streaming HD with a variable bitrate depending on the speed of your network connection and computer performance, and offers full seasons instead of just the most recent episodes (including all three seasons of Lost, with which I have just now become obsessed).

MSNBC did a nice job streaming real-time during the New Hampshire primary, but I can’t seem to find the streaming player on a normal day. Too bad.

NBC Nightly News has a nice new site, but I prefer the podcast.

Ads are more annoying online than on TV, but I don’t mind them unless (as in ABC) I am forced to “click to continue.” This single requirement means that watching a show on ABC.com is far from the leisurely activity it ought to be.

$1.99 for a single episode from the iTunes Store isn’t cheap.

But if I were asked to compare my experience watching Season 1 of Lost (iTunes) to Season 2 (ABC), I would come out on the side of iTunes - even though ABC is completely free, and I think for Season 3 I will drop the cash.

Why?

Well, iTunes is commercial-free (and click-free), for one. Minor, but it means I can actually relax and not have to actively participate with the episode, which, for me, is important since I often have a show playing on one of my monitors as I work in the other.

Secondly - and most importantly - I can take the iTunes episodes wherever I want on my iPhone. No other service lets me do this.

Skipping around is difficult while streaming. If I miss something, going back to it is an exercise in frustration.

With iTunes you get the episodes to keep. Am I going to sit down and watch them again? Maybe not, but other people in my household might. And if friends are over, you can never tell when you might feel like starting a marathon, or watching a funny episode or something. Not a biggie, and I would personally pay up to $0.50 for a single-viewing episode that works like the iTunes Movie Rentals, so long as I am able to transfer it to my phone.

Also, finally, online streaming depends entirely on the reliability of the source, and in my experiment watching Season 2 of Lost this past weekend, at least 3 of the episodes (out of maybe 12) wouldn’t start. I ended up just reading the episode summaries on Wikipedia and moving on, but I seriously considered buying the episodes on iTunes.

Conclusion?

There’s a long way to go. But the future is promising.

iPhone Web Clip Icons

The great Antonio Carusone from AisleOne has published a sweet collection of some iPhone/iPod Touch web clip icons perfect for decorating your now-customizable home screen (1.1.3 update) with nice-looking icons, rather than the miniature versions of the web page, which all tend to look pretty similar. Download the zip file, upload it to a directory, and then use these instructions to set a custom icon for sites for which you don’t have server access.

If you don’t have access to a web server to upload the icons, you can use the ones I have uploaded. Just click here to view a collection of all the icons and the links you’ll want to type in when you set the location (as described on the above link). I’ll be adding some of my own over the next few days/weeks, so check back every now and again to see what’s new.

Ultimately, I’m sure a lot of folks will end up making custom icons for their own sites - eliminating the necessity of this process - especially given how easy it is (Step 1: upload a 60x60 pixel PNG file named “apple-touch-icon.png” to the root directory for your site. Step 2: There is no step 2), but for now, this’ll go a long way toward making things more navigable on your iPhone. Besides, a bit of customizing never hurt anybody.

Apple Takes Over NYTimes Home Page

Awesome Apple ad tonight on the home page of the New York Times site (not sure if this is new). It occupied substantial real-estate under the masthead and down the right side of the page. Starring Justin Long and John Hodgman from the loved/loathed Mac vs. PC commercials, the ad plays with the very architecture and layout of the site. Hodgman climbs up a ladder to append the word “not” at the end of a quote from the Wall Street Journal (“Leopard is better and faster than Vista”).

Totally cool. Completely takes over the site, but does so in such a clever, whimsical manner that keeps it from being annoying. Great way for the Times to put their space to use (and make a nice bit of cash) during a slow news hour on slow news day (Just look at the headlines of the top stories if you doubt this.).

Update: Bob Caswell points out this ad is on the Wall Street Journal, too. Anywhere else?

Random Thoughts About Macworld

Organized by the order in which they popped into my head:

• The MacBook Air looks really awesome. And holy crap it is thin. Fits in a freakin’ envelope? Are you kidding me? Wow. Unlike some others, it doesn’t bother me that the computer is “missing” certain stuff like extra USB or Firewire ports, an optical drive, upgradeable memory and hard drive. Nor am I put off by the inability to change the battery (just like on an iPod or iPhone). Some people are trying to compare this to a MacBook Pro in terms of features and speed and power, and I think this is unfair. The MacBook Air is quite obviously not supposed to be a replacement for the MBP, otherwise they’d stop selling it. The moral here - as it was with iPhone - is that you need to look at it as a device in and of itself. If the features and capabilities don’t match your desired workflow (and fall within your price range) - for many it won’t - then don’t buy it. There is a computer somewhere that will. Get that one.
• I am so encouraged by Apple’s huge push toward wireless connectivity and downloads and the integration and mobility offered by this connectivity. This is the future, and it’s wonderful for Apple to say “Physical media? Meh.” just like they once did with floppy disks.
• Time Capsule, the Airport Extreme slash network backup device that works seamlessly with Leopard’s Time Machine is going to be a lifesaver for families and do even more to promote positive backup behavior than Time Machine did alone. Good stuff.
• Movie Rentals in iTunes - extremely awesome. That they managed to get all the major studios on board is huge. The only problem is that this increases the likelihood that I’ll spend way too much money impulsively renting things like Robo-cop (which is available, by the way). I know I could save money by getting a Netflix subscription and booting my MacBook Pro in Windows to watch the now-unlimited streaming movies, but a huge draw for me is the ability to move the video from device to device and take it on the go. I’ve watched dozens of movies and even more TV shows and video podcasts on the go with my iPhone, and I love the ability to sync back to my laptop, and continue watching where I left off on my gorgeous Apple Cinema Display. Can’t do that with Netflix (unless I rip a physical DVD - which is technically unlawful and more of a hassle than it’s worth for me - with iTunes it’s automatic.)
• New AppleTV stuff looks great, too. Certainly makes the device more usable, and I suspect will go a long way toward increasing sales of both the device and video content.
• The iPhone upgrade is nice. Nothing earth-shattering, but it’s becoming evident how big a deal the SDK will be when it’s released next month. As great as it is already, iPhone is going to get a whole lot more awesome. My only gripe with the update: I actually quite liked the icon for the iTunes Wi-fi store aligned to the right. Immediately after the update, it was on the left, and now all the icons automatically fill in from left to right as you add/remove them from the home screen. Minor. Minor.

Finally, here is a video of me eating my shorts as promised:


What did you think about yesterday’s announcements?

Tasty Del.icio.us Links Of The Day

“Where The Heck Are The Links?” Edition

• Messing up the interface
• Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Best Of
• Flickr: The Ampersandland Pool
• Frogpod Letterpress
• Naming Names - The New York Times
• David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars
• Most Controversial Films of All Time
• Why the iPhone ruled 2007 (and the new iPods didn't)
• A History of an Historical Quirk
• 25 Code Snippets for Web Designers (Part8)
• Annals of Communications: The Search Party
• Angry White Man
• Fine Print
• Russian Museums

What Not To Expect At Macworld 2008

Last year, I wrote up a short list of products that we should not expect to be announced at Macworld, and I was 100% correct. In the spirit of my Nostradamus-like abilities, I’m going to refresh my list for this year’s keynote (9 a.m. PST, today).

Slightly shorter list this year, because the rumors are so insane that it’s really hard to tell just what will be announced, with predictions ranging from an ultraportable MacBook to a tablet to a new iPhone to Apple TV 2.0 to movie rentals in the iTunes Store to new Apple Cinema Displays.

I’ve narrowed it down to two products that will not be announced at Macworld 2008:

iStone



This one is a product that been in development since the early days of Woz-man and Jobs-man and all the other ancestral engineers and developers of Apple that made the company what it is today. iStone is designed to deliver a superb, user-controlled listening experience that is totally wireless and requires no syncing. Simply bang it on things, and you get to hear what you want when you want it. Bang harder to raise the volume. Bang softer to lower it. Designed with social networking in mind, you can use iStone to keep in touch with your friends and family. Sharing music with them is never more than an iStone’s throw away.

Why You Won’t See It At Macworld
Despite eons of user testing and iteration, this is a product that maybe just barely missed its time. That’s what you get for skating so far ahead of the puck, I suppose. Look for this sometime last millennium.

MacBook Flow



The world’s first underwater notebook, MacBook Flow runs the innovative new OSX Leopard Seal operating system to deliver a premium entertainment and productivity experience when you’re in the Deep Blue. Seamless integration with the 100-mile reach of the AirPort Awesome Base Station means you’ll have a great time “surfing” even when you’re hours away from dry land. Totally waterproof, and constructed out of Titanic-grade metal alloys with optional sharkproof chain mail casing for your travels off the coast of Australia.

Why You Won’t See It At Macworld
Shipping delays and high component costs from overseas manufacturers. OSX Leopard delayed by iPhone Shuffle software development. They’re just having a hard time getting the random-dial algorithm perfect.

P.S. Last year I predicted you wouldn’t see an Apple iPatch. Well, I was half right. It isn’t an Apple product, but nonetheless, there is an iPatch, and Guy Wheeler from theiPatch.com reminded me of it in a timely email this morning. Check it out. It doesn’t do what you might think.

MacBook Air? Spare Me.

Macworld begins tomorrow, and the blogosphere is buzzing about the potential contents of Steve Jobs’ keynote, which last year gave us the announcement of iPhone - arguably one of the biggest unveilings in tech in all of 2007.

The big buzz this year is about a product being called MacBook Air, which is allegedly a small, ultraportable laptop, perhaps with WiMax capability and other cool stuff. Support for this rumor has come from all the typical places: spyshots (likely Photoshopped), logs from Adium (likely fake), and, especially, photographs of some of the banners now adorning San Francisco’s Moscone Center that read “2008. There’s something in the air.”

Now, I don’t have any inside information, but I can tell you that the chances this computer (if it exists) will be called MacBook Air are really slim.

My justification for this assertion: the very slogan that people claim supports the name actually totally eliminates it as a possibility, unless Apple’s graphic design people fell asleep and didn’t realize that they were putting the name of a product inside a banner designed to act as a teaser for the product announcements. There is no way this would fly. For branding purposes, this is a total no-no. You can’t use a non-proper-noun (air) to suggest a proper noun (Air). Just wrong. What kind of teaser is that?

Could you imagine such idiocy for any other product? It’s just unbelievably stupid - even if set beautifully in Myriad Pro Light (Myriad being my second-favorite typeface after Helvetica).


Hmm...I wonder what Apple is announcing this year. Maybe something called MacBook iPhone? The banner seems to support this hypothesis, see, because it says iPhone.

We’ll see tomorrow at noon EST. If there is indeed a MacBook Air, I’ll eat my shorts.

And then I’ll buy one.

Real-Time Politics. But Not On The Web?

Maybe I’m looking in all the wrong places, but I’ve yet to find a spot on the web that comes remotely close to the realtime updates and commentary (albeit constantly repeated) on the Presidential primaries and caucuses that can be found on practically every TV network. They’re all running day-long coverage of New Hampshire, with up-to-the-minute information about the race and how the votes are adding up.

Online, everything is minutes - if not hours - behind. Podcasts, newspaper websites, YouTube, blogs...they are all totally time-delayed. Twitter’s a little better, but it is too decentralized, and doesn’t aggregate or elevate based on relevancy. You’re either following someone who is talking about politics, or you’re not. And as much value as there is in giving everyone a voice, for important events the signal to noise ratio can get pretty high, and it becomes tricky to determine authority.

Where’s the magic, internet?

If TV is truly dying, where is the realtime news that’s going to replace it?
Why isn’t there an alternative to owning a television?

UPDATE: MSNBC is offering a live video feed of their broadcast. Anyone else?

C.E.S. Laments

In case you haven’t heard, the Consumer Electronics Show is going down right now in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I couldn’t be less interested.

It’s not because I don’t care about gadgets and HDTVs and all the fancy-schmancy doohickies that are being unveiled. It’s not because Apple isn’t there - really, it’s not. It isn’t even that I’m burned out from the holidays and have too much work to catch up on (which I am, and I do).

The reason is that there’s too much going on for any of it to be important. This is why the announcement of iPhone at last year’s MacWorld (which ran the same week as C.E.S.) overshadowed the entire conference. Zillions of new gadgets and best-ever versions of the same old TVs and mobile phones and media players (now with GPS!) compete for attention, and blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo publish post after post with little more than lists of features, and a couple passing comments on the look of the device being “reviewed.” Even for someone like me, who has a handle on RSS reading, these dozens and dozens of posts cancel each other out. How can you tell what is actually cool, actually worthwhile, actually has a life beyond the 15 seconds of fame and hype that they paid scantily-clad booth babes to create for them?

You can’t - at least not for awhile.

I’ve turned off my Gizmodo and Engadget feeds for the time being. I can’t imagine I will miss anything. Call me next week when they’ve figured out what actually matters.

Matt Ritchel of Bits blog (NYTimes) writes this gem:

Mr. Shapiro said that last year the C.E.A. did a comparison of the media coverage accrued by the iPhone and the entirety of the coverage given to C.E.S. Guess what? All the other gazillion products and companies got more coverage than iPhone and Apple. Take that, Steve Jobs.

No kidding?! You mean the sum of the coverage of an entire industry somehow managed to be larger than the press coverage for a single company and the announcement of a single product?

This kind of thinking (which, to clarify, is not Ritchel’s), is just deadly.

Leaving aside the general absurdity of the statement comparing the publicity for one product to that of thousands, the larger point is this: It’s not how much, but how good.

How many of those thousands of products were on any Best of 2007 lists? How many were sold on Amazon? How many of them can you recall?

Why would it be any different this year?