Kentucky GRILLED Chicken?

Are you kidding me?

This is Dunkin Donuts all over again

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.

Where I’m Getting My iPhone

If I get an iPhone. Yes, it’s still a question.

Pics of the 5th Avenue/47th Street NYC AT&T store follow below. As you can see, the brand switch (from Cingular) is nearly complete (still some orange, but no more Cingular name or logo), and AT&T is really using the release of iPhone as a vehicle for switching over. There’ve been guys working outside this store for weeks now - shining the brass, taping and untaping glass, setting up displays. These pictures are from yesterday, which is when I first noticed the presence of the AT&T logo instead of the Cingular one. Today, there’s a small iPhone display inside the store. Nothing fancy. Just a poster that says they’re getting it on June 29. It was creepy enough for me to be taking pictures yesterday (a guy on a ladder gave me a really weird look), so I decided to hold off until things are completed and/or I’m standing in a line with blue velvet ropes.

Notice the “display” they had up yesterday. If Steve Jobs saw that he’d have a stroke. Hell, I nearly went insane myself over the hyphen - let alone the capital I, which absolutely kills me every time I see it in newspapers and magazines (can’t they figure out how to begin a sentence without using the word “iPhone”?).

Pics, as usual, taken with my Samsung Trace T-519. Creative Commons “Do whatever the heck you want with them” license applies. My generosity overfloweth.





Bonus pics of my roommate (Gregory Polin) looking like a badass because he’s on IMDB, and me attacking a huge piece of meat because that’s what I do (apparently). It was really awesome (Becco).

Web 2.0 Really Sucks Sometimes

Fellow blogger and Twitterer and leading warrior in the field of blogocombat Steven E. Streight (Vaspers the Grate) has been on a tirade (I use this in a positive sense) lately against the insidious usability errors prevalent in far too many of the sites and web applications that are being called Web 2.0. If you thumb through his Twitter archives (beware: it’s addictive, once you find some folks who actually make quality updates), you’ll see a lot of great insights about what’s missing, what’s broken, and what just sucks.

He has also come up with a list of 20 of the top problems with Web 2.0 and written it up (long-form, like the good ol’ pre-Twitter days) on his blog. Here’s a taste of one of his points, relevant because I tend to talk about Facebook rather often on this site, even though I use it extremely rarely:

(7) insufficient input choices

Example: on Facebook, when you add a Contact or Friend or whatever the hell they call it, a panel appears, asking you "how do you know this person?"

But there possible answers provided are leaning toward casual friendships, school, and romantic entanglements, making it like the MySpace toilet. There is no "met via blogging" or "on another social networking site". So you have to select "met randomly", then a text entry box pops up, so you can explain what you mean.

I’ve run into this issue often as well, and think it’s just plain stupid not to give more choices. It’s trivial coding-wise to add more, and now that the site is open to more than just college students, it’d be nice to have some more “adult” choices.

He calls me out for using the handle Frivmo on Twitter, instead of my real name (Kevin M. Keating because there’s too many wellish-known Kevin Keating’s to fight against in Google - though I’m currently ruling Spock) or company name (Which one? The one that’s just my name that gets used when I do taxes? Frivolous Motion, Deliberate Motion, cakeeating, The Vino Tinto Love Song Band? I admit I haven’t done the best job branding up to this point, because I’m still working out how each of my different businesses/services/portfolios need to interact. I have reserved the Frivmo domain name, which just so happened to be available, even at a time when seemingly every pronounceable 5 and 6 letter “word” has been scooped up for use by some “jumping on the bandwagon” startup, and I do plan on building this brand in one way or another. Just haven’t gotten there yet, unfortunately.), but I’m not sure he’s doing it just as an example of a nickname, or because he really thinks it’s a bad choice. I could see either being true.

In any event, he is right about that point - that companies need to make it easy for users to find them all over the Web - though another of his points (about the failure of many web services to provide short, readable, guessable URLs) gets in the way of that on occasion.

The important thing running through all his points is an assertion that things just need to freakin’ work properly. Not a single request is unreasonable. Not a single point adds cost to a project. These are all things that ought to be a given. The Web has been around over 10 years now - there is no excuse to fail to do these things.

His conclusion is perfect:

All these problems, annoyances, and headaches could be avoided by running user observation tests on 4 to 8 typical users.

Instead, they slap the crappy "Beta" label on it. Beta means screw the users. Beta means mediocre, "don't worry, be crappy" garbage. Beta means they're too lazy, stupid, or cheap to do code testing and usability analysis on their products.

Seriously. If your site works less well than MySpace, you are in really bad shape.

Link, in case you missed it up there.

Remixing Your Own Brand

I’m not sure what the deal is with Technorati’s logo - whether this is something new, something for April Fools Day, or if I’m just way out of the loop - but it seems they have 14 different mastheads that load randomly whenever the page refreshes, each with a different anagram. WTF?, indeed.