Lone Ranger needs Tonto

By mctootApr 17, 2012
International design maven David Airey asked those who've been/are out on their own to submit FAQ-style answers to questions young designers might have about going it alone. Here's my contribution: Can I do this on my own? Yes. But even a Lone Ranger needs a Tonto. Some people work best in a crowded, noisy sandbox. Others, like me, prefer a room so quiet you can hear the clock ticking. This advice is primarily for the…
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De-Facing Facebook: The coming anti-Social correction.

By DavidApr 07, 2012
Originally posted some time in late 2009. Still think it's going to happen. Guess I'm just a...futurist. - dp (writing 6.30.2011) It's inevitable. And for many, it's going to be painful. I'm talking about what happens when the first wave of Social Networking enthusiasts crashes into the rocks of real.We've already seen the first of its victims. Remember that wack mom who faked her Space and quite possibly led to the suicide of a teenager?…
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People like p z l s.

By DavidApr 05, 2012
Originally posted some time in 2009. Re o t d oo re ak a oin . - dp You see it all over the place, every day. Puzzles. Games. Invitations to engage/enrage/enrapture. Pattern recognition: it's fundamental to our very survival and has been hard wired into our brains since Ogg figured out those things in the dirt pointing in one direction meant there was food on the hoof somewhere over that a way. People really,…
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Siri, can you pass the Turing Test?

By mctootMar 26, 2012
Originally posted some time earlier. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp Has anyone tried to get the iPhone 4S's Voice Assistant Siri to pass the challenge created by Alan Turing? From Wikipedia: "The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of…
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Twitter=Mars, Facebook=Venus

By mctootMar 22, 2012
Originally posted some time earlier. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp Women are different than men. Shocker, I know. But consider the following observation. It proves one of two things: A. That I am a chauvinist ass or B. That while painting with a timezone-wide brush, there's some truth here worth considering. My argument, unsupported by recognized fact or demonstrable metric, is that Twitter is to male communication styles as Facebook is female varieties.…
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Google+?

By mctootMar 12, 2012
Originally posted some time earlier. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp Here's my quick two-minute response to a friend's Google+ query re: Google+: "The thing that intrigues me most about G+ is what you started right here: a conversation with people you've curated into a posse (for whatever reason). A quick scan of this circle shows me only one person I know (hi Brian!) other than you, but because you've vetted this group (and…
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Sharing, not shilling.

By mctootFeb 27, 2012
Originally posted some time earlier. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp I've got a problem. A client is finally waking up to the potential of social media. Hallelujah for that. The problem is, they are rock solid certain that the best way to use it (for them) is as a always-on megaphone for their products and services. The online equivalent of dragging their catalog behind an airplane over a baseball game. To say they…
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me | recommend_Venus

By mctootFeb 19, 2012
cross-posted from my review @ The App Store. I've always disliked Facebook's desktop user experience. It has a baked in lack of intuitive navigation, suffers from seemingly non-sensical design, and is just plain corporate ugly. Oh, and let's not forget about the ads and distracting noise strewn about every page. Taken as a whole, Facebook always felt like the worst of "enterprise quality" design—you know, functional from a software engineering point of view, but sorely…
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Determining the difference

By mctootFeb 15, 2012
Originally posted some time earlier. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp So much of social media is based on tiny, seemingly insignificant nuances between apparently identical entities. That's a long way of saying that sometimes apples vs. apples is actually Golden Delicious vs. Granny Smith. So how's a person to understand the diff between the Facebook/MySpace, Tumblr/Posterous, Wordpress/Movable Types of the social media world? Test drive to see which thrives in your personal socmedia…
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Showroom vs. Barroom.

By DavidFeb 11, 2012
Originally posted some time in 2009. Reposted because this is a personal manifesto that's truer and truer every day. And yes, obnoxious pedants, truer is a word. - dp (writing 6.30.2011) Ah, the good old days. You come up with a product, gloss it up with some graphics, and then pick one of a handful of communications channels and pummel the entire United States until they staggered out like zombies to buy it. Even if…
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Minority > Majority

By mctootFeb 03, 2012
Originally posted some time earlier. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp Without going into horrendously boring detail regarding my personal computing habits, this post requires the following understanding: my very first computer was an 8088 IBM XT clone. Green screen. Dual 5.25 inch floppy drives. And no C: prompt until I "upgraded" the machine to a 20 megabyte Seagate hard drive running MSDOS 2.2 or so. Been there. Booted that. But here's the deal:…
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Facebook status updates.

By DavidJan 26, 2012
Originally posted some time in 2009. Don't Facebook as much, or Twitter. Too dang busy (shoemaker's children, if you know what I mean.) - dp I have a confession to make. I signed up for a Twitter account close to a year ago. Had to. Working in advertising/marketing, especially on the creative side, demands keeping up with all the latest, even if it's dumb, halfbaked, or just plain stupid (think: Jonas Brothers). So I signed…
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Location Based Hominid.

By DavidJan 22, 2012
Originally posted some time in 2009. Recycled for maximum blog churn. - dp There's been a lot of Cable TV babble about cell phones, "location based" services, and the creeping fear of Big Brother knowing where I am, what I'm buying, what I'm watching, what I'm thinking! ARRGGGH! My advice: just relax. And if you're really, really worried, just turn off your phone dipstick! This has been the same fear/pseudo argument of the Luddites since…
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