It’s a reality-bending fusion of sketch, art film, computer UI, and video by a Dutch artist, Evelien Lohbeck. Maximize the video and watch it fullscreen – you’ll enjoy.
Two things that come to mind:
One: this creative genius deserves a Mac, not XP.
Two: as I noticed while scanning Evelien’s website, she needs something better than a Hotmail account.
Dear reader (if I may call you that in an avuncular 18th century novelist manner) … This is one of those posts in which I use my blog as both a personal and public record of something I want to remember … using blogging as more of a personal database than a public communique.
While I’m not sure he uses Twitter the way I do – a tool for communication and community, for seeing what’s buzzing and for connecting to like-minded people – it’s an interesting read. If you, like me, don’t post to Twitter solely for the purpose of catching people’s attention and calling them to action (and even if you don’t use Twitter at all) this is useful advice for writing headlines and content that makes a difference.
It’s the UUUS rule. Is your content/headline/post/tweat:
Useful
Urgent
Unique
Specific
That’s a tall order. Millions of blog posts would never be written if all bloggers followed it. And while many don’t – and shouldn’t, as they write specifically about themselves and their families for the benefit of a small group of relatives and friends – many should. It’s something I’ll consider each and every time as I think about posting to Sparkplug 9.
The way you stand out in a non-profit organization isn’t that different from what you do in any group or company. You show up, give more than expected, and try to make other people look good.
Unbelievably true.
90% of success might be showing up, according to some, but it makes a big difference how you how up. Are you just there, or are you really all there? Do you do the minimum, or the maximum that you can contribute? Do you make others look good, or are you just focused on your own goals.
I am so not a Harry Potter fan, but you have to love this quote from the once almost-homeless woman who wrote the books:
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all–in which case, you fail by default.
Alas and alack! What are we social media aficionados to do?
Apparently our passions are curbing our potential – heavy Facebook use translates into a grade level drop at the college level.
We knew that, though. After all, if you’re taking your attention away from your studies, or work, something is going to suffer.
Here’s the best part of the article:
If you use Facebook, you are probably driven by the inane status updates that spew out of your friends across your pages. The joy of a muffin, the pictures of a party where everyone got drunk and dressed up like a slutty leprechaun, and the obligatory question that hopes to solicit a comment because you want to make sure someone in your network is reading your pathetic attempts at making the minutiae of your existence seem interesting. It is the equivalent of Vogon poetry, odes to green putty found in one’s arm putty.
To understand the Vogon poetry bit, you’d have to read some Douglas Adams. But anyone can enjoy the “pathetic attempts at making the minutiae of your existence seem interesting.” Love it!
Well, Billy Bob (it’s difficult to take anyone with who retains that moniker as an adult seriously) had a bit of a trantrum on camera during an interview with Jian Ghomeshi, host of the CBC radio show Q. Ghomeshi mentioned – horror of horrors – that BB had a previous career in acting. BB’s response was to reprise Joaquin Phoenix’s disastrous Letterman appearance, answering “I don’t know” to questions as obvious as how long the band has been together, and going on a long monologue about a toy building magazine he read as a child when asked what his musical preferences were.
Watch the whole trainwreck interview here:
After bad-mouthing Canadian audiences – and just clearly being a petulant jerk during the interview – Billy Bob was booed at his first Canadian show.
Now, he’s pulled out of all the remaining Canadian dates:
Billy Bob Thornton — who hit a sour note during a disastrous CBC radio interview Wednesday — has cancelled his band’s remaining Canadian shows.
Whatever the impact of those shows, and whatever the impact of BB’s performance on Canadian fans and audiences … the bigger impact is probably south of the border, where the YouTube video is also getting major attention. Many of the comments on the Q blog are obviously from Americans. The YouTube video already has almost 1.2 million views.
Way to go, Billy. Life is lived in public these days … and a moment’s bad temper can color people’s impressions of you for a long time.
Most likely you read the title of this and are already thinking: this is not going to end well. Airlines and customer service are like cheese and peanut butter: they don’t go together.
Sadly, you’re right.
Yesterday I was checking in to my Alaskan Air flight (which would be delayed by over 3 hours) when a woman at the check-in counter next to me exploded at the ticket agent. Later she repeated the process at security.
The problem was simple: one of her and her husband’s bags was overweight, and Alaskan was charging her $25 extra. Unfortunately, they informed her at the gate … sending her back out through security to pay at the check-in counter. Even more unfortunately, they had not told her at the gate that she would need to pay more … so she left her purse with her husband at the gate.
So having already gone through security once, she face the prospect of not only going through again to get her purse, but also a third time after coming back and paying the $25.
Naturally, this was a major inconvenience, and made her run a real risk of missing her flight. She crumpled under the pressure, and was not a pleasant woman to deal with for the ticketing agents, I’m sure. (Or for the TSA inspectors, as I saw later in security.) Not cool – understandable, surely, but not the best behavior.
However, consider the airline’s long-term interests here.
They’ve got their cold hard hands on an extra $25 today, but is that woman EVER going to fly Alaskan Air ever again? Not if she has even the slightest sniff of another option. Alaskan better hope that they’re in some kind of monopoly situation in the destinations she needs, because even if she has to pay more, she will actively avoid them in the future. And she will undoubtedly tell her friends, at length and in detail … probably making them slightly less inclined to choose Alaskan as well. Plus, now I’m telling you, and this record will stay in Google’s cache for … forever(ish).
Here’s the deal.
The ticketing agents aren’t bad people. They probably get the fact that asking a client to go through airport security three times is asking a lot. And they probably get the fact that this is perhaps not the best client retention strategy the marketing wonks at Alaskan have ever dreamed up.
But their hands are tied.
Because it’s a company policy, and policies are meant to be enforced across the board. They had no flexibility, no choice in the matter. They were forced to apply it to her.
What’s the better alternative?
Companies should train and trust their employees to do the right thing for the company in the unique circumstances they’re in. Waiving this $25 fee would have paid rich dividends in brand perception, customer loyalty, and eventually profit. It would have treated the customer like anyone working for the airline would like to be treated.
And, it would have not made the Alaskan employees upset with a customer and angry at their own company for forcing them to foolishly enforce this rule. All it takes is a little trust, and a little training, and a little follow-up.
If you can’t trust people to do their jobs, why have them at all?
This is a cross-post from the e-folio that I’ve been maintaining as part of my latest graduate course, ETEC 533, in the Master of Educational Technology program at UBC.
“When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.”
This is particularly relevant to me now, having just participated in a new media round table on journalism, papers, and the web: New Media Round Table.
Can social media do certain kinds of stories – like gang violence in Vancouver, like trials, etc. etc.?
Do traditional media have more protection when investigating things like gangs?
Do traditional media have more access to documents? FOI requests?
Are new media more vulnerable to faux legal attacks? DMCA, for instance. (I’ve been shut down, btw, as has Kris Krug.
How do people generate credibility online? The network self-corrects …
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
I'm a software exec who cares about UX and UI, scours web & social media, lives in Canada, plays hockey, uses a Mac (mostly). Oh, and I blog and speak at conferences.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
