http://www.kipbot.com/blog apophenic pretentia Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:50:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A friend of mine is plugged into many toy subcultures. This one is the most fascinating, strangest, trippiest and to some plain offensive. It's simulated guns. These are toy guns that shoot air pellets, but are built exactly to the specifications of real guns. Tokyo Marui ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/03/05/strangest-toy-scene-yet/ I love this passage from Hot, Flat, and Crowded and keep forgetting to just post it: The only thing that can stimulate this much innovation in new technologies, and the radical improvement of existing ones is the free market. Only the market can generate and allocate enough capital fast enough and ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/03/05/10000-garages/ After my TEDx Kent talk -- a delightful romp though kipbot's pissiness at how kids today don't respect the amount of craft and expertise needed to do digital -- someone recommended I read Rethinking Expertise, by Harry Collins and Robert Evans. Collins and Evans are sociologists at Cardiff University ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/03/05/beer-mats-hbr-and-a-book-or-two-will-make-you-an-expert/ I have a weird memory from a surfer movie. I can't remember the title, and having never watched surfer movies aside from stopping briefly on the remote in between stops, I have no context for it. (Major exception to the previous sentences: Point Break, which, of course, ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/03/04/interactive-as-olympics-or-chess-advice-for-traditional-agencies-and-other-n00bs/ The celebration of failure has become a tired, counterproductive meme. Sure, the tension involved in celebrating something normally thought to be bad gets your attention. It's also a way to get people out of their comfort zone. So cheers for that. But, really, we actually want ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/03/03/stop-celebrating-failure-find-a-better-word/ B&N's "pick me up" is a great cross-channel integration. I'm using my fantasy baseball drafts as a reason to finally learn a Mac-OSX database program, specifically FileMaker Pro. According to bn.com, "The Missing Manual" for FMP appears to be available at the Park Slope store. I signed ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/02/20/nifty-cross-channel-experience-with-bn/ Mastering the use of jargon increasingly seems to be a key to building strong, creative teams and collaborative environments. In the past, I've spent a great deal of time trying to stamp jargon out of the language of teams I've led. Improperly deployed jargon can often be confusing, ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/02/16/just-the-right-amount-of-jargon/ I'm convinced that there is a condition, that should be in upcoming DSM ;-), of environmentally induced cognitive diminishment. I'm calling it "the Googles" and I believe I suffer from said Googles. I've been thinking about this condition since reading Nicholas Carr's Atlantic article "Is Google Making us ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/02/15/its-official-i-have-the-googles-and-am-starting-treatment/ I don't know if I'm just noticing this or if it's new. But it's kind of weird -- Amazon is touting books that have 'deckle edge'. I originally thought it was an effect of when books needed the pages cut before reading, but it's actually an effect of ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/02/13/whats-up-with-deckle-edge/ Steven Johnson is one of my favorite writers. With the exception of Interface Culture, I would gladly see every one of his books (Everything Bad is Good for You, EMERGENCE, Ghost Map, and even The Invention of Air) be made mandatory reading people in digital design, digital strategy, digital ... http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/02/05/steven-johnson-getting-things-right/