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Paul is right. And: I will endeavour to remember his point about holding off talking about jobs (or yourself) as long as possible. I keep working on this stuff, because it's important and makes the world easier, so often. Listening first is always a good start.
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"…after spending this weekend fighting Resident Evil 5's grabasstical interface I am somewhat persuaded that there's a real divide when it comes to eastern and western design sensibilities, and this divide has everything to do with the design-centric and productivity-centric tendencies of North American tech culture." Which is an interesting way of looking at it; I'm going to hold my thoughts until Iroquois has written more on this. Manveer Heir (of Raven Software) leaves an interesting comment on the post.
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"Playdar is a music content resolver service – run it on every computer you use, and you'll be able to listen to all the songs you would otherwise be able to find manually by searching though all your computers, hard disks, online services, and friends' music collections." Feels a lot like Audioscrobbler did when that first launched; it'll be interesting to see what user-friendly services get wrapped around it.
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"The PushButton Engine is an open-source game engine and framework that's designed for a new generation of games. This game engine helps you spend less time with code conventions and more time designing fun experiences." Flash and Box2D from the looks of things. This could be really, really interesting.
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"…these ideas have been massively influenced by friends working in game design, agile website design or service design. Narrative media is still (outside of gaming) light-years behind the curve compared to the work going on in these disciplines, so a lot of the time I’m trying to act as a translator – taking concepts and ideas from more functional design disciplines into narrative/editorial contexts. When I speak to indies or producers, there’s a set of blogs/presentations that I tend to refer them to, so I thought i’d start by sharing this reading list." This looks like it's going to be an excellent series from Matt Locke.
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Takahashi being wonderfully perceptive and making some interesting observations. Also, describing some lovely design decisions in the beautiful, soothing, and bonkers Noby Noby Boy. I still need a soundtrack CD for that game.
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"Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit! BBC, you just don’t deserve to get your hands on these shows." Yes – whilst we all binged on the Wire when we had it on DVD, that doesn't mean that the "binge" is the correct method of consumption. 60 episodes across 12 weeks? Madness, and I say that as a Wire fan.
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"Which I think meant they were telling me they'd be happy if I pretended to follow them but then used technology to ignore them in favour of other people. What? So not only would they rather I pretended to follow them they wanted to explain to me how this dishonest artifice could easily be achieved." Dave Gorman on a kind of pretend-following, usage patterns of Twitter, and keeping tools useful for yourself (amongst other stuff; this is very good).
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"…I never thought I’d be banned from something for liking it in the wrong way. It’s interesting to discover completely different attitudes to these new ways of interacting online." Yes, I find this a lot; my actions and behaviours are shaped in a particular way, to the point that I've found myself recently (in the case of Twitter) recommending a totally opposite manner of usage to a friend.
MOO, and the re-invention of the calling card
20 September 2006
So I’m only the umpteenth person to say that I’ve just ordered a whole bunch of MOO minicards. Having seen them from some friends already, I can tell you that the quality is great, the size is lovely, and the colour repro is spot on.
What I find really interesting about them, though, is that MOO describe them not as “business cards” but as “calling cards”. I really like that; it’s an important distinction, and a nice reminder of the origins of what we now call business cards. They’re tools of etiquette, ways of seeking permission to see someone and also permission to engage with them. They’re also a signifier; in the old-fashioned usage (seeking permission to see someone) the card with a name on is presented before the card’s owner is even permitted inside the house.
And, as Wikipedia points out, we exchange business cards to swap not only contact details, but business interests. When I look at the cards I have, even though many of them are from friends, it’s still a reminder of what they do rather than who they are. We all have so many ways to contact us now – mobile, email, IM, VOIP, MySpace – that it makes sense to resurrect the idea of cards precisely for personal usage. No business strings attached, no implicit sell; just me, my name, my number.
That’s why I really enjoyed reading the comments on this Techcrunch post about MOO, which Tom linked to.
“Handing out photographs as business cards is confusing, difficult to read and unprofessional,” writes one commenter – but he misses the point, because these aren’t really intended as “professional” tools. The fact they can be used as business cards is, in fact, a nice side effect, and several commenters in that thread point out the value of photographic cards for trade purposes. But really, they’re just ways to remember who people are, and perhaps how to contact them.
I love the revival of a simple, physical identifier in an age when we’re drowning in digital identifiers that we keep losing. I also love that it’s designed for constant, ongoing delight (rather than just an immediate “wow!”). I guess that comes from the certain satisfaction in pulling out a physical thing you’ve had a part in making. Chris remarks that “the best thing is that each picture has memories and stories attached”. He’s spot-on. Every time you give one away, you’re not only giving away an identifier – my name, my number – but also a descriptor – “here is a photograph I like, which I took, which in part describes me through my taste”.
I’m looking forward to receiving my free set, and then I’ll set about getting some more. Demand will no doubt be huge, but I’m sure Stef and the team will cope. More to the point, I can’t wait to see what else MOO are going to do in this field. There’s so much exciting content around the web (besides text), waiting to be dumped out – I commented on the value of hard copy at Reboot in June. As such, surely there’s never been a better time to be in the print business?