“People wouldn’t think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really are: that you sit around and you drink and you curse and you’re fucking funny, and you have a bad mouth, and you don’t have that high voice all the time.”
Lisa Marie Presley, Rolling Stone [transcript]
It would have been awesome if Michael Jackson had just played himself as related by Lisa Marie on SNL. Also, I’m relieved to learn that the high voice wasn’t permanent.
Michael Jackson’s Design Legacy: Patented Anti-Gravity Shoes
Translation: special loafers fitted with heels that can slot into the stage floor to allow the wearer to lean forward, Smooth Criminal style, at gravity-defying angles. via superamit
When I was a kid, I used to try that move and fall on my face all the time. Grownups and their magic tricks.
“For me, experimentation is not about the technology. In an ever-changing technological landscape, where today’s platforms are not tomorrow’s platforms, the key seems to be that any one of these spaces can use a dose of humanity and art and culture.”
“The most expensive piece of medical equipment, as the saying goes, is a doctor’s pen. And, as a rule, hospital executives don’t own the pen caps. Doctors do.”
Today was the kickoff of custom URLs on Facebook and perhaps the advent of an interesting bout of digital identity crisis for some. For most things online, I’ve always stuck with the handle christmasgorilla—it’s a useful mnemonic for my full name.
But when I went to went to grab my Facebook name, I decided to go against the history of the handle and choose my family name: facebook.com/muscarella. Now I’ll admit that part of that was based on a recent googling showing that I was slipping in the ratings and some sort of need to own my family name space. But it also brought up an interesting thing about digital identity.
Facebook has always shown the full name of it’s users, which has always given status updates on the site a strange kind of gravitas over things like AOL chatrooms or Twitter. Further, the nodes of people in Facebook are usually those that know each other in real life and may be quite unfamiliar with the full extent of each other’s online identities (IM handles, email, twitter, etc). And it seems like I’m not alone in my choice. Most other people I know with extensive online profiles have opted for some variation of their proper name as their Facebook ID.
If Facebook can actually succeed at smudging the line between online identity (Facebook Connect), networks of friends, and other web services, they will have created the worldwide address book of the future. I used to be somewhat skeptical of that until I witnessed my own choices this morning. And that I was able to call someone a few weekends ago from Facebook when I didn’t have their phone number.
“Craftsmanship is, of course, incredibly expensive.
The only way you can afford it is when you are developing software for a mass audience. Sorry, but internal HR applications developed at insurance companies are never going to reach this level of craftsmanship because there simply aren’t enough users to spread the extra cost out.
For a shrink-wrapped software company, though, craftsmanship is precisely what delights users and provides longstanding competitive advantage.”
“I wanted better Gmail ads. I wanted something useful. So I started sending myself e-mails in an attempt to nudge the algorithm toward something I’d want to see. I figured I’d start positive. I sent myself a one-liner: “You are the best!” It generated an ad for a twelve-inch Pez dispenser. Banking on conflict, I replied to myself: “You’re an asshole!” producing an ad for a Hello Kitty bracelet. This made me think Google might actually consider me an asshole. So I apologized to myself in the next reply, which generated an ad for a service to learn French.”
Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee, Zulu
I am now less fond of the letters G, H, and M and more fond of K, P, V, and W.
