inCommunicado - eric eggertson

When’s the last time someone broke into the conversation because they couldn’t wait to tell you about a nondescript product or service that met some of their needs in a generic sort of way?
Unless your friends are broke and have found something free that would normally cost hundreds of dollars, it’s not likely.  People may […]

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The first time I started our Xbox I couldn’t believe the incredibly noisy start-up sound that emanated from the TV speakers.
Obviously, the design team never tried to catch a quick video game at 2 a.m., while everyone else is asleep.
It’s designed to draw attention to the fact that you’re about to play games instead of:

> […]

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Web seer Robert Scoble claims "ugly design" or "anti-marketing design" works well for web sites, because people have become suspicious of sites that look too well put together.  In a lot of ways, he’s right.
Anyone who has been involved in direct marketing can tell you the most effective solicitation pieces aren’t always the fanciest.  They’re […]

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Imagine the surprise of two pilots who, in July 1983, without fuel, successfully brought a Boeing 767 to an emergency landing on an abandoned air force air strip. They found, not an empty runway, but a car race taking place in what was now a raceway.
Imagine the surprise of the pit crews and crowd […]

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We’ve had our new TV for five months now, and when we watch a DVD we still go through a complex procedure that involves changing TV channels, manually flipping through the TV’s menu, and praying that some glitch hasn’t invalidated our cumbersome but effective technique.
The TV comes with an instruction manual and a remote control […]

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  Pretend Passengers    Originally uploaded by hyku.
Josh Hallett blogged about his experience on the public transportation system in his part of Florida.
The fact that taking a few buses for a day merits a detailed examination of the experience says something about our dependence on the car (or SUV, or minivan, […]

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Now here’s something I’d like to see for Canadian companies. Steve Rubel and Shel Holtz mentioned a web site that gives people tips on how to opt out of an IVR phone system and talk to a real person.
A lot of people have gotten into the habit of dialing 0 when they want to bypass […]

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I’ve been blissfully unaware of Newsmap, a web-based tool that presents Google News in a visual way, similar to a tag cloud.
Given that Google is purposefully very text-based and very black-text-on-white-background, the map is an interesting tool.

It assigns greater visual size for news items that are popular in the past day.
Marcos Weskamp, a designer in […]

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Dave Taylor argues in The Intuitive Life Business Blog that writers should be able to impose their formating preferences on the publications they write for. Hah! I wish him well on his campaign.
After the editors get finished forwarding his impassioned pleas to their friends and co-workers, with caustic comments attached, they’ll go for drinks […]

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The lesson to be learned from IABC’s choice of a four word lengthy tag for tracking postings and photos seems to be: if it isn’t simple, it won’t work.
All the tagged items so far on Technorati are from IABC’s own blog. No one else who’s blogging of posting photos about the IABC international conference being […]

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Anyone who has ever tried to get a well-entrenched screw out of wood knows it can be a bitch.  The only screws that don’t seem to strip when under stress are Robertsons.
So when using screws for a new project, my default is always a Robertson screw — the ones with the square hole instead of […]

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