Pablo Picasso quotes
“[Work] below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.” [tx Elia]
Hippie capitalism
“Entrepreneurs using capitalism to do good and help others. Here are some cases where capitalism isn’t totally evil and destroying innocent lives while creating vast wealth discrepancies.”
“Church of the Customer” authors on the importance of democratized data
On why YouTube beat Google: “YouTube won because of a vitally important theme: It democratized data. YouTube made user data transparent while Google Video did not. YouTube exposed data like numbers of views, comments, referrers, as well as most popular referrers, most popular videos, most popular channels, etc. That data helps YouTubers gauge their own popularity and allows the larger community to measure relative popularity, too. Google did none of that out the gate. It democratized data using a piecemeal approach, and it didn’t set any standards along the way. YouTube set all of the standards.”
Pinsetter from Coudal
“Spell with buttons. There’s not a whole lot more to explain after that…The 1-inch letter buttons are jet black and every order includes a red heart button too, so you can write I HEART YODA or something.”
Look for more profit sharing deals at sites with user generated content in 2007
“If consumers produce the content, if they are the content, and that content brings in money for aggregating brands, then revenue and profit-sharing is going to be one of 2007’s main themes in the online space. It’s not like brands will have a choice: talented consumers are going to be too sought after to remain satisfied with thank you notes. Get ready for an avalanche of revenue sharing deals, reward schemes and sumptuous gifts aimed at luring creative consumers.”
Every feature is an opportunity to do something wrong
“Apple likely does not pursue minimalist designs for their own sake. Every time a company adds a feature to a product, it adds the opportunity to do it wrong. Zune was an opportunity for Microsoft to look at the subscription model that has bedeviled its PlaysForSure partners and exercise restraint. Instead, it must now deal with the complexity of accounts that it has further complicated with an abstract points system.” [tx DD]
The dawning of the age of iPod
“When one of the designers said that obviously the device should have a power button to turn the unit on and off, [Steve Jobs] simply said no. And that was it. It was a harsh aesthetic edict on a parallel with his famous refusal to include cursor keys on the original Macintosh keyboard. From Jobs’ point of view, all that was needed was forward, back, and pause buttons, arranged around the circumference of the wheel. (After much effort, his team eventually convinced him of the necessity of a fourth button, called Menu, that would move you through the various lists of options.)” [tx Dan]
Iranian typography
“In comparison to Europe and North America calligraphy is a far more popular and practiced form of art in Iran and in most other countries around this area. You can spot at least one piece of calligraphy hung on the walls of most Iranian households. Perhaps these are all reasons why it is not so easy to draw the line where calligraphy ends and typography starts. Some of the masterpieces of Iranian design are often the results of a collaboration between a designer and a calligrapher.”
Book: “Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology”
“Gelernter suggests that the dichotomy between art/beauty and science/technology has led to inadequate academic training of computer-science students. He points out that the greatest minds in science and industry have always pursued beauty. ‘Machine beauty is the driving force behind technology and science,’ he says, and yet ‘beauty bothers us.’ Somehow it’s perceived to be softer and less rigorous to train computer scientists in art, music, architecture, and design. However, Gelernter sees these disciplines as closely aligned with the mathematics and science that are the foundation of technology. Because of this lack of aesthetic education, much user interface has been poorly designed.” [tx Andrew]
Video: Charlie Rose interviews American Apparel founder Dov Charney
The company is able to take a brainstorm for an item and have it in stores a week later.
10 Rules for Building Wealth
“Start early: More than any one stock or mutual fund pick, the age you start investing will determine how much wealth you build…Go heavy on stocks: Subtract your age from 120: That’s the percentage you should have in stocks; the rest should be in bonds.”
Why watches are set to 10:08 in ads
“The form of the hands has a positive effect on the viewer: the short hand pointing at 10 o’clock and the long hand pointing at 8 minutes is reminiscent of a check mark, which commonly means ‘ok’ or ‘fine.’ Some observers further identify this appearance with a smiling face.”