Paul Kafasis from Rogue Amoeba writes up a nice piece on the costs associated with exhibiting at Macworld.

If you’ve ever wondered how much it would cost for you to put your product in front of tradeshow browsers, this is a good read. It obviously depends on the show, your product, your people, etc, but it’s a nice bit of information. [via df]

We’re currently in the process of translating the online version of Getting Real into other languages. So far there are chapters available in Spanish, Italian, and Russian. German, Croatian, Chinese, and Slovakian are coming soon.

In order to keep the translating process as simple as possible, we’re doing the editing in Writeboard. Writeboard lets us keep track of all the edits, who made them, when they were made, makes it easy to compare versions, and saves us the hassle of emailing files back and forth all the time.

Thanks to all our translators for their help! If you’d like to volunteer to help translate Getting Real into your language, email svn@37signals.com.

Reminder: If you prefer the portability of paper, Getting Real is also available in paperback now ($29 via Lulu).

Maverick Mark says “Why I Don’t Wear a Suit and Can’t Figure Out Why Anyone Does.”

To me this is the key point:

Now I understand some people think wearing a suit provides them with a certain level of stature. It gives them confidence. It helps them feel good about themselves. Well let me be the first to tell you that if you feel like you need a suit to gain that confidence, you got problems. The minute you open your mouth, all those people who might think you have a great suit, forget about the suit and have to deal with the person wearing it.

I’ve actually found that suits can have a negative effect on my perception of some business people—especially salespeople. When you sound sharp you sound sharp no matter what you wear, but when you don’t know what you’re talking about you sound worse with a suit on. It has something to do with expectations. The suit magnifies missed expectations. It’s like wearing a first place medal around your neck before the race and then finishing 7th.

That being said, I don’t have any problems with suits themselves. If you like a suit, wear a suit. I believe you should wear what’s comfortable. Comfort is a huge part of productivity. If you’re comfortable in a suit, wear it proud. If you’re more of a t-shirt and jeans person, go for it.

Of course where you work and what the social/business/industry norms are play a big part in all of this. It’s easy for Mark Cuban to decide he’s not wearing a suit, but I think Mark’s “Someone had once told me that you wear to work what your customers wear to work” point is a good one.

So, what’s your take?

“Empathy suit” simulates the reduced mobility, hearing and sight associated with aging so designers can feel what it’s like

“Goggles reduce vision, and a headset reduces hearing. Heavy gloves simulate the reduced mobility of arthritis. Back, knee and neck braces reduce flexibility, while special shoes make walking painful. Shoulder straps prevent arms from being raised. The result is a full-body prosthetic that ages its wearer 40 years.” [tx JC]

RIcky Gervais explains Spinal Tap's influence on The Office

“The brilliance of the film is that it’s for everyone. It’s universal, it just happens to be guitars. It was the biggest influence on ‘The Office.’ The actual vehicle and the rendering was Spinal Tap all the way…The characters in Spinal Tap and the characters in ‘The Office,’ they have a blind spot. That’s what’s funny about them. You laugh at them because, as a viewer, you see the difference between how they are and how they see themselves. It’s the gap that’s funny.”

Top 100 ad campaigns of the century

Top 5: Volkswagen’s “Think Small”, Coca-Cola’s “The pause that refreshes”, The Marlboro Man, Nike’s “Just do it”, and McDonald’s “You deserve a break today.”

Head of Yahoo Music says subscription models will make DRM irrelevant within 10 years

“Eventually, perhaps in 5 or 10 years, he predicts, all portable players will have wireless broadband capability and will provide direct access, anytime, anywhere, to every song ever released for a low monthly subscription fee. It’s a prediction that has a high probability of realization because such a system is already found in South Korea, where three million subscribers enjoy direct, wireless access to a virtually limitless music catalog for only $5 a month. “

Apple, Amazon, and Blockbuster are hot on Netflix’ trail. Result: The company’s stock price is down more than 12 percent since Jan. 1. Now the company is looking to turn the tide with a plan to deliver movies and television shows via streaming video free to Netflix subscribers (Windows/IE only for now).

Beware of the supposedly seemless installation process though.

First-time users of the service must download a special piece of software, which, if all goes well, also takes only a few seconds. (When a reporter tried the system at home, however, the process stalled because of a mismatch between the version of Microsoft’s antipiracy software expected by the Netflix viewer and the one loaded in the PC, and it took about 15 minutes to fix the problem with the help of a customer-support specialist. A Netflix spokesman said the problem was known, but occurred only rarely.)

Not exactly the sort of thing you want to see in an article on your exciting new product launch. And it’s not the first time the Netflix PR machine has misfired. CEO Reed Hastings had an embarrassing moment during his recent 60 minutes profile when he was unable to find his own company’s support number on his site.

The “60 Minutes” report introduced us to a couple in Northern Maine – Bob and Bobbi Henkel – who are big fans of the service, but who had a few problems along the way with delivery of their discs. They wanted to call to express their frustration, but couldn’t find a phone number for Netflix anywhere on the site.

When correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Hastings about that, he responded, “I’ll show you that here,” and then clicked on the site which was already open on his laptop.

And then he clicked. And clicked again. And again.

He couldn’t find it. “Ah… how do I contact customer service?” he asked, answering his own question by saying “Okay, it’s all by e-mail.”

A support number, 888-Netflix, was added soon after.

We’re happy to announce two new additions to the roster of sites that make up The Deck, our advertising network for creative, web and design professionals. Effective immediately, YayHooray!, the long-standing, always-changing, hard-to-classify web and design community is carrying the Deck feed. Yay! is a product of the crew at skinnyCorp, who you may also know from Threadless, their user-designed tee shirt juggernaut.

The second addition is the site for a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture that looks at the proliferation of a single typeface. Welcome aboard to Gary Hustwit’s eagerly anticipated documentary, Helvetica.

At The Deck, we won’t take an ad unless we have paid for and/or tried the product or service. So, sell us something and we’ll sell you an ad.

Roger Ebert once said, “A movie is not what it is about, but how it is about it.” Riffing off this, Tom Asacker writes, “If your business is struggling with disengaged employees, fickle customers and razor thin margins, it’s because you believe that your brand is what it is about instead of how it is about it.”

The post reminds me of the MacGuffin, a filmmaking concept used frequently by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock’s description of the MacGuffin:

[It’s] the device, the gimmick, if you will, or the papers the spies are after…The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they’re of no importance whatsoever.

In an interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock discussed the importance of keeping the MacGuffin as simple as possible:

When I started working with Ben Hecht on the screenplay for Notorious, we were looking for a MacGuffin, and as always, we proceeded by trial and error, going off in several directions that turned out to be too complex…So we dropped the whole idea in favor of a MacGuffin that was simpler, but concrete and visual: a sample of uranium concealed in a wine bottle.

David Mamet has discussed the power of the MacGuffin too:

The less specific the qualities of the MacGuffin are, the more interested the audience will be…A loose abstraction allows audience members to project their own desires onto an essentially featureless goal.

Update: A couple of commenters mentioned the suitcase in Pulp Fiction as another example. Pulp Fiction co-author Roger Avery said:

Originally the briefcase contained diamonds. But that just seemed too boring and predictable. So it was decided that the contents of the briefcase were never to be seen. This way each audience member would fill in the blank with their own ultimate contents. All you were supposed to know was that it was “so beautiful.” No prop master can come up with something better than each individual’s imagination.

One of the things that got me excited about Apple’s multitouch UI for the iPhone is the potential for “handmade” shortcuts. I’ll call them trails.

I don’t know how this would work, or where/when you’d be able to do it, but let’s suspend those issues for a second and just talk about the potential.

What if I could make shapes or trails on the iPhone screen to visit a web site, sms someone, or speed dial? Here’s the idea:

In otherwords, make the shortcuts mine. I could make a Z trail to call my dad at his office number. Or an O to call my friend Oliver. Or a spiral to load up The New York Times’ web site. Or create parallel lines with two fingers to open up the sms app and start a conversation with David.

Anyway, just an idea. I’ve always thought squiggles or trails or shapes would be a great personal way to create shortcuts. It’s cool to maybe see that potential made possible with the iPhone’s Multitouch technology.