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]

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?

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.

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.

I just registered Writeroom, a great “forced focus” writing tool for the Mac. Writeroom basically hides the rest of the screen so you can focus on the words.

What I wanted to write about was the interesting registration process. Registration processes have always interested me.

When you register Writeroom you get an email.

No serial numbers, no codes, just a file. You can either click the file or just drop it on top of the Writeroom app you’ve already downloaded.

Then you see:

All done. The smoothest way to register a product is by paying for the upgrade inside the product. Aside from that method, which Writeroom and most products don’t offer, this is the smoothest and simplest process I’ve experienced in a long time.

Well done. Just like Writeroom.

There’s an interesting tradeoff presented by the iPhone. While the phone can do more, and it’s interface is fluid, in some ways it widens the gulf between human and computer.

When you touch it it doesn’t touch you back.

That may prove to be a good thing. It may prove that what we think we need we don’t really need. The tradeoffs may payoff. But we’ve certainly lost the tactile feedback humans are used to when dealing with things that are right in front of us. Now the connection is simulated. Rich textures have been replaced with androgynous glass.

How can you dial the iPhone without looking at it? How can you reach in your pocket and press “1” for voicemail? How can you orient yourself with the interface without seeing it? With a traditional phone or device with buttons you can feel your way around it. You can find the bumps, the humps, the cut lines, the shapes, the sizes. You can find your way around in the dark. Not with the iPhone.

I don’t know if this is better or worse. We won’t know until we try it (and oh man I can’t wait to try it). I just think its really interesting. It’s a pretty big deal. The implications are far reaching. The iPhone demands your attention, it forces you to look at it. We’re lucky it’s beautiful.

The consensus is that today Apple is going to announce a phone.

Some are calling it a personal communicator or a convergent device or a pocket computer or a “4th screen.” I’m not so sure.

Apple makes history not by leapfrogging everyone in terms of functionality and bells and whistles, they do it through elegance, simplification, clarity, and practicality.

I see no reason why they won’t follow that strategy with their phone. It will change the game, but not because it does more than everyone else’s phone. I think we’ll see just the opposite.

Apple will execute on the basics beautifully. Just like they did with the original Mac. Just like they did with the iMac. Just like they did with the iPod.

The mobile phone world is littered with crap. The interfaces are tragic. The materials are cheap. The build quality is marginal. And of course the sound sucks.

These are the things people complain about. They don’t complain that they can’t video conference with their friends. They don’t complain that they don’t have advanced voice recognition. They don’t complain that their phone doesn’t open an Excel spreadsheet and sync with Quickbooks. They complain because the sound sucks, the interface is miserable, and the phone is falling apart.

Apple can change this because that’s what Apple does. They can look at the crisis points of a typical experience and erase them one by one. Not by adding a lot of new things things, but by removing the crap and paying attention to the basics.

The basics are the secrets of business. Execute on the basics beautifully and you’ll have a lot of customers knocking at your door. Cool wears off, usefulness never does.

Most people just want things that work well and, unfortunately, the mobile phone business is littered with things that don’t work. That’s Apple’s opportunity. Build something small, light, beautiful, and useful that works and they’ll win.

That’s not to say it won’t have the usual twists and surprises that we’ve come to expect from Apple, but they’ll be modest in implementation and bold in impact. And, like the iPod, it will play especially nice with Macs to start.

I’m so looking forward to 9am PST.

Waiting on hold yesterday after pressing 5 buttons, getting cut off, being misunderstood by the automated “I can speak English but I can’t understand it” attendant, and finally getting the wrong answer reminded me that frustration is exponential.

Someone sent me this quote yesterday:

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
-Charles Eames

I think that’s a great way of putting it. It’s also one of the reasons I like the Patterns series by R.BIRD. In many ways it’s all about the details.

For example, take their latest report, Crunch, where they take a look crunchy things like cereal, crackers, chips, candy bars, etc.

They look at things like packaging texture, windows that reveal the product, illustration, colors, typography, mascots, and more. It’s a dissection of the details that make the design.

Other recent reports include energy drinks, children’s cold medicine, and women’s razors. Good stuff.

Here’s another simple invention: The Hercules Hook. This one is for hanging pictures or other items on drywall. Billy Mays does the hocking.

The hook/hanging business seems primed for a renaissance. 3M’s quickly expanding Command Adhesive line seems to be doing really well too. It’s always cool to see new products address problems that seem like they’ve been solved long ago. It’s a reminder that room for improvement is plentiful.

What’s interesting about the Hercules Hook is that while you still do need to put a hole in the wall, you don’t need any tools anymore. All you need is your hand and a little muscle. So while the end-game remains the same, the effort needed to get there is reduced.

It’s definitely a novel alternate solution to traditional hammer, nail, and hook system. Neat thinking.