Shure: The best?
This Q&A at the Shure site is interesting because the company rep actually backs away from declaring its industry standard microphone “the best.”

Question: I was just wondering, the sm57 seams to be the mic that most artists use for their Guitar Cabinet, but is it really the best mic for that or is it just that it’s been such a classical model so long that they just presume that its the best and therefore use it? I mean the technology must have gone forward since it was first released?

Answer:
There is never a “best” microphone. Is there a “best guitar amp”? Is there a “best guitar”? The selection of a mic, guitar amp, or guitar is subjective. It is what appeals to your ear that is important. Many artists prefer the sound of the SM57 for miking a guitar amp, thus its popularity.

“I mean the technology must have gone forward since it was first released?”
The SM57 has been internally improved in many ways over the years, but the styling has stayed the same because customers like it. Some styles are classics: Marshall amps, Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, Shure SM57 and SM58. Why change if it a model is successful?

Steven Berlin Johnson: Insane, etc.
At author Steven Berlin Johnson’s site, he provides snappy and straightforward summaries for each of his books. The kind of unique p.o.v. stands out from the accurate but dry summaries you usually see.

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture—and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received of all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.

[Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.]

The Chatters
Jacob DeHart (skinnyCorp/Threadless)
Jeffrey Kalmikoff (skinnyCorp/Threadless)
Zach Klein (Connected Ventures/Vimeo)
Jakob Lodwick (Connected Ventures/Vimeo)
Moderated by Matt from 37signals

Continued from Part 1.

Alphabet 26 combines the “best” upper and lowercase letters into an alphabet using only 26 symbols.

The impetus for Alphabet 26 was provided in 1949 as he watched his young son labor over his first reader. As he watched, he made a discovery. His son was able to read the first sentence, “Run Pal,” but stumbled over the second sentence “See him run”. Obviously the boy was confused because the symbol R in the first sentence became a totally different symbol ‘r’ for the same sound in the second sentence. Results: Learning to read is that much more difficult. The act of reading is that much slower…A graphic symbol, or for that matter any trademark worth its salt, to be efficient, should be constant.”

[Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.]

The Chatters
Jacob DeHart (skinnyCorp/Threadless)
Jeffrey Kalmikoff (skinnyCorp/Threadless)
Zach Klein (Connected Ventures/Vimeo)
Jakob Lodwick (Connected Ventures/Vimeo)
(Moderated by Matt from 37signals)

Topics
Our chatters — old friends btw — discuss Threadless, Vimeo, retail stores, video, community, Silicon Valley, YouTube, Yahoo, and a lot more.

From 0 to 60 to World Domination is a lengthy article discussing how Toyota’s success is the result of its unorthodox philosophies about engineering and business. Some excerpts below.

Irei projects are one that will be accomplished no matter what it takes…

Within Toyota, there is a rare and secretive designation for certain development projects known as irei, which is roughly translated as “not ordinary” or “exceptional” and refers to vehicles that the company will spend any amount on and go to almost any lengths to engineer, market and perfect.

Chief engineers go on lengthy expeditions to test designs…

Under its system, an engineer appointed to lead a new project has a huge budget and near absolute authority over the project. Toyota’s chief engineers consider it their responsibility to begin a design (or a redesign) by going out and seeing for themselves — the term within Toyota is genchi genbutsu — what customers want in a car or a truck and how any current versions come up short. This quest can sometimes seem Arthurian, with chief engineers leading lonely and gallant expeditions in an attempt to figure out how to beat the competition. Most extreme, perhaps, was the task Yuji Yokoya set for himself when he was asked to redesign the Sienna minivan. He decided he would drive the Sienna (and other minivans) in every American state, every Canadian province and most of Mexico. Yokoya at one point decided to visit a tiny and remote Canadian town, Rankin Inlet, in Nunavut, near the Arctic Circle. He flew there in a small plane, borrowed a minivan from a Rankin Inlet taxi driver and drove around for a few minutes (there were very few roads). The point of all this to and fro, Jeff Liker says, was to test different vans — on ice, in wind, on highways and city streets — and make Toyota’s superior. Curiously, even when his three-year, 53,000-mile journey was finished, Yokoya could not stop. One person at Toyota told me he bumped into him at a hotel in the middle of Death Valley, Calif., after the new Sienna came out in 2004. Apparently, Yokoya wanted to see how his redesigned van was handling in the desert.

Parts are made just in time via on-site parts suppliers…

There is no real inventory of parts, which is a hallmark of Toyota’s approach. Once a truck chassis begins its run on the factory line, an order goes out to, say, an on-site parts supplier that provides seats for the interior. At Avanzar, an independent company located in a large workroom adjacent to the assembly line, I watched workers build a car seat from scratch. They chose a raw steel frame with springs, put it on their own minifactory assembly line to add padding, then leather, and then they transferred it (via pulley, over a partition wall) to the Tundra assembly line, where it was installed in the truck. If the front seat had not been ordered 85 minutes earlier, it would not exist.

Posterwire.com’s movie poster of the year
The 2nd Annual Posterwire.com Movie Poster of the Year Award

Bill Sullivan photographs
Elevator photos from Bill Sullivan. [via DP]

Ridgid drill

“It lights up when it’s plugged in! And it has a picture of a drill on it so you know which cord to unplug!”

New $1 coins
The Presidential $1 Coin Program: “The United States is honoring our Nation’s presidents by issuing $1 circulating coins featuring their images in the order that they served, beginning with Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison in 2007.” The new coin features edge-incused inscriptions.

Brother, Would You Take a Dollar Coin…Please? talks about previous dollar coins that never quite took off.

Despite the fact that the Susan B. Anthony was minted for three consecutive years (and again in 1999), the coin was, for the most part, regarded as a sad aberration among consumers…

Just a month after the coin’s introduction, the magazine Forbes was already hinting at trouble. From the Aug. 6, 1979, issue:

The public’s vote won’t be in for a while but banks and retailers are showing reservations, presumably because the coin’s size — slightly larger than a quarter — could lead to expensive confusion in handling. One department store cashier in Washington, D.C., where the Susan B. was first circulated, says flatly: “I reject it on the grounds that it is not paper and it’s got an old woman on it.”

Think Small looks at the trend of tiny second homes (500 square feet and under). Less house means less upkeep, energy, and waiting are required.

Minimal square footage means reduced maintenance costs, less upkeep and reduced energy consumption. Prefabricated and pre-built models can require little or no site preparation, which means no anxious weekend drives to the country to make sure construction is moving along. Add to this an element of instant gratification (once the planning stage is over, most houses go up in days, even hours, and many are delivered, turn-key, to the site).

There’s an audio slide show of a some different tiny homes too.

Reminds me of that Geico “Tiny House” commercial.

From the bathroom chalkboard wall at the 37signals/Coudal Partners office (click image for larger view).