Here’s a look at how four great writers describe an amazing athlete. Note how all three spotlight a single play to explain a larger idea. By zeroing in on a specific moment, they are able to explain to readers what general, big picture platitudes can’t.

Bill Simmons on Allen Iverson
Don’t Question The Answer by EPSN’s Bill Simmons describes a quintessential Allen Iverson encounter.

Once I was sitting midcourt at the Fleet Center when Iverson was whistled for a technical, yelped in disbelief, then followed the referee toward the scorer’s table and screamed, “[Bleep] you!” at the top of his lungs. The official whirled around and pulled his whistle toward his mouth for a second technical.

And I swear on my daughter’s life, the following moment happened: As the official started to blow the whistle, Iverson’s eyes widened and he moved angrily toward the official, almost like someone getting written up for a parking ticket who decides it would just be easier to punch out the meter maid. For a split-second, there was real violence in the air. Of course, the rattled official lowered his whistle and never called the second T. By sheer force of personality, Iverson kept himself in the game.

Look, I’m not condoning what happened. It was a frightening moment. At the same time, I haven’t seen a player bully a referee like that before or since. And that goes back to the “seeing him in person” thing. Iverson plays with a compelling, hostile, bloodthirsty energy that the other players just don’t have. He’s relentless in every sense of the word. He’s a warrior. He’s an alpha dog. He’s a tornado. He’s so fast and coordinated that it genuinely defies description. He’s just crazy enough that officials actually cower in his presence. And none of this makes total sense unless you’ve seen him.

David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer
Federer as Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace, author and tennis player, describes a Roger Federer moment.

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).

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.

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.

Gazprom

Daniel Libeskind’s design for Gazprom City, the future St. Petersburg headquarters for Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Gorillapod

The flexible Gorillapod is a tripod that can attach anywhere.

Acquarium

This crazy home aquarium gives fish somewhere to go.

Pioneer Theatre

Rich Corbridge writes, “The Pioneer Theatre in Salt Lake City provides not only a seating chart of the theater but an interactive ‘here’s what the view would be like from the seat you’ve chosen’ feature — very useful to a customer who has never been there before (follow the ‘Seating Chart’ link in the body of the page).”

Negative savings at Overstock

Josh Posner writes, “I just wanted to share this fantastic deal with you guys over at www.overstock.com. Check it out, you can save -$9 on this smart disk. Got to love it.”

Hefty shipping charges at Griffin

Ed Wilde writes: “Just came across this at Griffin. This is what happens when you input a non-us postcode, shipping = $1,000,000.00…ooof!”

The mean-spirited tone of online forums is getting more attention lately…

Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette? (David Pogue)

Instead of finding common ground, we’re finding new ways to spit on the other guy, to push them away. The Internet is making it easier to attack, not to embrace.

Beware the Online Collective (Jaron Lanier)

I remember the first time I noticed myself becoming mean when I left an anonymous comment on a blog. What is it about that situation that seems to bring out the worst in people so often?...Blogs often lead to such divisiveness that people end up caring more about clan membership than truth after a while.

The blog commentor’s gaze (Jason Kottke)

interacting via text strips out so much social context and “incidental information” that causes some people to display psychopathic behavior online and fail to develop an online moral sense.

Blogosphere 2.0: civility strikes back (profile of Mena Trott)

Trott has an interesting golden rule that she would like to see bloggers adopt. “If you aren’t going to say something directly to someone’s face, than don’t use online as an opportunity to say it,” she says. “It is this sense of bravery that people get when they are anonymous that gives the blogosphere a bad reputation.”

Pogue just published some reader responses to his lament about online etiquette. Some of the more interesting offerings…

+ “Why is everyone so angry?!! It appears there is so much suppressed anger these days. Nearly everyone is so much richer in material things, but so much poorer in a philosophical sense, i.e. living a meaningful life.”

+ “I’ve been reading Slashdot since 1996 and UseNet since 1982, and I can’t agree that there has been a decline in civility. The same low standards we see today have been more or less constant. We can and should bemoan those standards, but if there is a downward trend, I sure don’t see it.”

+ “The smaller [sites] have less jerks, and different sites attract different sorts of audiences.”

+ “Netiquette in public forums has a lot to do with the content around which the community is centered. Lifehacker’s posts set out to help folks, so in kind, our readers want to help us and each other back. Digg is a popularity contest of one-upmanship. Gawker is all about making fun of things, so its readers mock each other and it. Karma’s a boomerang.”

What do you think? Are there any solutions or is the negativity just something we’ve got to accept?

Superfluous visual effects at Quicksilver

Doeke Zanstra writes, “Preference pane of Quicksilver. I really like the option ‘superfluous visual effects.’ It makes me feel…spoiled.”

Unspecific message at Logitech

Brian Parker writes, “Congrats Logitech! You win the Least Helpful Search Results Award. Not only did you not return any relevant result but you also managed to tell me that: ‘Your search was either too broad… or too narrow…’ I think that’s about as helpful as having the GPS in your car instructing you at an intersection to: ‘Turn left or right.’”

“An artist emphasizes some things and de-emphasizes other things to make a statement.”

There’s a lot of inspiration about visual principles to be had at Temple Of The Seven Golden Camels, Mark Kennedy’s site about the art of storyboarding. The main topic is animation and drawing, but the visual principles discussed — what makes things blend together, group, separate, create interest, etc. — apply to more than just movie making.

Statements like the following, from Things They Don’t Teach in Art School #1, relate to the task of modeling a domain and creating an interface for it.

Real living forms are very complicated. But the point of art isn’t to capture life with all of it’s details….photography can do that just fine. An artist caricatures the world, filters it, makes choices. An artist emphasizes some things and de-emphasizes other things to make a statement…You can bend the forms to your will — make them what they need to be to make your drawing work. Make them be what will contribute to the best statement and/or the best design. If it looks right, then it is right. Design is more important than accurate structure!

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson once said information is “a difference which makes a difference.” The road to that difference is this filtering process of deciding what matters, what gets emphasized, and what gets downplayed in order to ultimately say something meaningful.

Character introductions
Another interesting post there is Character Introductions, which talks about the need to craft intros very carefully so they communicate to the audience exactly what the character is about.

So why is it important? I think it’s because you have to make the most out of every minute of film time you have. Film is “life with the boring parts cut out” and so every part of your film has to be interesting and make the strongest statement possible…Like many things in film, this works better if it’s done in a smart and effortless way…If your character is very complicated, then put the simple and strong statement over first and then add shadings to it as the story moves along.

The post also includes a fascinating dissection of the opening credits of Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” (warning: movie spoilers at the link). “An analysis of the beginning of the film is like a master class in beginning a film quickly and effectively,” writes Kennedy. “He gets across a lot of setup in a really compressed amount of time.”