"Hello_World"

Where typography meets geography

One day, when I'm really rich I'll have buildings that spell out my name.

In the meantime I'll just settle for a geogreeting (via core77), a pretty rad service that spells stuff using buildings found on Google Earth..

Nice...!

It started out as just a 4gb flash drive

A few weeks ago I read on cherryflava (highly recommended feed) about Mimoco's new limited edition designer flash drives.

I went straight to the site and ordered two of their 4gb models; ghost and robo.

Now if the conversation around the design itself is not free prize enough, although at $170 a pop I'm kinda stretching the whole "free" thing, each drive arrived today with a wad of themed stickers and postcards. Nice touch.

Then, when you insert the drives into your machine, you'll see a .zip that contains videos, icons, wallpapers, and screen savers. Even nicer touch (not to mention great use of the medium).

I love it when guys get the little things right. After all:

There are no little things...!

PS. The Star Wars series kicks ass too

So, Apple wants to spam me...

I recently downloaded the trial for Aperture. To activate it you need a serial number from Apple.

I went to the site, filled in my data (why is this step even necessary? Just give me 30-day trial like everyone else), unchecked the "send me news" box, and hit submit.

That's where it all went horribly wrong.

Apple actually forces you to check the "Keep me up to date with Apple news, software updates and the latest updates on products and services." check box i.e. The "allow us to spam you" one.

Dirty tricks...!

Watch this. Read that.

On Friday night, Andrea, Ben and I went to watch Children of Men, an awesome, if not somewhat disturbing film.

The basic premise is this; 20 years from now the last generation of man exists because all women are infertile, and have been for 18 years.

All but one woman that is.

Clive Owen's job is to protect her and her unborn child.

This reminded me a lot of a graphic novel I bought recently while in Boston with D'ave. It's called Y: The last man (written, drawn). I should mention here that I've never been a comic fan as such, the story just appealed to me so I picked it up.

Basically, every creature with the Y chromosome has died, with the exception of one man, and his pet monkey. These two are left to fend for themselves in a world of women.

It is wicked cool! Seriously, even my wife is hooked. Which brings me to the point of the post. You can now download the first issue from Vertigo (8.8mb pdf).

I strongly suggest you give it a read...!

Turning nouns into verbs

So I just had an aha moment courtesy of The Seth. It's from his essay, Verbs (Gerunds actually) which I read in his killer book Small is the new big.

Here's an excerpt:

 

People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that happen, that change. The care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel. Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps.

This got me thinking about presentations (what we do). Most people see presentations as nouns, files with data (that can be uploaded to silly sites). Presentations aren't  about the noun though, at least the good ones aren't, the good ones are about the verb i.e presenting. People give give good presentations, they don't make them.

(Cartoon from blaugh. Cheers Rob!)

Rarely if ever have I seen a speaker receive positive feedback for getting the noun right, if they failed at the verb.

This, incidentally, is what Apple didn't understand when they created Keynote as a solution to PowerPoint's problems, but that's another rant altogether.

So, fix the verb first, if you get that right, the noun will just be common sense...!

Turning nouns into verbs

So I just had an aha moment courtesy of The Seth. It's from his essay, Verbs (Gerunds actually) which I read in his killer book Small is the new big.

Here's an excerpt:

People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that happen, that change. The care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel. Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps.

This got me thinking about presentations (what we do). Most people see presentations as nouns, files with data (that can be uploaded to silly sites). Presentations aren't about the noun though, at least the good ones aren't, the good ones are about the verb i.e presenting. People give give good presentations, they don't make them.

(Cartoon from blaugh. Cheers Rob!)

Rarely if ever have I seen a speaker receive positive feedback for getting the noun right, if they failed at the verb.

This, incidentally, is what Apple didn't understand when they created Keynote as a solution to PowerPoint's problems, but that's another rant altogether.

So, fix the verb first, if you get that right, the noun will just be common sense...!

Update: Seth has a bit more to say about the presentation as a verb thing over here.