A great question posted by Matt over at 37Signals, Do Americans have bad taste?
He wonders:

Interesting question re: the taste of Americans. I think there’s def more of a culture of design in Europe and some parts of Asia/S America. Even little things tend to look designed. Even if it’s just a restaurant menu or signage for a bookstore. There’s an appreciation for details and things that look good.

Read the comments section too, there’s a lot of great points of view.

This has been sitting in my Instapaper queue forever:

When one becomes obsessed with a beautiful object, it isn’t because we want that object to come into our own personal world. It’s in fact the reverse. We want to enter its world. Of course, that thing that we found to be so beautiful at first glance may actually have some awful flaws. Really expensive yet excruciatingly uncomfortable shoes come to mind. We want it to work out so badly.

Many people think the electric car is a new development in transportation, but the picture above shows Thomas Edison next to an electric car built by S.R. Bailey & Company that he developed his nickel-iron batteries for.
The photo was taken around 1910 (New York Times article on the event).
Over one hundred years ago. Not horses. Not bicycles. Electric cars that had a range of 100 miles.
Here’s a film from 1900 showing a parade of automobiles that include steam and electric models.
With the weight of the emerging global oil economy behind it, internal combustion automobiles eventually surpassed their electric counterparts in speed, range and price in the 1910’s.
Very little is ever mentioned on how the electric car was killed off, but in his book, Internal Combustion, Ewan Black explains in detail ‘How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives’.
One can imagine living in a very different world today if electric automobile and battery technology were not prematurely stopped over 100 years ago.
This was not the only time in history the electric car was prevented from making progress. In his 2006 film, Who Killed the Electric Car? writer and director Chris Paine examines the creation and subsequent destruction of the electric car in the mid 1990’s.
It’s important for people to not just be aware that something happened, but why something happened the way it did. It’s easy to dismiss electric cars in the 1910’s as not economically viable or as mature a technology as gas-powered cars, but imagine if Edison were allowed to continue his pursuit of the electric battery technology. Imagine if his Edison Plant in Orange, New Jersey didn’t mysteriously get destroyed in a fire (even though most the buildings were concrete and Edison claimed they were fire-proof).

Financial bootstrapping is a term used to cover different methods for avoiding using the financial resources of external investors. Bootstrapping can be defined as “a collection of methods used to minimize the amount of outside debt and equity financing needed from banks and investors”[10]. The use of private credit card debt is the most known form of bootstrapping, but a wide variety of methods are available for entrepreneurs. While bootstrapping involves a risk for the founders, the absence of any other stakeholder gives the founders more freedom to develop the company. Many successful companies including Dell Computers were founded this way.

(via)

I was down in New Orleans, Louisiana for a bachelor party this past weekend. A few months ago when we were making plans, my friend Bryan researched ways we could help with Hurricane Katrina victims in the area. What he found was the St. Bernard Project.
From their about page:

The mission of the St. Bernard Project is to create housing opportunities so that Hurricane Katrina survivors can return to their homes and communities. The St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit, community-based organization carries out its mission through three primary programs: Rebuilding Program, Center for Wellness and Mental Health and Senior Housing Program.

This past Monday my friends Bryan, Frank, Andrew and I drove out to Violet, Lousiana, located in St Bernard Parish (New Orleans is divided into parishes like New York City is divided into boroughs) to help rebuild a house. The drive out to Violet revealed that there’s still a lot of grim, empty communities that have still not recovered from Katrina.
Thanks to the St Bernard Project, over 275 houses have been rebuilt with families back living in them. The goal for 2010 is to rebuild another 133 houses. The project is having a huge impact on the city, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Here are some statistics (via):
• 1,000 families still displaced in St. Bernard
• 13,000 families still displaced in New Orleans
• 75% of homeowners did not receive sufficient funds to rebuild their home
I strongly encourage you to do what you can. You can find out how on their site.
One of the easiest ways is to make a $5 donation by texting “NOLA” to 50555. It will show up on your mobile bill. My friends and I all did this on the ride to the house we worked on.

Fascinating idea, although it makes complete sense too:

According to a paper by Jennifer Brown, an applied macroeconomist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Mr. Woods is such a dominating golfer that his presence in a tournament can make everyone else play significantly worse. Because his competitors expect him to win, they end up losing; success becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is so, so, so important to understanding human behavior, especially how financial disasters happen (via 37Signals):

1. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

2. You can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.

3. I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!

4. I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.

Job titles are important. Very important. But this doesn’t mean they should dictate everything. Job titles should be warranted. They should be earned.
This doesn’t mean, for instance, that an art director can’t let a junior design act as lead designer on a project. In fact, it means quite the opposite. The only way you can grow in your field is to take on more challenging projects than your title dictates.
In the career trajectory of an interactive designer there’s a substantial amount of time you can operate in a ‘silo’ and create designs that you and you alone are responsible for. I have known many visual designers, senior visual designers and art directors who have worked within a team of developers and Human Experience designer where they are the only visual designers on the project – no one junior assisting them and no one senior to them, guiding the direction of the final design.
The art director level in the career of a visual designer represents the point at which it’s no longer about your design chops alone that make you great at your level – how fast and precise you are in Photoshop, or how beautiful you can animate a scene. If we take a quick jump into the etymology of these positions, we notice that the change comes when ‘designer‘ is replaced with ‘director‘. As an art director, you’re no longer designing on the project, you’re directing the design efforts of others (ideally). As a creative director you’re directing the conceptual and strategic efforts of others.
Getting to a director level is also about how well you present your ideas and designs to your internal team and your client. It’s about how you work with and mentor junior designers. It’s also about how you delegate responsibilities. It’s about management.
Despite these characteristics, you’d be surprised how many people consider themselves art directors. This doesn’t mean the people I’ve known who have been art directors couldn’t perform the non-visual tasks I mentioned above or that they’re not worthy of the title. It just means they’ve never had the opportunity to (disclosure – I’m guilty of this ‘silo’ work lifestyle too).
We have to be very careful when we assign titles to people within the companies we work for. I don’t give a shit if you’ve worked for a company for 20 years. If you’re not qualified to be a manager or a director or a senior vice president, then you shouldn’t be one. End of story. What salary compensation you give someone is another story. That is something between your management and you, and doesn’t get added your email signature next to your email address and job title.
When people who are given titles they never live up to, it might give that person an ego boost, but it demoralizes others in the company who look to them for vision, direction and strength and never receive it.
Giving the wrong job titles to the wrong people effectively makes job titles meaningless, and inevitably confuses everyone, making them question their own worth in the company.

Regarding Palm’s recent revenue forcast (via NYTimes):

The company shipped a total of 960,000 smartphones during the third quarter ended February 26, but sell-through — which reflects how many devices actually end up in consumers’ hands — totaled 408,000 units, lagging the 600,000 units or more many analysts expected.

I understand that the point to consider with this news is the decreasing sales trend not the total number of units sold, but it’s still sad to think that a company that moved over 400,000 units is doing badly.
As much of a Apple enthusiast as I am, I really want to see Palm succeed with their Pre and WebOS. They need to break off from their shitty mobile provider, Sprint.

A good way to tell if you understand your own business plan, product or service is whether you can describe it in the length of time an average elevator ride takes, aka the ‘elevator pitch’. Sometimes that’s all the time you’ll get to pitch it to the person making or breaking your future.
The smart people over at Knowledge Games have a great exercise to help you achieve that level of clarity and simplicity:

Often this is the hardest thing to do in developing a new idea. An elevator pitch should be short and compelling description of the problem you’re solving, who you solve it for, and one key benefit that distinguishes it from its competitors. It must be unique, believable and important. The better and bigger the idea, the harder the pitch is to write.

A great example of a company who understands this is The Future Well.
What is The Future Well and what do they do?
They provide a much needed service with an admirable focus, and they can tell you:

We identify either creative or disruptive business opportunities within the health space and design beautiful solutions that positively impact health and happiness.

And:

Sometimes we identify the opportunity and find the right partners to execute it and sometimes we build it ourselves. Other times, we help guide clients so the product/service is simple, elegant, and wrapped up with a business strategy that leverages their core competencies.

After an hour-long wait I had a great conversation with my doctor. I explained that the medication he suggested I take before bed (for a non-terminal issue) made me feel drowsy in the morning, almost like I was hungover and that I stopped taking it.
He told me he was glad I stopped taking it. He went on to express his frustration that drug companies create conditions and diseases that don’t exist and that while my condition might cause discomfort, the med he prescribed was by no means the only solution.
I’ve become more and more jaded with the US healthcare system and it was refreshing to talk to a doctor that didn’t feel like he was in a drug company’s back pocket.

This past week at Roundarch we kicked off the visual design phase of an iPhone appication we’re developing for a client. As I began reviewing the designs my teammate Vika had started, one of our multi-talented senior developers, Chris Nojima, alerted us to the iPhone Dev Center on Apple’s website.
The iPhone Dev Center is just another example of Apple paying attention to every detail. There’s some people that think Apple’s products are all about shine and polish and pretty colors.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of using a iPhone to dispel this theory, you need go no further than the iPhone Dev Center to see how much Apple focuses on how the iPhone works. Coding tips, How-To videos, Human Interface Guidelines … it’s all there.
And if you can easily become an Apple Designer and/or Developer (or at least see what’s involved) for free by registering. If you already have an ID from iTunes, you can just use that instead.