influencer:

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL
influenced:

2010 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG

Om Malik on the Nokia N900:

Like a great home run hitter who has lost his swing and is only one double away from getting his swing back, I think Nokia is a device or two from posing a strong challenge to its competitors.

Nokia is looking more and more like the lumbering, day-late Microsoft with their products and that’s not just me who thinks that, it has more to do with their 20% loss in sales for Q3.

Engadget Mobile:

We think its approach on the hardware front is absolutely spot on – by using high grade materials and a unique design, the Korean giant has certainly put together a device that grabs and merits our attention. What LG needs now is that same level of care and painstaking refinement to be applied to the software side of its phones.

Combustion Chamber translation: Great body design and paintjob, poor handling, interior and engine. Unfortunately, my initial suspicions were true.
Have we not learned from the RAZR?!
Focus on the software!

found via soulcookie

When I spotted this car I had to look around me and make sure I was indeed on the upper east side of Manhattan and not Collins Ave on South Beach.

I had to do it:

UPDATE 18.09.2009 – After creating the image above, I went and posted it to my friend Dalematic‘s Facebook wall. I hadn’t anticipated what this action might start, but given Dalematic’s arsenal of design chops and knowledge, I should have.
Dalematic’s response #1:

The Combustion Chamber’s response #1:

Dalematic’s response #2:

The Combustion Chamber’s response #2:

Dalematic’s response #3:

The Combustion Chamber’s response #3:

What the hell is going on with that home screen on the N97?
By cramming everything on the screen, they cram nothing on the screen.
It does have an ‘analogue’ clock and Facebook access, so it must be cool.

Gary Wolf is missing the point over at Wired.com in his piece, Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess.
Some people – be it developers, media outlets or plain consumers – have a big problem if you don’t play by certain rules.
We heard outcries from frustrated developers who pleaded (and still plead) with Apple to open up it’s iPhone platform. How can Apple not see the benefits of an open platform?! Google’s doing it, why can’t you?
Or how about the stories that circulated earlier this year with bewilderment that the founders of Twitter didn’t want to sell the company just yet, they want to develop and mature their company. You’re not going to sell out to Google, are you MAD?!
Now comes another whining rant about craigslist (CL). What is Wolf’s beef with CL? He citing numerous supposed ‘problems’ but the big ones were:
– it scorns advertisers
– doesn’t charge to use their service
– they banish third party sites who ‘scrape’ their site
– they have no API or mobile applications
Wolf on craigslist’s inner workings:

Many people who have heard Newmark’s public remarks find the ideals admirable but difficult to apply. What would such an approach mean in practice? His cause is not helped by the fact that if the craigslist management style resembles any political system, it is not democracy but rather a low-key popular dictatorship. Its inner workings are obscure, it publishes no account of its income or expenses, it has no obligation to respond to criticism, and all authority rests in the hands of a single man. Ask Newmark about any feature you would like to see on craigslist and you will always get the same response …”Ask Jim,” he says.

In short – they’re not like everyone else. Well isn’t that the fucking point? As is mentioned in the article, it’s projected that CL’s revenue could approach $100 million for 2009.
They might be a mess, but for a company of 30 people pulling in tens of millions of dollars a year, I’ll take that kind of mess any day.

On Design

Wired’s article is accompanied by redesigns of the site by a few prominent designers, such as Khoi Vihn, design director at the NYTimes.com. The redesign project reminds me of their 2004 Googlemania project where they asked also asked 4 designers to redo the Google homepage.
Both these redesign challenges were exercises in futility.
While some of the redesign efforts do a good job at providing more structure, heirarchy and clarity to the ordinary-looking CL (such as Vihn’s), some are just cute, showboating one-offs (like Pentagram’s).
Wolf on CL’s design:

Besides offering nearly all of its features for free, it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate. [my bolding]

I feel about CL the same way Jason at 37Signals feels about the Drudge Report:

To clarify, my definition of design goes beyond aesthetic qualities and into areas of maintenance, cost, profitability, speed, and purpose. However, I still think that the Drudge Report is an aesthetic masterpiece even though I also consider it ugly. Can good design also be ugly? I think Drudge proves it can.

Here’s the thing – craigslist doesn’t need a redesign. While I can appreciate redesign efforts like Vhin’s, they’re a want, not a need. Real design goes far beyond fonts and colors. Design is about how something works and for all it’s spam, seemingly loose structure, and scams – craigslist works damn good.

Uniqlo Calendar

1a space via the media arc

via loudpop

PC World: Coming Soon: Adobe Flash on Android, WinMo, and WebOS
All I have to say is, Flash sites kicked on my old Powerbook’s cooling fans faster than a mouse click – I can’t wait to see what it does on mobile devices.
I have no problem with a Flash-less iPhone.

from BBC News:

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of
300,000 users found.

How is this even remotely surprising?
Isn’t this consistent with millions of other scenarios in life?
This 90/10 ratio follows the basic theory Joseph Juran coined for this phenomenon back in the 1940’s, after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.
via Wikipedia:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule,[1] the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

This is not to be confused with Ms. Jackson’s Pleasure Principle.

I imagine this is what it would look like if you combined an iPod, a Ferarri F430 and a yacht.
Amazing.
Schopfer Yachts (via PSFK)