• Black dog bias?
  Shelter officials have dubbed it black dog syndrome — the propensity of dark-coated animals to be passed over for adoption in favor of their lighter counterparts.
• Zappos Launches Insights Service
  Zappos Insights is a subscription video service that lets companies ask questions about the Zappos way and get answers from actual Zappos employees. It will charge $39.95 per month for subscriptions. The service, said CEO Tony Hsieh, is targeted at the “Fortune 1 million” looking to build their businesses. “There are management consulting firms that charge really high rates,” he said. “We wanted to come up with something that’s accessible to almost any business.” (via Guy Kawasaki)

Stephen Anderson’s musings on collaboration and attribution reminded me that a project we worked on for BIC has gone live:

From Business Week

[BIC is] designing disposable cartridges for fuel cells, a kind of power supply that could someday eliminate the need to constantly recharge mobile phones or laptop computers. Electronics makers are drawn to fuel cells because today’s rechargeable batteries can’t keep up with the demands users place on portable gadgets.
…
Bic’s big adventure with fuel cells began in 2002. Ken Cooper, the company’s U.S.-based director of strategic business development, was in a New Haven (Conn.) drugstore and spotted a cordless travel hair dryer with a tiny motor that ran on butane. This got Cooper thinking about fuel cells for handheld gadgets-a hot topic in consumer electronics circles. Few companies in the world package as much fuel every day as Bic does in its butane lighters, he reasoned. So Cooper decided Bic should take a gamble and develop fuel-cell cartridges that are “lighter-like, pocketable, yet safe.”

I know Ken worked with a series of small consultancies over that period. From our workshop, I remember strongly that fuel cells

were a key takeway. But was that concept extant before the workshop, or did we generate it? I honestly can’t remember, and ultimately, (as Stephen addresses) it’s not a worthwhile pursuit to frame it that way. In most of our engagements we are trying to inform and inspire talented business people to develop and refine ideas and move them further along, and seeing this story in BusinessWeek 6 years later confirms that indeed we did.

• Alternate designs for telephone keypad
  From a report issued in 1960 by The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, just before pushbutton phones went mainstream. In addition to key arrangements, other categories of design features were studied, like force-displacement characteristics and button-top size/design. The focus groups were tested on keying times (error rates were calculated) and asked which they preferred aesthetically.

• The 57 Watt Bulb: Trimming the standards
  Our grocery store has no 60 or 75 watt bulbs, well establish standards. Instead, they have 57 and 71 watt bulbs. GE is productizing the “turn the thermostat down a notch”? Seems like they are almost as bright as the ones they are replacing (which, when you think about it for at least .001 seconds, makes sense). But is this really what we want? If everyone is just slightly more in the dark, then we can save $X billion a year? Why 57 and why not 56? What happens next? 50 instead of 57? In which case, we’ll just all be using 60 (which is the new 75) instead. It’s not a sustainable innovation.

• How do you design: a massive collection of process diagrams assembled by Hugh Dubberly and co.
  In my User Research Friday talk I pointed to this; you can download it from the above link.

I ordered some tripods from REI and in the package was a nice bonus: a mini Clif Mojo bar. Although my purchase was not outdoor recreation related, REI reminded me of their positioning with an appropriately positioned freebie; a outdoor recreation lifestyle snack.

The trailer mashup may have hit its peak a couple of years ago (hey, there’s at least one blog devoted solely to examples of the genre) with my favorites Shining and Toy Story Requiem.

I’ve written before about how technology increasingly makes producer work available to consumers and so I was struck by the latest trailer mashup, combining The Ring with the hated Saved By Zero commercial.

The ability to put video inside video might have been out of reach to mere consumers (and I don’t know the details of who made the above mashup), but it looks like these tools are becoming available to anyone now.

Today marks the seventh (lucky seven!) anniversary of All This ChittahChattah!

Photos courtesy of flickr users rgusick, _Harry Lime_, Leo Reynolds, rehuxley, skeeter torino, Ju‚Ñìiette, korrey

I received this promotion from a local plumber. In addition to the more typical description of services offered, he provides a striking summary of his personal brand attributes: insightful, mature, courteous. Those are desirable characteristics in any professional setting; they are provocative when highlighted by a plumber.

• Statue Folklore
  It seems to be a widespread instinct for passers-by to touch statues, in greeting or for luck, if they represent a popular personality, as when Tory Members of Parliament rub the toe of Winston Churchill’s statue at the entrance to the Chamber, and Liberals that of Lloyd George. Animal images also attract this affectionate gesture; the nose of a lion-faced door-knocker at Durham Cathedral is well polished by the constant touch of visitors, as is the beak of a certain falcon in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum. The other recurrent piece of folklore about a statue is the assertion that it gets down from its pedestal and walks about, or sits down for a rest, whenever it hears midnight strike; the lions at the door of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, either roar or drink from the gutter. Such statements are a catch, for ‘when it hears’ is an impossible condition. (Thanks, Anne!)
  Previously: Desire Lions
• Statue Burnishing Etiquette
  What to touch, and when. Thanks Anne! Previously: Desire Lions