Today is World Usability Day and one newly generated ritual is Take a Red Balloon For a Walk!

A worldwide initiative that EVERYONE can participate in to celebrate World Usability Day 2006!

Walk around your community, office or home and take photos of products, road signs, or anything that represents something USABLE or NOT USABLE. Of course, you can include yourself and your balloon in the photos!

I’m reminded of Red Nose Day which when I initially encountered it was a movement to help people lighten up and have a nicer day. (Now it’s tied to fund raising and charity).

I’m sure someone could make a case that this raises awareness in a light-hearted way but it strikes as ridiculous. What’s next, red balloon lapel pins, red rubber bracelets, red balloon-shaped magnets for the back of your car? Move over Lance Armstrong, overseas troops, and breast cancer, the Red freakin’ balloon is here!

• A single-topic blog: the (ab)use of silent next-to-last panels in comic strips
  An overused cliche that the blog author is hoping to eradicate through critical and out-of-context overexposure.
• Further Us and Them attitudes: a cartoon about “bad creative feedback”
  I like how “client” doesn’t appear in this cartoon about how non-creatives don’t get it (and how much those of us who DO get it suffer at their hands); they mean client, but don’t come out and say it. I am sick to death of this knowing/distancing attitude

Clay Shirky writes in Wired about the meganiche

, a narrowly focused area on the web that can still be very active and significantly popular

I first encountered the meganiche concept by chance: I was examining the top few thousand sites listed by Alexa. Once I had culled the well-known media outlets, famous brands, Web marketing firms, and porn venues, I was left with an unfamiliar, difficult-to-characterize residue. There were focused communities (HowardForums and Gaia, plus sites like CollarMe, LifeTips, and SwapperNet), silly diversions (Consumption Junction, Funny Junk, I-Am-Bored.com, Shoosh Time), narrow commercial offerings (NextPimp, YachtWorld), and creative forums (4Chan, FanFiction.net, and YTMND.com).

Many of these sites are unconventional in their approach, content, and design, but all garner substantial traffic. And traffic means potential revenue, which makes the meganiche a good business bet as well as a cultural phenomenon. User-generated content is the Web-biz buzzword of the day, and meganiche sites tend to produce lots of it.

• Apple product development (branding, marketing) – we’re talking about the FRUIT
  “heirloom” varieties emerging; over a 1000 different types; 40 years to go to market for a new type

Communication Arts offers up 50 Essential Bookmarks. Of course, they’ve got Core77 (where I sometimes blog and write) as well as a nice sidebar about Design Observer, that quotes me

Design Observer has reached beyond the world of design. Fast Company counts this blog as one of seven must-reads for design. “Though academic at times, this smart blog hosts a thriving community.” Marketing consultant Steve Portigal (a repeat visitor and author of his own blog All This ChittahChattah) posted this note after a heated online debate: “Thanks… for a great piece. This is what blogs excel at-a personal story, not too confessional…a relevant one, of course, mixed in with perspective, and analysis. Add in an articulate critique of colleagues whom are liked and respected (but not unequivocally supported in every single decision) and you’ve got real leadership.”

Marketing consultant? Not quite. And how’s about linking to this blog, not just mentioning it?
Well, anyway, all is not lost. Debbie Millman, in a separate sidebar (or popup; whatever) lists All This ChittahChattah as one of the “sites they consider to be vital to their work.” Thanks, Debbie!

The Internet is amazing. I was having an IM conversation with a colleague today and sharing cool packaging stories. I tried to describe the magic packaging (keeps the seaweed separate from the rice, yet you can open it up without having to unwap the whole thing) for onigiri (rice balls) and he suggests there is probably a video somewhere. Indeed, within 30 seconds I found two. The packaging – as you will see – is amazing, but the availability of any sort of content you can imagine is also amazing.

• Lou Reed plays a web conference while people keep yakking; he cranks it up
  Now, I’m no Lou Reed, but I had this same thing happen to me when I emceed the Bay Area’s Best a few weeks ago. Of course, Lou was presumably getting big bucks for his gig. I just did mine for the love. And no one empowered me to turn things up. Next time.
• List of faux pas (via Kottke)
  Detailed list of cultural norms. Many if not all (a post-modern debate for another time) of these have no intrinsic meaning. “Thumbs up” – offensive? Encouraging? Flirty? It’s entirely culturally constructed. If you step back and think about that, it’s pretty fascinating.

I just got this email from Yahoo.

Yahoo! Alerts Yahoo! 360° – My Alerts – Edit Alert
Yahoo! 360°

Steve P,
Your Yahoo! Messenger contact wants to add you as a Friend in Yahoo! 360°. As Yahoo! 360° friends, you and can stay in touch through blogs, photos and much more.

On Yahoo! 360°, you always control who sees your content. If you do not accept the invitation, nothing happens, and can only see your public content.

Accept or decline the invitation by going to:
http://360.yahoo.com/friends/waiting_room.html

I use Yahoo! Messenger, but I don’t use 360. I’ve never used it, as far as I know. So this message is very cryptic and frankly seemed like a phishing expedition.

When I went to the Yahoo page, I see a whole bunch of my Yahoo “buddies” and I’m asked to accept or decline them as friends. But what triggered this email? The email suggests that someone actively pinged me on Yahoo and Yahoo is coming to me to verify that. But the site suggests that they are just trying to link on 360 those that they know are linked on Messenger.
Their email doesn’t even tell me which contact is trying to add me as a friend; just that one of them is — “your contact.” It’s badly written, not helpful, not wanted.

Further investigation reveals that this is a Yahoo 360 Alert. I absolutely never created this alert. Did Yahoo just turn on some alert default and automatically pinged me because of some accumulated set of events?

This is the kind of bullshit that Yahoo! pulls that I can’t stand. Don’t manipulate me into services or features I’m not interested in. Make it clear what Yahoo is doing and what my contacts are doing. Be honest, be clear. Use defaults that benefit me, not you. And so on!

Yikes! Yuck!

Reading Chinese shopkeeper can no longer sell Mao condoms we see that there were other condom packages that were not acceptable, so this may simply be a clever headline play rather than the truth of the story (even though it’s Reuters, do we believe them when there are details clearly left out?). But potentially a counter to the Dictator Kitsch we’ve discusseed here.

• Domino’s “Brooklyn Style Pizza” compared with local Brooklyn pizzas
  Fun piece that is about the food itself, but also a search for authenticity and an exploration of what authenticity is, especially regional authenticity. Throw in accuracy, and taste, and you’ve got a great read.
• Slice article about Domino’s Brooklyn Pizza
  References in the NYT article. Nice use of “ontology”!
• What are you, nuts?
  Also mentioned in the NYT article, the caricature-cum-offensive official site for the Brooklyn Style Pizza features some silly stereotypes of the borough.