GTA must halt Michigan garbage shipments by 2010 is a news story that uses one of my flickr photos, with permission. They’ve got some nifty interface going; I received an email on flickr asking if they could use my picture; all I had to do was click on a URL and indicate yes or no on a web form. If yes, the photo gets published, and credit is given to me. It’d be nice if credit would linkback to either flickr or some other page, rather than NowPublic.Com (who runs the site), but whatever. I think it’s a neat way to do it – make it easy for people to say yes, make it easy for publishers to get photos for use in stories.

flickr just launched a new interface. Here’s some screenshots. I don’t think I can be objective about it; of course, I’ve got habits to break and new ones to learn, and that will take a while. I will say I trust them and so am hopeful for good things.

Update: I just noticed this: There are sneaky advertising links buried in flickr!

Taken with a Nikon D50.

is now
Taken with a D50.

and that logo is a hotlink to a Nikon advertising site.

You can see all of my Toronto pics here, with a few selected below. They’re all kinda shrunk down to fit on this page, so click on any of them to see them larger.

Trompe l’oiel
Famous building in downtown Toronto that makes appearances in movies every now and again.

The city awakens
Coming downtown, via the 427 from the airport at 6:45 am. I think the monochrome image with the red flag is pretty damn cool. No Photoshop effect – it just came out like that.

Yung Sing Pastry Shop
This little place in the Baldwin Village is right near U of T as well as the (former) Northern Telecom office on University Ave. I used to go to this place and get Chinese buns – with a million different fillings – fried rice, coconut-bean-something, barbecue pork or beef, chicken, etc. It was the first place I had ever experienced this particular type of Chinese food and I really loved it. I decided to take a quick walk up there the other day while in town and see if it was still around. It was fun to go back – the food was pretty good, but not stunning. Has it changed, or have I?

Half-Mast
Several Canadian soldiers were killed the other week in Afghanistan, and the Prime Minister is going through some Bush-esque steps – barring photographers from the arriving bodies, and not ordering flags at half-mast to honor them. (I may have the story only partially correct?).
I suspected this business had their flag at half-mast as a deliberate note of honor despite the government’s lack of action in that direction.

When I see large Canadian flags, especially ones waving politically, I can’t help but wonder about evolving Canadian nationalism. When I lived in Toronto during the first Gulf War, I would often drive to New York State and would be very struck upon crossing the border to see many many huge huge flags proclaiming support. I felt that was in contrast to the under-patriotic tone in Canada. It seems like Canada has moved up a notch after decades of self-deprecation – I like to believe it came from the I Am Canadian rants of the late 90s, but I don’t know if anyone else would support that notion.

Smart Car
We saw quite a few Smart Cars driving around Burlington/Oakville. Here’s a working Smart Car, all made up to be a messenger vehicle.

Dessert Faves
clockwise, Nanaimo Bars, Vanilla Slice, Butter Tart.
I’ve only ever seen Nanaimo Bars and Butter Tarts in Canada, so I try to make sure to get some every time I’m home. They are just damn good.

Many days on the way home from high school we’d stop in and get one of those Vanilla Slices- very very good – seems like they are traditionally from Australia. The same bakery from high school is still there and still sells ’em.

Falun Gong protest march
We were in the Spadina Garden restaurant (now located on Dundas) when this parade of Falun Gong protesters came by. When the owner came to take our order we made a comment about it and he went into a serious (if somewhat unintelligible) rant about these crooks and how we shouldn’t look at the parade. It was a bit of a bummer moment – I don’t understand the politics or other aspects of the issue and no doubt its highly contentious, but I didn’t really want his opinion when I was trying to eat his food and look at his window.

[murmur]
These signs are quite common in Toronto – you call the number on the sign, punch in the code (even though this one was worn away) and hear some details about where you are standing.

If we didn’t have to pay international roaming charges on our cell, we would have tried it to see what they had to say. Kind of a drag, then. You can hear the info online as well at

Spadina Station
Waiting on the platform for the Bloor trains at Spadina Station. The famous (from the Shuffle Demons) Spadina bus (either 77A or 77B) are long gone, replaced by the LRT that now emanates from a gaping maw in Spadina Road, just south of Bloor.

There are other TTC stations that have attached bus/streetcar stations, but do others have the icons next to the station name? I didn’t think so.

Dining Lounge – Dancing
A shuttered restaurant (The Blue Moon Saloon?) on Bloor St. in the Annex.

The Tap – DJ, Moe Berg
TPOH frontman Moe Berg is the DJ at the Tap on Bloor St., Saturday nights. He was there when we went in, too. Kinda noisy to hear anything, but always fun to drop into the Tap anyway.

Parking Lot Fruit Stand
When this place opened, it seemed like it was in the parking lot attendant booth, with a tray out in front. It didn’t even seem like a legal business; more like someone was squatting with fresh fruit in a highly commercial area.

But more than 15 years later it’s still there; it’s grown into a little building but it still looks pretty damn haphazard.

Senator David A. Croll Apts.
Location of the infamous Rochdale experiment.

Liebeskind with new glasses
“I believe there is no longer an argument as the role and importance of museums in shaping civic, regional and national identity, giving scale to aspirations and opening new horizons.”

Daniel Liebeskind has designed “The Crystal” as part of the expansion of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the whole thing is called the ROM Renaissance. Yet another of a super-modern building laying on top of a very traditional building. I’m not so sure I like it, but it will certainly be dramatic when completed.

We Kill You.net
I guess it’s some sort of public art guerilla collaborative. This location is was up on their site along with many others.

Eat Fish…Live Longer!
Sign in the window at Buster’s Sea Cove in St. Lawrence Market

Bloor Cinema
The Bloor Cinema, where I first saw indie films such as Roadkill. Or various bizarre animation festivals (early Bill Pympton stuff). We were walking by there during this last trip, and the HotDocs film festival was going on, and they were inviting people in at 11:30 pm for a free screening, so we went in.

This was free, remember.

They introduce the movie and thank the sponsor for the film and talk to the director and then roll it. We get the usual film festival promo trailer, and acknowledgments screens, and then an ad for Cadillac.

And the audience begins to boo.

I don’t normally do this but I shouted out against the booing “You’re seeing a FREE MOVIE so shut the f*** up!” It was a big flashback to my days living in the Annex with all the hipster posing that went on. I remember people laughing too hard at strange indie films and feeling like that was how they felt they were supposed to react, rather than anything sincere or heartfelt (or backed up by actual thoughts). I almost had forgotten that feeling from my time in Toronto and having this strong reaction to the anti-advertising booing (at a FREE MOVIE) brought it all back, and I realized that in many ways, I was very glad not to be living in Toronto any more.

Site of the former J.J. Muggs
Remember when restaurants had clever names like J.J. Muggs? This place was so 80s, green marble everywhere, waiters that would crouch down and call you buddy with a slap on the shoulder. This was where I first learned to drink (and I was never that much into it) – Long Island Iced Tea, and something that was like a fake root beer made of many different alcohols. Good stuff. Pitchers!

They had an incredible all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch buffet that featured half-lobsters (a whole lobster, cut lengthwise). I remember going and staying so long, eating lobster (and King Crab and everything else) that I just waited out being full until I was hungry again.

Hockey on Yonge St.
They closed down Yonge St. and there were a million teams of kids playing road hockey (aka street hockey). Only in Canada!

At the closing Dcamp dinner, Eugene Chen told me about a cool event he’d been to called Pecha Kucha where participants show 20 images each, each for 20 seconds. I couldn’t remember what it was called, but today I stumble across on the web. Less than 48 hours after I first heard about it. I love synchronicity.

Pecha Kucha is a Japanese term that roughly translates as chit-chat, or perhaps as irritating chatter.
Pecha Kucha is a lot of fun for short attention spans.
Pecha Kucha is a new kind of venue for anyone involved in, or interested in, architecture, design, fashion, and art.
Pecha Kucha is intended to inspire a broad mix of participants – from well-known practitioners to students, recent graduates, and new firms presenting their work for the first time.

Eugene didn’t emphasize the design-y aspect of it; just seemed like it could be about anything, at least around the table we began brainstorming ways to work within the seemingly tight constraints. As images go by automatically every 20 seconds, you could speak to each one, or you could speak to a larger story that is paced along with the images, or you could be out of sync (or in reverse) with the sequence of images, etc. There’s a lot of potential besides just a super-quick presentation linearly.

I guess it’s going on all over the world but the event was created and is somehow owned by Tokyo’s Klein Dytham Architecture. I’ll have to check it out soon!

Update: I did!

This past weekend was DCamp

DCamp, an unconference focused on design and user experience, is open to everyone interested in the topic: designers, usability practitioners, developers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and others.

Unlike traditional conferences, there is no program created by conference organizers. What happens at DCamp depends on you.

It was interesting to be involved in a do-it-yourself grassroots type of event. I’ll admit to some anxiety as the event approached, specifically because I had offered to give a talk. What kind of environment would we be in? Did I need a projector, or should I just “wing it”?

I’ll say that the anxiety decreased over time, and my overall enjoyment/value from the event increased over time. By the end, I was pretty into the whole thing, but it’s an adjustment of expectations from a more traditional top-down event.

As with most conferences, the hanging-out is lots of fun. People I’ve never met before, people I’ve met once or twice before, people who work with or know others I know, people to suggest books, or share their own stories, or to ask me about myself. It’s a workout for the introvert (and I came home and crashed pretty hard, I must admit), but lots of fun.

I think the sessions are a mixed bag; the audience is varied and the presenters can’t count on an audience having a certain level of experience with their topic. Every session I was in started off with one topic and wandered more or less into something different, or at least a narrow corner of what was brought to us by the presenter – and that was okay – that was the point.

But that means that only one session made my head spin, the rest were comfortable, a bit provocative, a bit interesting, but not challenging or building new ideas or anything. That’s probably a reasonable proportion for a short event, consistent with a more traditional event.

DCamp – 92.jpg, originally uploaded by chrisheuer.

I think those of us who lead sessions need to learn how to handle a more open-ended type of event, but also participants need to think of the group dynamic or what kind of questions or comments will move it along versus stall it. And that is not something that’s natural, especially with a new group of people getting together.

The event was held in the offices of wiki startup Socialtext, and we totally took over their space. There was stuff everywhere – food, ice, beer, DCamp t-shirts, water, paper, people, laptops. The vibe was good, but sometimes it felt a bit cult-like with lots of walls covered with tree-drawings that were for planning future events, or photos of attendees, or DCamp slogans. See the flickr pics here.

The cost was $10. Sponsors took care of the facility, food brought in, and two lavish meals at nearby restaurants. It was quite wonderful.

Oh, and it was indeed a “camp.” If you brought a sleeping bag (or if you didn’t, even) you could sleep over.

And in an interesting-sign-of-our-accelerated times, there is already a reunion planned. For Monday.

Introductions, originally uploaded by niallkennedy.

We were asked to give our name, and three words. I offered “seize the day” (since carpe diem is only two, yes?)

P1010803, originally uploaded by Fred M Jacobson.

DSCN0279, originally uploaded by blue_j.
Here’s Dirk and some others looking in on my session. There’s me in my lawn chair in the middle right of the pic.

DSCN0274, originally uploaded by blue_j.

I did the traditional slideshow thing, but I whizzed through it and tried to get people talking. It was the first session of the whole event, and I don’t know that everyone was clear what session this was, what room the various sessions were in, etc. And so there was a reasonable amount of awkward silence. The room was rather weird, too. I was sitting in the middle of the room around a low table, with a few folks at that table, and then the rest of the room was ringed with people, so in terms of maintaining eye contact with each other, it was pretty tough.

Of course, I’m obviously a harsh critic of myself, and of experiences like this – the feedback I did get was really good; I even heard some of the concepts I was asking people to think about (briefly – the value of the space between defined opposites) emerge in subsequent sessions.

DSCN0277, originally uploaded by blue_j.

The talk and discussion was being recorded for podcast, so I’ll post when that goes online. Update: Arthur has posted the notes here (they are also on the Dcamp wiki but that requires registration, I believe). This was great of the folks from AOL to bring the gear and set it up for each session and so on, but we’ve got a long way to go with that. People aren’t comfortable talking into microphones, and in this case, there was no amplification, so whatever use model we bring to using a microphone, this broke. You were asked to place it very very close to your mouth, far closer than I am in this picture. And rather than have a free-flowing conversation, we had to pass this device back and forth to people – who did not want to use it. And typically they’d hold it about a foot from their face, so someone would interrupt as they were starting to talk “Put it right up to your mouth!” Which just served to make them more self-conscious. I would rather privilege the experience in the room over any documentation for others, and just have spoken more normally. In one session, a dude sat there with a handheld recorder and just point it at people, leaving us to talk normally. It felt much more comfortable.

Good experience, overall, good to see people, and have some conversation. I’d probably go to another one, and even mused to myself about organizing a similar event that is a little closer to my areas of professional interest than this one was.

One summer in my undergrad days I took a course (still offered) called Marketing Geography

. Our text was Location, location, location written by the folks (or so I recall) that coined that phrase (the three most important factors in a business success are….”). I hated the class, but one assignment was to pick a business and hang out there and observe the area and the foot traffic and merchandise and everything.

This is the hardware store I chose. I had no idea what I was doing, and I don’t think I learned very much, but the idea of such a study has obviously stuck with me much later in my career than I would have expected!

Already tired of the Play-Doh parfum? Get yourself some Eau de Stilton.

Nigel White, from the Stilton Cheese Makers Association, said: “The perfume has a very earthy, musky, herby type of background which is very different to the very sweet perfumes you smell wafting down the street as someone walks past you.”

Mr White added that the smell was not to everyone’s taste and that there had been a mixed reaction to the perfume.

Uh, right. Just because you can extend a brand, doesn’t mean you should!

Thanks, Dem!

When PR masquerades as customer-centricity:

McDonald’s announced a Global Moms Panel to provide guidance on such topics as balanced and active lifestyle initiatives, restaurant communications and children’s well-being.

The nine women will serve one-year terms on the panel. The company said it wants their input in order to better serve the needs of moms and families worldwide.

‘We want to become the best ally we can for moms and a true partner in the well-being of families everywhere,’ said Mary Dillon, McDonald’s global chief marketing officer.

On this panel is:
U.S. Olympic speedskater Bonnie Blair
Italian Olympic cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo
Christa Kinshofer, an Olympic skier and author from Germany
Gao Min, an Olympic diving champion and author from China
Keddie Bailey, a full-time mother from England
Michele Borba, a childhood development expert and author
Maru Botana, a chef and TV cooking-show personality from Argentina
Laura Lopez Cano, a Latina artist
Kim Carter, a librarian and Parent Teacher Association president

McDonald’s should realize that “soccer man” doesn’t refer to soccer stars!

It’s potentially a great initiative, but I’m reminded of when Ah-nold was the Chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. It’s not like his own personal experience with health was representative of the people the gov’t was trying to reach. He was a lead user. So are these women.

McDonald’s is being disingenuous by corralling a high-powered bunch of global supermoms and then claiming they are going to stay in touch with the needs of their real-people customers. One is PR/lobbying/advocacy, and the other is about reaching out to real ordinary people.

An article in the Daily Mail reports that Nestle is removing the artificial food coloring from Smarties.

Although Nestle says it is responding to calls from consumers for more natural ingredients, it has faced heavy lobbying from campaigners worried about the effects of the chemicals on children’s health.

The colours being axed include Brilliant Blue (E133); Quinoline Yellow (E104); Sunset Yellow (E110); Ponceau 4R (E124); and Carmoisine (E122).

A recent study by experts at Liverpool University identified a possible harmful cocktail effect on the nervous system of artificial colours and chemicals.

Two of the colours examined were Brilliant Blue and Quinoline Yellow, which like many others was originally derived from coal tar.

This seems like a good occasion, therefore, to re-release some of my earliest consumer research, conducted in partnership with Mark Jaycock. In “Are You A Smartie?” we asked a range of demographics (age, gender, smoking status) to identify the color Smarties candy based on taste alone. We theorized that the food coloring itself may have had a taste that people were learning and indeed identifying with the supposed flavor of the color itself. I wonder how the results would be different now, with the artificial coloring removed? Will the natural colorings taste as strongly?

The report is available as a PDF download here. It was tempting, when revisiting this work (which is about 25 years old) to correct typos, upgrade the information design and readability, but as an artifact of some of my earliest consumer research, I felt it was better to leave it mostly intact.

The McDonald’s redesign is getting some more attention in blogland. A really powerful rant (even if you don’t support all the points) comes from the consistently acerbic Marginal Utility

So having abetted the atomization of American society, undermining traditional rituals of eating that once fostered polite society and turning food into on-the-go fuel, McDonald’s now wants to present the simulacrum of what it helped destroy, an ambiotronic environment in which the semblance of civility is exhibited for maximum marketing appeal. It wants to cater to the illusion that people have time to hang out, that people enjoy being in public with strangers, that its own food is something to be savored rather than inhaled on the run. The corporation can subsidize a few people hogging the comfy chairs and watching the TVs in order to give its bread-and-butter customers – the harried single people in a hurry – a warm, fuzzy feeling about what they are about to eat, as if a Big Mac can give them access to the laid-back linger-zone life by proxy. But most people, McDonald’s knows, don’t really want to linger. Rest assured, regardless of the redesign, the heart of McDonald’s will remain as hard a plastic as ever.