Bi-Swing Windbreaker. Hmm. An orientation I didn’t know about. And they have their own wardrobe, of course, that’s a clear way that a subculture demonstrates affiliation.

Fit Technologies designed a clothing sizing system that radically reduces complexity and confusion and helps guide shoppers to a product that will really fit their body type. But a better solution for consumers isn’t necessarily a better solution for retailers or manufacturers, and even though they are giving it a shot, it seems likely to fail.

Retailers that commit to it must find space for more merchandise, train workers to understand the new sizes and explain the new system to customers – a struggle for stores that already have few employees on the sales floor.

Then there is the reality, however counter-intuitive it may be, that retailers and clothing makers thrive off sizing confusion. Consumers who find a brand that fits are likely to stick with it and a standard sizing system would encourage them to visit other stores.

You may want to click that image to see it larger. It’s a list of adult-themed chats available on Skype. I’m sort of surprised I never heard this mentioned before. Of course it’s being used for that, upon reflection. I’m sure I could find something about it in Google, but I sort of got curious today and was rewarded with a rather funny list of Skype usernames.

Another hilarious Tim Goodman skewering of crappy TV (new series The Bedford Diaries) in WB lowers its standards one last time

The WB sent two episodes. To finish the first was like having dental floss wrapped around your spleen and then pulled up and out of your mouth by a runaway horse. Second episode? There’s not enough Percocet on this continent.

Through wincing eyes, one must endure young Owen getting paired in a class assignment with a pretty young girl who — gasp! — was the sole survivor of a rash of students who jumped off a very, very tall building in a suicidal leap. (Apparently they had all seen early screeners of the series.) Having survived (she has a small limp, because anything more would be ugly by WB standards), she’s paired with Unlikable Fabio and he says to his video camera later: ‘A girl who would jump off a roof. There is something very hot about that kind of crazy.’

There might be a word missing in that quote. If you put both of your hands over your ears and yell ‘Make it stop!’ at the top of your lungs, then it’s quite difficult to be verbatim about these things.

Mostly unrelated to the rest of this Metafilter thread was this brilliant comment

Remember that different cultures focus on different features when thinking about race. Americans focus on skin color and eye shape. But from what I’ve heard, what strikes most Asians about white people is their long noses, big chins, and pale hair, not their eyes or skin.

Sure enough, you’ll sometimes see an explicitly American or European character in anime, and they tend to have gigantic long noses and huge jutting chins. Hair color is a little more complicated – after all, anime characters of all races can have bright blue hair – so we probably shouldn’t read too much into it.

So the round-eyed, small-nosed, small-chinned, black-haired (or magical blue-haired) characters are meant to be Japanese. They just conform to Japanese ideas of how the Japanese look, not American ideas.

(Another interesting thing to notice is that Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters in anime look blatantly different, while American artists tend to draw them all more or less the same way. Again, evidence that race looks very different through Japanese eyes than through American ones.)

Hadn’t really thought of that before – that our cultural lenses create different, not opposite, physical/racial archetypes.

Broadband National Scam? I don’t know. I just got a phone call from this company (some sort of reseller or provider of well, broadband services). They had my number, obviously, my first name, and they claimed I did a search on their database yesterday for broadband services, and was I still looking. I did no such thing. I haven’t heard of this company or visited this site and I can’t imagine what I did online yesterday that would have sent my info to them.

Anyway, I told them they had the wrong person, but I was kinda shaken. Maybe it’s just a sales technique to convince recipients of cold-calls that they aren’t all that cold. I don’t know.

Update: Later today I got a recorded phone call from the same company, offering me a deal with Comcast High Speed Cable Internet. I reported them to the FCC for violating the Do-Not-Call registry. Very weird. I post this all here because someone will probably end up Googling this when it happens to them and maybe this provides some measure of reassurance, if not actual resolution.

Update: I received this email today

I have been forwarded your complaint regarding what appeared to be a “cold call” about broadband service. Broadband National manages 1200+ websites for various broadband service providers. This is how we received your name and number. As of today, we have since removed your name from all internal records and have placed you on our Do Not Call list. We do apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,
Debbie Garrett
Consumer Products Manager

I’ve finished uploading more than 200285 photos from Bangkok to flickr. Check ’em all out, but here are a few samples

It’s butter

Ronald does the wai

Crockery Flower

Detail: Shrine at a shrine at a temple

Working Boat

Thai Coke

Reserved for monks

Monk awaits

Soi Cowboy

Big Bowling Pin

Reindeer pair

Much of user research hinges on unpacking words that mean one thing to one party and something different to another. Now we bring science into the picture, using MRI.

The research team found that while the same words were being used to describe people and products, different regions of the brain were activated when subjects were talking about one or the other. The fMRI scans detected that there was a greater neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain when applying the adjectives to people. But when focusing on brands, like Wal-Mart, Starbucks or Ben & Jerry’s, the left inferior prefrontal cortex was activated, an area of the brain known to be involved in object processing.

In other words, you can call it love, but fundamentally, we process the emotion differently depending on the object.

[via MIT Advertising Blog

]

In the Hong Kong Art Museum store, we found a bunch of cute products with this funny character Matchman. I was trying to figure out which trinket to buy and bring back as an odd cultural souvenir until I stumbled across some pencil cases or stationery with what seemed to be serious religious overtones. I looked further and realize that it was a sneaky Jesus-pushing character, designed to appeal to “the kids” (and naive foreigners, I guess). I hate seeing that stuff sneaking past us, doesn’t speak well to the mission, if it’s about tricking you!

Shades of Veggie Tales!

Check out this podcast; an interview with me about listening and innovation (entitled The Listening Revolutionary).

The whole thing is 25 minutes, but honestly, I haven’t listened to it beyond the first 30 seconds – I start hearing stuff I said that I wish had said differently, or better, or not at all, but the conversation felt good while it was happening, so I’m going to trust that what’s up there now is reasonably interesting and hopefully worth your time.