It’s passe, I guess, to make fun of bad error messages. How 1997! But still, this is hilarious and disappointing (seen while browsing a dynamically updating website).

Transaction (Process ID 98) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.

Just announced! I will be one of the panelists at Design2.0 – San Francisco.

The theme of the event is Products and their Ecosystems: Understanding the power of context in product innovation

Moderated by Jesse Scanlon of BusinessWeek
and in addition to myself, the speakers are:
Diego Rodriguez – IDEO, MetaCool
Peter Rojas – Engadget
Robyn Waters – RW Trend

I’m really looking forward to the event.

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Days after blogging about the dramatic impact of Latino culture, there’s a front page story in the SF Chron about Latino-owned businesses.

Theirs is one of a increasing number of Latino-owned businesses in California and across the country that reflect the nation’s growing Latino population. The number of Latino-owned businesses in the United States grew by 31 percent between 1997 and 2002, more than three times the rate for all businesses. In California, Latino businesses grew 27 percent, more than twice as much as businesses overall, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“It illustrates that the contribution they make to the economy is growing rapidly,” said Lee Wentela, chief of the bureau’s economic census branch. He said 15 percent of all California businesses are owned by Latinos.
…
Indeed, the vast majority of Latino entrepreneurs nationally have only themselves on the payroll — 87 percent versus 75 percent for all businesses.

The impact of Latinos on California and its economy is deepening. In 1997, 336,405 Latino-owned businesses took in $51.7 billion in California. In 2002, the 427,727 Latino-owned businesses in California had $57.2 billion in sales and other receipts, a 27 percent rise in the number of businesses and an 11 percent increase in their economic impact.

In 1997, Latinos accounted for 9.8 million or 30 percent of Californians. By 2002, their number had risen 21 percent to 11.9 million, and they made up 34 percent of California’s population. Nationwide, the Latino population grew 33 percent, from 29.2 million to 38.8 million, or 13 percent of the total population.

The Hapa Project showed up on one of the pre-show ads at the SF Int’l Asian American Film Festival last weekend. It was cool to see the word Hapa again, I had heard the term but had forgotten. It’s slang for (a person) of mixed racial heritage with partial roots in Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry, and the project is a book of photos (and an exhibit) of people who self-identify as Hapa.

Reminded me of a spirited and interesting discussion on Metafilter recently about racial identity and racism, epitomized by the What Are You? question.

Projective Techniques for Projection Technologies, my paper for the dux05 conference, has just been posted online. Check it out here!

To facilitate the development of a new home-entertainment device (a portable projector with built-in speakers and a DVD player) we conducted in-home interviews that explored home entertainment activities, presented a demo of a rough prototype, and brainstormed with participants about future refinements.

I don’t often get to talk about my consulting work, so it’s great to have a fairly detailed case study published and available.

Design brings more cultural mashups. Al Quds jeans, from Italy, are designed for Muslims.

The bagginess is to ensure the wearer avoids stiffness while bending down repeatedly during prayers. The pockets are for holding all the accessories Muslims have to take off while they worship. And the jeans have green seams – because green is the sacred color of Islam.

Insane Thai beaten to death for destroying sacred Hindu shrine

A 27-year-old mentally disturbed Thai man was beaten to death by enraged onlookers at a world-famous shrine in downtown Bangkok after he destroyed a popular statue of a Hindu deity with a hammer, police said.

Thanakorn Pakdeepol, who police said had a history of mental illness, was killed after he broke into the Erawan Shrine and used a hammer to shatter a four-headed statue of Brahma covered in gold. Thousands of Thais and tourists seek good fortune at the statue every day.

We were just there in January. Here’s our pics.

Tracing the roots of a Canadian icon

Wendy’s International Inc. is expected to spin -off a 15-per-cent stake in Tim Hortons this week, and curious observers are watching to see how many of the shares will land in Canadian hands.

The stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange, but the vast bulk of Tim Hortons’s coffee sales still occur north of the border, where the chain has strong roots.
…
Tim Hortons now has about 2,597 outlets north of the border and 288 in the U.S.

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan cheered when they learned that Tim Hortons is opening an outlet in Kandahar.

Hmm. Eating Timbits in Afghanistan? A new book idea!

When I spoke at Easy6 earlier this year, some of the speakers reminded their audience that companies were doing business in India becaus of the innovation spirit, not because it was cheaper. There is some evidence that it’s actually cheaper elsewhere, even. I wondered at the time how much of that was just blowing smoke; a big lie that people have bought into so they can have pride and work hard and not be seen as America’s Call Center, etc. So it was cool to see an American perspective supporting that supposition in the New York Times.

Read-Ink, one of the self-financed operations, is developing an advanced handwriting recognition software that can read scanned forms, claim forms, medical records and even digital tablets.

Its founders, Thomas O. Binford, a retired computer science professor from Stanford University, and his wife, Ione, a former manager at Hewlett-Packard, arrived here four years ago with five suitcases. They say they are now close to signing up their first business customer.

The signs of this shift toward high-value work are becoming more visible. Executives at Silicon Valley Bank, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., and provides consulting services to technology and venture capital firms, said they were seeing twice as many Indian start-ups looking for capital investment than even a few months ago.