• My pictures from Amsterdam 2009 (377 of 'em!) – Here's the whole set on Flickr. I'll continue to blog highlights from the trip. Next up, Belgium.

• Interesting and inspirational exhibit at SFMOMA: Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans" – "I'm always looking outside, trying to look inside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true, except what's out there. And what's out there is always changing."
• A hedge fund manager learns to say "no" to investment proposals, fighting to buck the trend of easy if ludicrous investing – I told him that it was the dumbest idea I’d heard in a long while, and that I’d sooner pile up hundred-dollar bills to make a bonfire than invest. I hung up abruptly, and I began to feel a long-forgotten rush. The rush of calling foolishness by its true name. The pleasure of meting out chastisement to presumption. The satisfaction of knowing that my no meant a death blow for this bad idea, because there wasn’t an uncritical yes waiting next door. I am capital’s gatekeeper, and you shall not pass!

• Mark Menjivar's You Are What You Eat – Set of naturalistic images of inside of refrigerators, with brief profile of the owner. Beautifully done.
• Rollasole – after-dancing semisposable shoe vending – Fact 1: The best nightclubs are notoriously located at either the top or the bottom of a massive flight of stairs.
  Fact 2: The best nightclub shoes are painful, precarious and perilously pointy.
  But fear not, for we at Rollasole have appeared like Prince Charmings (sic) to gently escort you down the stairs, across the kerb and into the back of your carriage – all without falling on your face.
  When you're all danced out, just slip one of our vending machines a fiver and it'll sort you out with a pair of roly poly pumps and a shiny new bag to shove your slingbacks in.

  (via Springwise)

• Legendary McDonald's failure in the UK – McPloughman – Although vegetarian burgers have failed in the U.S. McDonald's, one of McDonald's most spectacular production failures happened in Britain. This failure can be seen not only as a failure to understand the desires of its primary market, largely for burgers and fries, but also as a lack of understanding of a food product that is tied to British identity. In 1994 McDonald's test marketed the "McPloughman" in Britain. A "ploughman's lunch" is a very traditional British lunch that consists of bread, cheese (British, of course, usually cheddar) and a pickle (also cured in the British style). An attempt to tie the America-based company to such a traditional British product was a "McFlop." The company admitted that the British counter crew were embarrassed both by the concept and by the name itself.

  [Thanks to Stokes Jones for the tip to this one]

• A sociological-framed blog with (like so many others) commentary on images from media and daily life – The sociological imagination is a woefully under-utilized tool. We hope this blog encourages all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination and that, between all of us, public discourse will increasingly include a sociological lens with which we can all learn about social processes and mechanisms, critique social inadequacies, and design functional and equitable alternatives.

  We assume that you, our audience, are sociologically-inclined folks. So we do not typically include a lengthy sociological interpretation of the images.

  Images are polysemic and people will view and use them in many different ways, so our commentary, when offered, is never meant to control how people use the images (as if we could anyway). We welcome comments that offer additional or alternative interpretations of images.

• A "Geography of Buzz" – Research presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers locates "cultural hot spots" by looking at frequency and spatial mapping of geo-tagged photographs. The exclusive use of for-sale Getty images to make up the research sample (as opposed to a diverse sample including photo Tweets, etc. that might have been more underground-inclusive) raises interesting questions about the definition of "buzz." What's buzz to one person–a Broadway opening, for example–may well be noise to another.
• My photos from Los Angeles, Feb 2009 – I spent a week in L.A. doing some work, some cupcake shopping, and some vacationing. Here's the photos from that trip.

Today’s Doonesbury reminded me of a curious incident during my recent trip to L.A.

Getting off the freeway in Gardena, on the way to our appointment, I passed by this place:

Guard dog rental? Amazing heroic mural? I had to stop and take a picture. I did a few U-turns, stuck my camera out the window, took some shots (even from across the street I could hear that kennel sound of a million dogs barking), and headed the last mile to my appointment. Parked in front of our participant’s building and getting our gear ready, I was surprised when a Hummer pulled up beside us. The window rolled down and the uniformed driver, presumably the guy in the mural, said to me “You were taking pictures of my building?”

I really was confused; it was already a few minutes ago and a mile away; I was on to the next thing and it took about 15 seconds to realize that i) he had seen me across the street taking pictures and ii) he had got into his vehicle and followed me for a mile to check into it. Once I realized that he was not asking about the building I was currently standing in front of, but something from a few minutes ago, I explained that he had a beautiful mural. And this was a perfectly satisfactory answer. He told me that some of his puppies had been taken, and then introduced himself and gave me his business card. We wished each other a good day, and he drove off.

I thought about what had just transpired and how it could have been so different. There was nothing threatening about this man or his manner, just his context (a large and physically present individual who runs a security firm in a Hummer); given that he embodied a potential threat, he gave off a pleasing calmness, with no undertone of intimidation. I was not scared or uncomfortable; but I realized very quickly that the scenario was one where those feelings would be typical, and I attribute this guy’s serious coolness for keeping it that way.

See more of Steve’s L.A. photos here.

• IxDA SF presents Interaction09 Redux – Saturday, March 14th – I'll be leading a condensed version of my IXDA workshop from Vancouver (Well we did all this research…now what), looking at a framework for transforming questions into answers, answers into insights, and insights into actions.
• Steve's photos from Vancouver, Feb 2009 – I was in Vancouver to run a workshop at the IXDA conference and to visit family. Some of the photos will make their way into dedicated blog posts but meanwhile here's the whole set.
• Juice is in the details – Tropicana's redesign is being heralded for the caps that look like oranges. We've got a carton in the fridge and it's as plain as plain can be, so I'm not sure where these great caps are lurking. Meanwhile, back in 2006 we were seeing orange-looking caps on Florida's Natural packaging.
• Tropicana reverts to "classic" packaging after their crappy redesign is met with broad scorn – Mea pulpa: "Asked if he was chagrined that consumers rejected the changes he believed they wanted, Mr. Campbell replied: “I feel it’s the right thing to do, to innovate as a company. I wouldn’t want to stop innovating as a result of this. At the same time, if consumers are speaking, you have to listen.”"

At the house of some long-time family friends, a husband and wife express themselves through their personal spaces.

She, the Elvis Room.

He, the garage.

• Photo Clichés (You're Not As Original As You Think) – Pictures of people being uniquely hilarious, just like all the other people who took the same photo – (via kottke) At first I thought yeah, people are really lame, acting all goofy and clever but being just like everyone else, but then I realized that this is all about culture, and design. Cultural stories – memes – travel fast, far, and wide, and so imitating a famous pose become a rapid shorthand for belongingness. And designed objects and environments have affordances, built-in invitations to be used a certain way, to be grabbed, held aloft, or whatever. Everyone puts their head in the shark's mouth because it's designed to invite you to do so. When people use a product over and over the way it was intended, we may consider that a design success. So while these are funny pictures to look at it the aggregate, it doesn't mean that we (or the people in the pictures) are all that lame. We're collecting and transmitting culture and we're responding to artifacts that are designed to be used any number of ways.

Books left on floor, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA

Notice in school bus window, Pacifica, CA

Sign, Bonny Doon, CA

Sign, San Jose, CA

Sign, San Francisco, CA

Posters, San Francisco, CA

6-panel strip on telephone pole, Chicago, IL

Related Posts:
Framed Framework/Conceptual Art
Words
The End of Things