“We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds…Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.” – Alaine de Botton
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
Shortly Over Part 2: Twitter Returns Long URLs
After maintaining years of awkward, inconsistent URL shortening behavior because of some vague argument about SMS capabilities – Twitter has announced links passed through their service may or may not be shortened to t.co. “A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed …
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Dan Pink on Incentives and Work.
A great talk & animation on motivation for all the slower, smaller, better-smelling horses out there.
Every Proper Noun is Free Marketing
This is simply sandbox to flush out this idea. I promise more incoherent ramblings and typos than usual. Scrabble now allows proper nouns in some game play. Seems like a great opportunity for Mattel to sell double word scores to the highest bidder. If every proper noun is marketing, who are you marketing right now? …
A Long March
For the past 10 years (as long as I’ve been noticing) March has been tough month for me. It’s as if my mind and body finally succumb to the winter’s weight. The smallest things start to seem overwhelming and their failure inevitable. Rather than magical place full of opportunity and wonderfulness, the world seems trite, …
Sturgeon’s Law, Now Recursive
Theodore Sturgeon is credited with saying, “90% of everything is crud” In this age of always-on, real-time, democratized media there’s so much more of everything – 90% isn’t what it used to be. Even if we determine the remaining 10% of everything isn’t complete and utter trash. We still need to cull for relevance, importance, …
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It seems to me, that like XML and violence, the world would be a better place with less Javascript.
Initial Thoughts on Google Offering Droid for @font-face Use
My initial thoughts on Google offering a hosted version of Droid: This is more an extension of their mobile play than getting into the font hosting. Here’s why: The Android handsets only display the Droid family of fonts. Google’s stated a number of times they’re serious about being successful in mobile. Google is a web …
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Returning the Page
Back in art school – I spent some time with a designer-turned-fine-artist name Eric (last name since forgotten). Aside from his crash course in contemporary fine art of the late 1990s the thing I remember most about him was his answer to my question: Why did you switch from design to fine art? He looks …
2005-Present: I Protect
Great talk from Linda Stone on what comes after ‘continuous partial attention’. She argues that it’s filtering, engagement, discernment, and a striving for intimacy and a quality of live. “Understanding Workers” vs. “Knowledge Workers” Conversely, being tuned into the always-on, real-time stream creates a constant sense of crisis. Additionally, this constant fight-or-flight actually prevents innovation …