You are a snob!... or just have low modesty.

Mindset Media released a report profiling the personality of the average Mac user. Here are the reported traits: high-openness, low-dogmatism, low-modesty, high-superiority, and high-perfectionism. Of course some are reporting the Mac users as having super egos and others are seeing the Mac user as a brighter future. No mystery as to which side the marketing department will take. My thought is that creative people are needing more expensive and more technology, so they are becoming recognized in the market place as a viable market. Now their personality has found a home in a technology and visa-versa. I cannot find the full report but here is a link to its mention:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-16-2008/0004737667

This is this american life

I am addicted to "This American Life" radio show. It is my "Lost"," American Idol", or "24". Not having any real knowledge of their tv show I decided to view their promo and this image was used as the title screen. Without the words I know it is not obvious as to the meaning, but with the words and knowing the feel of the show it feels so right. Or maybe this is just a shameless plug for my favorite show.

Go Here to Listen:

http://www.thislife.org/Default.aspx

Apple TV

I just viewed the intro video to Apple TV. This product is a great step in the right direction yet I am not seeing, besides the rental feature, how this product with a $300 price tag is better than just getting a macmini at $550 and having a great deal of other features plus the use of it as a computer and music system. Also the price of 2.99- 3.99 a move for a 24hr period is a bit much. The prices on movies and other products need to come down, the cost that have been elliminated in production of these products have been greatly reduced and I do not think it is being reflected well in the price. That said, I am excited about on demand movies with out being tied to a subscription.

Has anyone had the opportunity to use the AppleTV?

Trail Signs

I have a book called "Signs and Signals" by Catherine Davidson. This is a book outlining some basic forms of communications using signs and signals, obviously, like sports hand signals or sign language. One section that I thought would shed some light on signs along the trail ended up confusing me more.

















As a brief intro stated, some of these signs might be made out of objects found along the trail. Interesting to think of how to display a message using found objects and how they really work only with found objects. As 2-D symbols representing how they would be seen along the trail the signs, three out of four, seem misleading especially because the arrow (the main clue) would not be there. If I was on a trail and said "look a trail signal" and saw the found objects arranged so I would probably get it, mostly because it is one of a handful of messages that would want to be communicated. Now how to recognize when there is a sign versus nature's own fate or displaying a more complex message like "rattlesnake wielding mountain men below" I have no idea.

Post Secret Book

I was in the book store the other day and ran across the book My Secret: A Post Secret Book which Amazon describes as this:

At the beginning of 2005, Frank Warren launched a new blog called PostSecret as an experiment in community art, inviting strangers to mail him anonymous postcards that made art out of their innermost secrets and then posting a selection of the cards every week on his blog. Within a year, his blog was one of the five most popular in the world, and his first book, PostSecret, was one of the surprise bestsellers of 2005. My Secret is his second book, a collection of cards from teens and college students--none of which has been shown on the website--that carries the same emotional power and creativity that have made Warren's project a phenomenon.


Most of the secrets were a bit juvenile but one almost brought me to tears. A person sent in a postcard that his Grandmother sent to him. She would send him postage paid postcards so that he would write to her. Now the grandmother had past but the grandson still had empty postcards one of which he sent to this blog, now book, reflecting on how he should have written her more.

This hit home since it took me awhile to realize my Grandmother likes me to send letters and that at 92 that is all she really wants is to hear from family and be reminded of how amazing of a woman she has been in her life.

Knowing When it is Time to Change

My family keeps twisting my arm to get a new TV. They have all bought new TVs in the past two years so I imagine they still have the fever. I really do not see a point until 2009 when the signal goes digital, even then I might just take the rebate and get a box. So I have resisted for the past years explaining a new TV is a luxury not a necessity.

This works for the most part, then as I was driving I had to chuckle when I realized that I was behind the icons. The icon for the TV has changed. My rabbit ears gone from the picture. It was like watching the changing telephone icons, only to go over to my grandmothers and realizing she missed decades of design changes.

So this has me thinking about icon evolutions. Already the light bulb is changing, but what else?