I put together a holiday mix with Daniel, and I’m giving it to friends. We made it on Christmas Day from vinyl records my brother has lying around. The idea was that vinyl would give it the nostalgic vibe, and most of the songs are quiet and warm. It’s like someone got ahold of Starbucks’ holiday christmas CD and removed all the evidence of 2003, replacing it with evidence of the mid-20th century. All that Nora Jones, Alicia Keys, and whoever else is replaced by Nat “King” Cole, Stan Getz, et al., then augmented by Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and the like, just to spice it up.

Here’s the track listing:
1. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Nat “King” Cole
2. Baby Lets Swing
Todd Rundgren
3. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
Bob Dylan
4. Les Paumes du Petit Matin
Jacques Brel
5. Corcovado
Stan Getz w/Astrud Gilberto
6. Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat
Bob Dylan
7. Dreamsville
Henry Mancini
8. Gone with “what” wind
Charlie Christian
9. Woman in Love
Streisand
10. Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
The Rolling Stones
11. Boots of Spanish Leather
Bob Dylan
12. Mama Miss America
Paul McCartney
13. You Can’t Always Get What You Want
The Rolling Stones
14. January in Bombay
Chet Atkins

Speaking with Daniel last night about video games. He enjoyed this article in the Sunday Times about Atari, its new leadership and funding, and the future of video games.

They say the future is bright for video games. I thought so back when I was 8 years old, playing Buck Rogers on my grandfather’s ColecoVision system. And I felt it again when I first played SSX 3 for The Playstation 2 last week.

Anyway, Daniel was speaking of ethics in video games, about how it’s all shooting things and blowing things up, and that maybe it’s time for some reform here. I don’t have children, so I don’t give a fuck, but lets presume that there is some sort of moral or ethical issue here, and the violence must end, and maybe we should be teaching something other than hand-eye coördination and how to obliterate the enemy.

Keeping that in mind, take a look at the typical video game system and its controller. The basic controller affords movement with the joystick (of your piece, or you, or your ship) and a few other actions (blow things up, accelerate, punch stuff, etc). It’s an elegant interface, but I think it limits the kinds of video games created.

My friends who play online RPG/strategy games (like Ultima Online) strongly prefer the keyboard and mouse over any other game controller because there’s a vast number of commands and modes in RPG games. So I think the gaming industry needs to augment the current platform with something that goes a little beyond the simple controller plus buttons we’ve used since the 80s. It’s time for a new interface.

Lets step back and look at the whole system, not just the controller, in an effort to get away from the status quo. One problem with current-day video game systems is that they make no attempt to bring players into eye contact with each other. In a 3 player video game, everyone stares at the screen and shoots wildly. If it’s a collaborative game, there may be some conversation about strategy, but otherwise it’s pretty much devoid of direct personal interaction.

I’d like to create a video game that isn’t time-limited and that involves eye direct contact between players. Something more like Chess or Scrabble—the kind of game you’d be comfortable playing with friends in a coffee shop.

Enter the digital gaming table. The initial model would have two “controllers” and a built-in flat panel (the table top). The controllers might have their own display (for Scrabble, card games, etc). I envision an interface that is solely about direct manipulation, so probably a touch screen or two is involved. Slide your finger across the table to move something, etc.

What I’d like to do next is start building a table and devloping game ideas simultaneously. I think the table should have a general enough interface to allow for a number of traditional board/card games (1-4 players), so development can work in parallel.

Do you have any ideas about the interface? That’s the biggest challenge, I think. Here are the requiprements:
- allow for games where each player has a private “hand.”
- facilitate direct manipulation of “pieces” if possible.
- keep the table surface flat, so it’s usable for reading the newspaper and drinking coffee, but keep the interface easy to get to when it’s needed.
- avoid cords if possible
- the touch screen either needs to be REALLY sturdy or kept away from the table top.
- is it possible to make a glass top table with a touch screen somehow built into the glass?
- the game board itself -could- be displayed via an LCD projector directly above the table.
- inspiration might come from Audiopad, though I don’t like little radio sensors that can get lost/stolen/eaten/broken.

There will be more to come on this topic…

Here are some of the freshest ideas I’ve had. Just need somewhere to put them for now, so why not here:

Connect a computer up to a digital projector, and place it in parallel with a standard movie projector in a theater. The computer displays only a little sliver of something, set just above or below the movie projector’s image on the screen. What would it display?

- “pop-up video”-style trivia.
- synchronized subtitled director’s commentary
- real-time text messages sent in by the audience
- current sports scores, during sports season
- breaking news, as needed (“WE GOT HIM”?)

OK, all my ideas for the content are kind of whacky, but I think this has potential if one were to mull on it further. What I like about it is that every viewing of the movie could be different. No two audiences will have the same experience. I also like the idea of some form of audience participation, turning a movie into a performance.

A photo of storefronts without signs (photoshopped out), preferably a strip mall
juxtapozed with photo of beautiful old retail architecture (see harvard design school book)

Japanese Vacation Photos of America— coffee-table type book. Japanese people are renowed for the quantity of vacation photographs they take. Aren’t you interested in their perspective? I’d go to Japan for research, visit families who have travelled to America. Most pictures would probably be of American landmarks, some with other Japanese people around, the Japanese tour bus, etc.

Celebrity Water Heaters— and other domestic photos. Touring the basements of the stars.

Architecture by Non-Architects— a review of functionally excellent buildings designed by non-architects. I only know of a couple examples off-hand (Tor House, Boston Athanaeum’s facade (?), etc), but this would be a lot of fun to research.

Now that the ski season is going, I see a growing need for WiFi access points out there in the wilderness, or at least at the base lodge. I was yearning for this last year when I broke my wrist and sat in the lodge all day with my laptop. I’d love a little timed-use internet access with my hot cocoa in the lodge. This is especialy true for places like Smuggs, who already have a huge hotel at the bottom of the mountain.

Victoria’s Secret meets Virgin Megastore as a sex shop— tall ceilings, open plan, escalators, plasma TVs, big wall-sized color posters, nice light, high end adult products, nice packaging, friendly service. Right on Newbury St. / 5 Av / Michigan Ave / Rodeo Dr.

I went Christmas shopping this weekend. I’m pretty jaded about the whole thing, but I did it. I tried to find very “classic” stuff, things that will last a long time. An old hardcover book. A bottle of whiskey. A simple knit hat. A vase. etc. What I like about these classic gifts (as opposed to, say, a DVD) is that they will last longer, they’re not much more expensive, and they may come to represent a place and time for the recipient. They’ll gain both monetary and sentimental value over time.

Anyway, here are some interesting products I’ve seen while out and about, not all of which are “classic”:
The JavaLog, made from spent coffee grounds. Brilliant.
Method Home revamped dish soap and going up against P&G in the grocery store.
Mighty Leaf tea company. They’ve redone the packaging and it’s good: each teabag is cloth, not paper. The label is swen on, not stapled. Very expensive, very “natural” feeling. Nice.
Nigella Lawson Bowls and Canisters. Thoughtful design, and good looking— a difficult combo.
Dr. Glide 6x17cm panoramic medium format camera. Wow. Out of my price range, but I would love to go on a long trip with one of these.
Star Alliance round-the-world plane tickets, with as many stops as you want. They are supposedly reasonably priced, and you can spread your ticket out over a whole year. Very little notice required before flights.
Klockworks clocks. Nothing more needs to be said.
French clothing: Agnes B. and A.P.C. Simple and not much more pricey than Banana Republic.

Just watched Francois Truffaut’s 1959 directorial debut, The 400 Blows.. wow, what an excellent movie. I usually don’t go in for B&W films, but Truffaut delivers in a big way. The 400 Blows is the story of Antoine Doinel, a mischevious kid growing up in 1950s Paris whose petty crimes get him into all kinds of trouble with his parents, his teachers, and eventually the law. I think Antoine is portrayed as a victim of circumstance, always assumed to be guilty and unable to defend himself properly. Toward the end of the film, he finally speaks frankly with a psychiatrist about what he’s done— of course he’s just exploring the world and pushing a few boundaries, but you see that he rarely (or never) intends to do harm. The movie is very well put together and engaging even for my modern-day taste. It conveys something so classic, so pure and simple about every day ife in 1950s Paris. Was life really like that back then, or is Truffaut romanticising it a bit? Aside from being a good story, could this be looked back on as a historical snapshot of the times? Having not been alive at the time I suppose I can’t say whether it’s accurate. But it looks nice.

Today I thought, “Cook with all your senses”. That is, make empirical measurements rather than getting out those dreaded spoons and cups. Not only is it a faster approach, it also feels more natural somehow. If you understand the ingredients, what their typical ratios look or feel like, and what they look like when they’re properly cooked, you don’t need much in the way of recipes. I remember the story of the French bakers who know, down to the drop, how much water to add to their dough as they knead it. They know by look, they know by feel, and they know because they’ve done it all their lives. I tend to go in this direction when I make a recipe more than once. Someone recently told me they never make a recipe more than once, and while I appreciate the adventure of it, it might never allow them to fully experience one recipe, take it to the n-th degree, learn how to do it blindfolded, and personalize it.

The best and worst of Bostonians comes out right after a snowstorm. Walking out for a cup of joe this morning, everybody said “hello”, “good morning”, etc. I probably waved and smiled at more random people this morning than the average celebrity. That was around 9am. As the day wore on and people realized what they were up against (2 hours to dig their car out, then the plow comes and buries it again, repeat), they started to get angry. Cars were honking at pedestrians in the street who had no sidewalk to walk on. People put lawn furniture in public parking spots, trying to hold a space. It doesn’t help that each person in Cambridge has their own personal car (5 or so cars for a 3-family house), so there’s already not enough room for everyone…

The snow finally stopped this afternoon, and I went out with fellow Zipcar folks to remove snow from our cars. We looked at upcoming reservations in the neighborhood and visited as many cars as we could. Among the four groups that went out, we got about 50 cars done, of 170 or so above-ground cars the Boston fleet. It felt great to get out and bust my ass with some real manual labor for once.

Tonight, outside Trader Joe’s on Mem Drive, I saw the single largest pile of snow I’ve ever encountered. No camera, so no photo, but it was probably 10 times the size of this one in the local supermarket parking lot.

It feels like an Alaskan outpost here, now more than ever.

Greg forwarded an interesting site to me today:

An Analysis of Netflix’s DVD Allocation System

Netflix’s approach dynamically adjusts the quality of their service for different classes of customers. As a new Netflix customer, it’s important that I have a good experience, so they’ll give me better access to new releases. As a long-time but high-margin customer, I’ll get a similar treatment. Since they have a subscription model, infrequent users are high-margin users. But if my habits are eating too far into their profits, the availability of items in my movie queue will fall off dramatically. They’re actively adjusting my behavior (with respect to their service) so they can make more cash. Once I’ve entered Netflix limbo, I may end up going to Blockbuster to get that new release I want, which is fine with Netflix— I’m paying them monthly, not per rental. This model, properly tuned, will only eat into customer satisfaction for the kinds of customers they don’t want anyway.

Another example of this can be found in credit card customer service centers. Some credit card companies are reportedly sticking their worst customers (the ones with excellent credit, who always pay their bills on time) on hold for longer, and immediately answering calls from their best customers (the ones who pay the minimum each month, etc).

I call this the “fire your customers” model of achieving higher margins and selective customer satisfaction with the limited resources of any profit-driven company.

Lets look at another approach— the approach of Easy Everything, the company behind Easy Internet Café, Easy Cinema, Easy Jet, and others. They are all about dynamic pricing, so rather than firing or otherwise inconveniencing the customers they don’t like, they simply charge more. Easy Internet Cafés make you pay by the minute for access, and their per-minute price is dynamically tied to the utilization of the cafe. You pay a lot more during peak hours. Easy Cinema prices their movie tickets dynamically, depending on a combination of how far in advance you book (want to see Gigli for 90 pents? Book 2 weeks ahead) and how popular the showing is (based on past utilization or on current bookings made so far).

I call this the price tweaking approach, and it seems very much in vogue right now. Of course, airlines have done it for years. It’s typically combined with lots of value-added things that cost extra. At the Internet Cafe I can buy drinks, print things out for $x per page, etc.

I don’t mind paying more at peak times and for extra services; it makes sense to me that I should, and while I do feel I’m getting a good deal if I play the game right, I’ll always wonder what the person sitting next to me paid. Also, as opposed to the “fire you customers” model, my experience will not be worse at times when I pay less (in fact it might be better— I’d rather sit in a quiet, mostly empty Internet cafe anyway). But the dynamic pricing model is annoyingly opaque when compared to Netflix or the simple “Matinee vs. prime-time” movie pricing that most theaters use. But by requiring you to put the movie tickets onto your credit card, they make the dynamic pricing pill easier to swallow.

Anyway, I think both of these models are really just getting off the ground. They rely heavily on computer-based analysis, trends, etc.

Other things to think about:
- As an outsider, what can you glean simply from the dynamic pricing? If you know what goes into the pricing, and how it’s weighted, you might be able to extrapolate backwards and get some really nice information about usage patterns, etc.
- What other traditional businesses set prices dynamically?
- Cell phone companies, roughly based on network utilization
- “Filenes Basement” discount clothing store, based on how long it’s been sitting around.
- Music? Listen to it the first time for cheap. Each time thereafter, the song gets more expensive, until it eventually is free. Nice concept, wouldn’t work in the real world.
- You tell me!

I’ve never been mistaken for a girl before. OK, I may not be the manliest man in the world, but people know I’m male.

So why has the Discover Card market segmentation group decided that I’m a girl? I received a holiday card from them today. In pink:

“We’re here to spread a little holiday cheer— with savings to make you smile.”

“15% off your purchase of $100 or more at Ann Taylor and a double Cashback Bonus® award”

I’m ecstatic.

In trying to decide how they came to the conclusion that I am of the opposite sex, I looked back at my bills. Here are the girliest charges I could find:

Oct 14th : Penzey’s Spices, $36.44
Dec 12st : Bed Bath & Beyond, $125.99
Dec 24th : Williams Sonoma, $21.65
Apr 21st : Design Within Reach, $291.43
Aug 6th : Sak’s Fifth Avenue, $231.80
Jan 11th : Crate & Barrel, $419.95

But the following manly charges should at least cancel those out:

Dec 31st : Liquor World, $64.26
Dec 26th : CompUSA, $76.46
Jun 25th : MicroCenter, $12.58
Jan 1st : Eastern Mountain Sports, $42.95
Oct 15th : Tweeter Electronics, $136.49
Jan 18th : Burton Snowboard Factory Store, $129.85

Hmmm…

In Nashville for Thanksgiving weekend. The pace of this town is so good for the soul. It’s quiet and the weather has been lovely. Excellent thanksgiving lamb with the fam. Lots of gravy. Our once humble home is so sprawling and beautiful now, I hardly recognize. Now that my parents are rid of me and my grandparents have all died or moved in, they’ve brought out the nice dishes and tablecloths, set up the family heirlooms around the house, and so on. It’s so pleasant and proper now. Antique handmade oriental rugs and all that sort of thing.

I hung around with Daniel and Leslie last night, drank an amazing bottle of vintage port with them, designed a CD case for the Bees record. We listened to Ravi Shankar and Phillip Glass until it drove us crazy. Daniel off to England early in the morning to help out on a Julian Dawson record.

Played breakfast Scrabble with Freddie and Whitney, and discussed road trips and web design and Ryan’s mystique (is it intentional? is it unveiled by his blog?) and facial expressions and triple word scores.

The other night I spoke with Ryan offhand about friend networks. It got me thinking about all that again \\

I think we can frequently improve a design by looking at ways people “misuse” it. We do it all the time. With Friendster, an obvious example is the proliferation of fake, non-human Friends. I’ve seen “Harvard Square” as a person on Friendster. Harvard Square doesn’t have musical and book tastes, but it is a community hub of sorts, so it’s clear now why someone would want to identify with it online. Having not the foresight to build a feature to link people via objects or geography or ideas from the start, the Friendster creators have to deal with the consequences of these “fake” friends. Fake friends would not exist if the software had originally accounted for the human need a little better. Tribe Networks was smart enough to add this feature on their own. Though at first glance their site looks just as hastily thrown together as Friendster.

Another nice feature of friend network sites might be blog integration (why not mix one overhyped concept with another?) — you’d have your blog alongside your profile. Of course, you’d also want some form of access control on your blog entries; only some should be public. You could restrict some entries to yourself, and make some only available to n levels of friends from you, or groups of friends.

Many people use both blogs and friend networks (and address books!) to keep in touch. I want to see the integration of all three. I especially like to get a snapshot of what my distant friends are up to, what they’re thinking about, etc. Both a profile and a blog help with this. But I also want to know when their phone number changes.

Here are the friend network sites I’ve found over time:

Ryan’s Snuffster
MySpace (Ryan: “all the cool kids are using myspace now.”)
Tribe Networks - the most advanced in terms of features?
ChiaFriend
of course, Friendster

and… Colleen from work sent me an invite to a business networking site, same idea… but I don’t remember the name. Anyone? Update 12/9: It’s LinkedIn… haven’t really looked at them yet. Anyone else heard of them?