Author Archives: John

barnes and nobles says opt out is ok

like official government mail, only different

Important Information Regarding Your Borders Account

I’m not going to the mat on this one, but if you want to send me an email after you’ve bought up the physical and intellectual assets of your former competitor, please try to keep from insulting my assumed by you parochial view of online reality at the same time.

Non-breaking news: Borders Book Stores are no more. Bulletin: Chain declares bankruptcy. Bulletin: Assets bought by competitor.

My good friend William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, wrote me the other day on behalf of the entire B&N team to make sure I was aware of important information regarding my (former) and seldom used Borders account.

Skip down to fourth paragraph: “It’s important for you to understand however you have the absolute right to opt-out of having your customer data transferred to Barnes & Noble.” (Bold theirs.)

Then follow a couple more graphs of boilerplate and schmooze, but basically the message seems to be driven by B&N’s attempt to spin this in their favor by offering me the option of bailing by a date certain, after which they’ll just go ahead and act on the info as if no opinion equals okey-dokey.

In fact, they could have, and would have, curried a lot more favor by allowing me to opt in to their marketing plan. This would have had the added benefit to solicit more personal choices, including genres, platforms, frequency, etc. All presumeably valuable, driven by the coupon with sign-up bribe good for something or other, coffee maybe, MP3 download possibly, after a short survey.

On the other hand, they’ve got a probably outdated windfall list of – well, a bunch of – email addresses just ready to be acted on if they don’t hear back! Opportunity knocked. No one answered.

My guess is they’ll never know what they didn’t know.

an honest product

a perfect combination of flavor, value and integrity

It’s a lucky day when I discover product integrity, honesty, marketing savvy and economy in the humblest of packages. Blue Runner Foods cans beans, Creole sauces, and chili components at their Gonzales, Louisiana facility just off Interstate 10 halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This is the only product carried by my local (Florida) Winn Dixie, but all their varieties are available on their online store.

The thing about red beans and rice as a staple is that preparation isn’t difficult. It does take some time, but unless you’re planning on feeding a junior high football team, it’s not really conducive to small batch quantities. I like mine simmered with a little chopped andouille.

After that, there’s not much else to say. Their web site is basic: down to earth, practical, easy to navigate and to the point. They process and can food. Nothing could be simpler, so why complicate matters?

cycle world sold – again: to bonnier ab

The saga of Cycle World’s future existence continued today on news of the venerable publication’s sale to Field & Stream publisher Bonnier AB, a family held privately owned media group headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Self-described as, “… a culturally progressive, humanistic organization (with) knowledge-sharing goals,” the European publisher is also involved in book publishing, broadcast, digital, cinema, cultural events and educational efforts.

Many of the company’s best known titles were acquired as part of the Time print selloff in 2007.

News of Cycle World’s (re)sale was predicted before the ink was dry on the June, 2011 sale by HFM to Hearst. Shortly after the transfer, rumors began circulating that the familiar CW brand was for sale by owner, no reasonable offer refused. Bonnier’s titles also include Popular Science and Parenting. In a statement announcing the sale, Cycle World is slotted for Bonnier’s special interest Outdoor channel. The amount of the sale was not disclosed.

Bonnier’s portfolio of titles is impressive, and includes such special interest lifestyle nameplates as Saveur, the Transworld active collection, Motorboating and Yachtbroker. Given the production quality and editorial value of their offerings, Cycle World seems likely to maintain their leadership in print while enjoying a much needed web makeover that could be transformational.

designing for variables – involve, evolve

2011/09 Chris Bangle of Chris Bangle Associates from Creative Mornings/London on Vimeo.

Our speaker at the August 2011 CreativeMornings/London was Chris Bangle, formerly design director at BMW Group and now running Chris Bangle Associates. (chrisbangleassociates.com/) The event was generously hosted by Buro Happold (burohappold.com) and Sense Worldwide (senseworldwide.com). Breakfast was provided by the amazing folks at L’Eto Caffe (155 Wardour Street, Soho) and Vantra (11-13 Soho Street, Soho). Finally, a big shout out to ‘Femi T for providing her photography services on the day.

CreativeMornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types. Each event is free of charge, and includes a 20 minute talk, plus coffee! You can currently join us in New York, Zurich, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. (creativemornings.com)

A big thank you to Nick Culley (nicecreation.co.uk/) for filming and editing the talk.

………………………..

chris bangle presentation promotes design accessibility

This provocative August, 2011 Creative Morning/London presentation argued the benefits of extending the design decision loop beyond the purely economic realm of client-designer, and the potential effects a new style of style and design involvement could have on driving societal change.

CreativeMornings is a publicly available series of short hosted seminars and presentations that take place monthly in cities around the globe. Founded and administered by Tina Roth Eisenberg, best known for her SwissMiss design studio and blog, CreativeMornings brings fresh and original insight on design’s role in our daily lives. If you’re lucky enough to live in one of the cities served, you’re already aware of the very high content quality. If not, the second-to-none production quality on the videos is the next best thing to sitting in the audience.

First Live Digital Image on CompuServe

Digital photograph of ASMP Central Florida chapter February, 1993. David Heller (seated, center) provided IT supervision.
©John Siebenthaler

CompuServe Social Platform’s First Live Digital Image Upload

The black and white digital photograph above is one of the first real time, commercial images to be viewed live on CompuServe’s dialup modem linked network of servers.

Today we snap anecdotal photos by the billions, using miniaturized smart phone cameras to simultaneously update our visual interests to any number of social sites. It wasn’t always this painless. This is what it looked like in the beginning.

February, 1993, and commercial digital photography is in the very early stages of development. Essential JPEG (.jpg) algorithms now taken for granted were still being finalized. TIFF was the standard (bloated and inefficient) format for rasterized image content. <download chapter newsletter (left) PDF

At the same time, while what we now know as the web and its browser enabled rich content was still being imagined, commercial sites of the early years (prohibited then from accessing the WWW) ran over household telephone lines behind an impenetrable wall of individual cantons.

I belonged to CompuServe, the first and then largest of a half-dozen or so commercial intranet social services (AOL, Prodigy, GEnie, each serving their own customer base and incapable of talking to each other) popular at the time. Members jumped online with dialup modems that connected to local access nodes peppered throughout the continent. Common practice when traveling was to tote along a phone jack hack kit and a list of hit-or-miss toll-free numbers.

CompuServe Was Professional Photography’s First National Online Site

As an administrator of Compuserve’s Special Interest Group (SIG) Photography forum, I was able to carve out a private niche for the American Society of Magazine Photographers, becoming the first online presence for a national professional photographer’s organization. (I also formed and chaired ASMP’s first technology committee, authoring the first report to address the issue of online digital access and what that might mean to photographers’ usage rights.)

A regional meeting in Orlando of Florida’s ASMP chapters was the opportunity to photograph members with Kodak’s beta DCS 200mi Digital Camera System. I’d made the loaner list for Kodak’s $20,000, black and white only, heavily modified motor drive Nikon mated to a small, slow hard drive powered by 16 rapidly drained AAs. (So much for blaming Kodak’s eventual bankruptcy on a lack of digital imaging knowledge – this was the first practical digital image capture commercially developed.)

There was no in-camera preview; the image first had to be transferred (over SCSI cable connection) to a Mac IIsi for viewing in Photoshop and downsampling before being uploaded to Compuserve’s mainframe in Columbus, Ohio, a process which took nearly half an hour over a staggeringly slow 2,400-bps modem.

To complete the project, Compuserve’s Photography forum owner in Sacramento had to merge the image into the forum library, and within 15 minutes it was available for viewing and download by ASMP members worldwide. As part of the experiment, ASMP members in three separate chapters throughout the country were also able to conduct live online chats within the forum. The photograph above is one of the first near real time, commercial digital images ever viewed electronically.

product design hits and misses

Fast Company Cries Foul

since you put it that way, what was erik thinking?

Who says you can’t beat that dead horse? Fast Company compares Ulysses to Barcolounger! Whoop! Buell gets a posthumous dressing down over on Fast Company’s Design channel. Their current pictorial serves up a night and day visual of the role design plays in the consumer acceptance cycle. Message? I guess you know it when you see it. Screw around too much and you’ll pay the price: see iPod vs. (M.C.) Hammer clown pants over on the United States of Design for rock solid proof of usually avoidable consequences based on (bad) taste alone. Which is why the t.v. audience for Boise State home games will never exceed friends and family.

bottleneck! your social media workflow

pick and choose what’s manageable

Edelman Digital’s recent post (via David Armano’s typepad driven feed blitz distributed Logic+Emotion blog) announcing their new SlideShare presence adds another layer of social versatility to their expanding toolkit of content sites.

Armano is Edelman PR’s widely followed social guru, operating out of their Chicago office where he spreads knowledge and opinion across the twitter/facebook/linkedin universe. A July post, for instance, presented the case for Google Plus in an extended essay piece that positions the new service as a layer, rather than a channel, then goes on to count the degrees of difference.

so many channels; really, so many channels

But regardless of worthiness, for me it’s yet one more dedicated channel to tend in a garden of tasty greenery run amok. For the small shop and independent practitioner, your fulltime job can easily become a sideline to the babysitting necessary for even basic online maintenance. The connect options presented on their Edelman Digital space (above) include RSS, email, Scribd, SlideShare, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr channels: and that’s just the tip of their social channel spear.

As Delicious prepares to roll out a much needed overhaul courtesy of new owners and YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, I’m split between excitement about what’s to come and concern over management issues. There are no best answers for any one situation. It’s clear, though, that too many channels quickly add up to a weedy, overgrown online presence where your last visited update is months old, stale and reeking of abandonment issues.

aeron chair repair customer service

How Do You Repair An Aeron? Just Call — It’s Covered

Industrial designers Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick describe the original Aeron prototyping at Slate.com.

download Herman Miller’s Aeron Chair Adjustment Guide PDF.

In 1999 I graduated from a comfortably traditional chrome and fabric no instructions needed Steelcase to a revolutionary and slightly intimidating Aeron Christmas present after a test-sitting at the local Herman Miller showroom. This after the realization that my future did not include a drawing board and the transition to full digital was complete.

I didn’t give much thought to warranty coverage at the time. As daily use stretched well into the aughts, however, I started wondering if there was a Herman Miller policy for repairing wear and tear over time.

A Google search quickly turned up warranty details – all out in the open, displayed in large print and written in language anyone can understand. Turns out, their warranty covers parts and labor for 12 years, up from the original 10, from the date of purchase.

How Can We Help You? When A Brand Values Their Reputation

First, when you purchase an Aeron, there’s not one whisper about shelling out for an additional “extended care” warranty. And even though Office Pavilion, the original dealer, no longer serves my region, their replacement, Workplace Resource of Florida, didn’t miss a beat.

My simple email request for info was quickly answered with the necessary (minimal) paperwork attached: a warranty request form that asked for only basic information, mainly the proof of purchase serial number and birth date, both on the chair as shown in the top photo.

I filled it out, waited for a response, and two days later I was in business. No beat down, no obfuscating. Their response in totality: you’ve got a problem, and we’ll fix it.

One month later, I got a phone call from the tech to confirm the repairs, which would be performed onsite. Granted, the chair’s not cheap, but I’d assumed that for a piece of nearly 12-years-old well used furniture, whatever coverage I had coming would be carried out after drop-off to the nearest point-of-sale for the six to eight weeks necessary to complete repairs.

No User Parts Accessible? None

Bob the Tech showed up as promised, on schedule, wheeling in his portable work bench, toolbox, and a couple of cartons of repair parts. An hour later I had what essentially was a completely rebuilt chair. And not just the visible wear and tear that’s bound to occur over a decade of daily use, either. My Aeron rehab visited every nook and cranny of my well used furniture.

Red tape? None. Superior service? Yes. Brand reputation? Polished to a blinding brilliance. Thanks, Herman Miller, for designing, marketing, and standing behind a best-in-class product. If you visit the web site, and I hope you do, please enjoy the reference to design integrity in the making of video on the Aeron home page.

the last shuttle

america’s manned space program ends

One of our country’s finest engineering achievements is now just a memory, but my fascination with NASA’s space shuttle program over the years is recalled over on intersect, beginning with witness status of America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard, and experiencing the launch of STS-3 first-hand from the NASA causeway in 1982.

business needs rich media pr talent

manship prssa class of 2010

Mark Ragan’s PR Daily post by Arik Hanson highlights perfectly the growing demand for well rounded PR practitioners in the Twin Cities, a need that’s extendable throughout the country.

In it, Mr. Hanson cites employers scrambling for capable content providers or, as he phrases it, media producers. To me that translates into photojournalists, storytellers, videographers and to a lesser extent verbal audio specialists. Add to that list basic graphic design awareness.

facebook’s not enough to make me look

When I visited LSU’s Manship School of Communications (above) as a guest portfolio reviewer for the PRSSA Class of 2010, I was surprised that the current generation – fluent in texting, IM and facebook – was by and large incapable of producing a rich media story on their own. Continue reading →