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February 23, 2010

links for 2010-02-23

  • Article: "His career-defining moment came in the old Yankee Stadium in the form of an 11th-inning, Game 7 of the 2003 AL Championship Series that lifted New York past the Boston Red Sox and into the World Series." Not entirely true. I best remember him for playing basketball that off-season, screwing up his left knee, and getting his Yankee contract voided. ESPN has a habit of hiring analysts who are not very good at making smart decisions (see also: Phillips, Steve)
    (tags: baseball)

February 19, 2010

links for 2010-02-19

February 17, 2010

links for 2010-02-17

February 15, 2010

The ROI of UX: Continental Airlines

From my post on aiaio:

Yes, there are premium seats available; no, you can't have them. I asked if I could pay extra to reserve those seats: no. I asked if I could get a seat assignment, any seat assignment, so I knew I would make it on the plane: no. I eventually gave up my attempts to cajole customer service into helping me, and after a few hours of deliberation, I took my business elsewhere.

My story isn't all that uncommon, but it still strikes me as a miss on Continental's part. Why must they hold a random middle seat for an unbooked elite member, thereby denying a paying customer a chance to confirm travel?

Between this and Continental's other discomforts—a small 31" seat pitch in coach; 60,000 miles to book coach-class reward travel—I haven't flown CO in more than five years. In the interim I've been on American, JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, Northwest, Alitalia, Midwest, US Airways, United and Virgin America, and I've enjoyed all of them more than I enjoy my typical interaction with Continental. (Well, maybe not Alitalia.)

February 11, 2010

links for 2010-02-11

February 9, 2010

links for 2010-02-09

February 7, 2010

links for 2010-02-07

February 4, 2010

Super

I am once again pleased as punch to report that my talented, hard-working wife has produced a commercial running in the Super Bowl, this time for Snickers.

The spot runs early in the game on Sunday, and there's a teaser on Facebook for the curious and impatient.

I will go on the record as saying I think the full spot is great: perfect for the Super Bowl. And I think I'm more proud and impressed than she is.

Update: Snickers topped the Ad Meter as best commercial of Super Bowl XLIV. Kickin'.

February 3, 2010

links for 2010-02-03

February 2, 2010

links for 2010-02-02

  • Bluetooth-enabled device monitors your sleep patterns, wakes you at the optimal REM stage. This is genius—I can always tell when I wake up at the "right" point in my sleep cycles. An alarm clock that ritualizes this for me may be worth 10X its weight in gold
    (tags: health gadgets)
  • Blogger shutting off FTP access for remote posting. This is fascinating to me--not long ago, FTP was really the only way to publish a blog to a personal domain. Fast forward a few years and 0.5% of Blogger's users are FTPing anything. Interesting shift in both Blogger's usage trends, and probably of the migration of domain-level bloggers switching to local install apps (MT, Wordpress) and then to remote services with auto-redirects (Tumblr, Typepad, and Blogger itself)
    (tags: blogs trends)
  • Jake Dobkin knows from chutzpah
    (tags: media blogs nyc)

February 1, 2010

links for 2010-02-01

  • This provides great perspective on the iPad. The startup making the JooJoo is creating an off-the-shelf Windows machine with a touchscreen for $499. That same price will now get Apple's polish and a unique user experience on a similar product. I know which one I'd buy
    (tags: gadgets)

English as a first language

I'm having a lot of fun helping Nate learn to speak and watching him communicate. One of his more perplexing pronunciations is "lion," which he learned perfectly, then switched to "liney." So I figured we'd work on it.

"Nate, who's that?" I said, pointing to his gold teddy-bear lion.

"Liney."

"Yes, but it's not liney, that's lion."

"Liney!"

"Nate, can you say lie?"

"Lie."

"Good! And how about yin?"

"Yin."

"Good good! Now say them together. Lie-yin."

"Liney!"