June 2007

A quick post linking two recent blogs about the iPhone.

• John (Web Directions): iPhone/Safari is the Mosaic of the Mobile Web (key point: wifi and Safari in iPhone make web usable).
• Dave Winer: Why no iPhone SDK? (answer: the threat to telcos that Skype represents)

It won’t take long for someone to work out how to get Skype on the iPhone, SDK or not. And like iTunes, Apple seem to be taking a “trojan horse” approach – restricting the platform, then working to open it later.

I’m still not sure on the significance of Safari 3 more generally (iPhone fun aside) – I’ve seen very little commentary on it, which is surprising. But the combination of wifi on the iPhone is going to be a bit of a game changer methinks.

Update: interesting take – perhaps Safari is the SDK?

Fascinating exchange between Jeffrey Zeldman and Campaign Monitor debating HTML email effectiveness/value.

• Zeldman: E-mail is not a platform for design
• Campaign Monitor: Zeldman says ‘HTML mail still sucks’
• Zeldman: Eight points for better e-mail relationships

Definitely worth a read if you’re putting out HTML emails – great tips and advice.

(As an aside – this exchange also points out the power of corporate blogging, but that’s not the primary point…)

Sounds like it. I’ve been following a thread from Thomas Hawk on his Flickr profile for the past month or so on actions by Flickr to censor comments on discussion threads and certain photos because of blog.

Yahoo! seem to have mis-stepped on this issue fairly significantly. But it also highlights one of the risks of using third-party social media sites to host your content – you are agreeing to the terms of service, and those terms may not be as open as you’d like.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t take advantage of such sites to further your cause or simply to share your personal photos. But, as with all such things, “free” doesn’t necessarily mean free.

Update: Priscilla chimes in, and mentions the Against Censorship Flickr group which I neglected to post.

Seth Godin writes a pretty direct post saying that marketers are responsible for the impacts of what they market.

If marketing works, it means that free choice isn’t quite so free. It means that marketers get to influence and amplify desires. The number of SUVs sold in the United States is a bazillion times bigger than it was in 1962. Is that because people suddenly want them, or is it because car marketers built them and marketed them?

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We are slowly refurnishing our igloo, and one challenge is to find 2nd hand / recycled stuff that has the look & feel we are searching for. This search led us to the Auction at Mitchell Road in Alexandria… Despite the fact that we have become the proud owners of some really unique pieces, we have had heaps of fun and came home inspired.

New ideas about how we could give old furniture pieces a new meaning of life, like we did with the old airline food-trolleys that we turned into storage, were born as a result of our mission.

It sounds so simple, framing 3 awards… It might be, but not if you are determined to make use of eco-friendly, preferably recycled materials. I set up the following questions beforehand:

1. Eco-friendly frame (recycled material or organic materials preferably including re-use of glass etc)
2. How long is the life span of the article
3. Can the materials used be recycled after we have used them
4. Nice aesthetic that fits with the overall studio look
5. Developing a long term supplier relationship
6. Looking for alternative ways to display and protect artworks, awards etc.

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Facebook has been on my radar for a while – and I’ve dabbled before (when working at WWF someone created an Earth Hour Facebook group that we heard about, so I – somewhat embarrasingly and belatedly – created a profile for WWF in support of the group).

But it seems it has started picking up some steam – at least in the tech/geek community. I received three invites in the space of two days from friends, and since I (finally) created an account to see what the fuss is about (much the same as Priscilla did) I’ve had 16 friends add in less than a week.

The integration with common email programs and their address books is very interesting. It allows you to find people on Facebook that you have an existing relationship very easily.

Facebook recently opened up their platform to application developers which is a bold move and looks like it’ll pay dividends for them in terms of increasing their user base. I’ve already added a Twitter application (though I’m not quite sure what it does yet). And I’ve been invited to iLike within Facebook too.

Either way – it’s definitely a site and platform that’s worth watching and getting your head around if you’re interested in the social media space.

Update: Phil Lamb from EchoDitto talks about the platform launch. And Laurel points to a beauty – Ning now integrates with Facebook. Ning is a social network building tool that now integrates with another social networking tool. Leverage the power and effort in one space to support another. Clever.

Olivia Ratten, a design student at Swinburne University, approached me to do a quick interview for a uni assignment on "social sustainability" – what follows is the results of the interview.

But first, a tiny bit of context. I wasn’t sure entirely what Olivia meant by "social sustainability", so I asked and this was her response:

The best example I have been presented on designing for social sustainability is the work of Architect and former Mayor of Curitiba (Brazil) Jaime Lerner. The garbage recycling system he introduced in the 80’s improved the local environment, saved money for industry and provided new jobs for those who may otherwise be unemployable. In addition a green trading system provided fresh food to those in serious poverty in exchange for recyclable garbage that couldn’t be collected by ordinary means.

There are many similar examples of systems he created that reward citizens for contributing to the environment by providing them with goods and services they need, meaning no one should be neglected. I see ’social sustainability’ as a holistic term that provides for all members of a society and in this example it is clear that ’social sustainability’ and ‘environmental sustainability’ go hand in hand and members of a society need to contribute to a society and it’s environment in order for it to remain sustainable.

The next question that needs answering is – Which society? When discussing social sustainability in the context of digital media I can discuss specific groups like members of a forum, or a city or the whole world. So I am attempting to cover both specific online groups and local geographical societies – cities/countries.

What’s really exciting to us is that a design student is researching this as part of their course-work! Although my responses aren’t directly related to the kind of sustainability work Olivia mentions above, hopefully they will be of some interest regardless.

The full interview is over the jump.

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Last night we went along to WebJam 3 at the Jam Bar in the CBD hotel. Dave presented the Close Guantanamo (formerly Bring Hicks Home) campaign site that we built for Amnesty International Australia (I’ll try and twist his arm to write up a case study for the blog…).

It was a fun night all round – and great to catch up with some familiar faces, and make connections with folks like Laurel, in all of her avatar costume glory, who I’ve only met online before last night.

Shout-out to Lachlan, Anson and the crew for putting on such a great night. Looking forward to the next one

Here at the igloo there’s been much debate over paper coffee cups. Some of the ‘mos (myself included) sometimes succumb and grab a takeaway coffee in a paper cup from time to time. Last week, Fieke picked up some insulated Thermos cups and we now have a ‘no paper cup’ policy in the studio.

When we were deciding what to do I mentioned that I’d read that the energy use of a ceramic or manufactured cup (like an insulated cup) was higher than a paper cup.

Today Dave found the original article I read on Treehugger: EcoTip: Coffee cups – spilling the beans.

In the meantime keep on using your ceramic cup, safe in the knowledge that over the long term, it is the [TreeHugger] choice.

While the post/research doesn’t address plastic and non-ceramic cups, it’s worth mentioning. So far my trusty Thermos mug has handled hundreds of cups of coffee – so it’s on the way to producing a net environmental benefit. Hopefully there’s a few more years left in it yet…