« October 21, 2007 - October 27, 2007 | Main | November 4, 2007 - November 10, 2007 »
HIG for OpenSocial? "If you're new to developing social applications, it can be difficult to immediately grasp how good applications facilitate fun and meaningful social experiences. ... Populate the application with fun or interesting content (especially content from friends) that makes for a browse-friendly experience. Make it easy for the user to add content, change settings and feel ownership of the application."
Keynote: Ian Cheney and Aaron Woolf, makers of the soon-to-be-released film King Corn.
Workshop topics include:
- Climate Change and Agriculture
- Connections between Racial Justice, Nutrition, Food and Neighborhood Health
- The Future of Urban Agriculture
- School Food
- New York's Global Food Footprint
- Using Technology to Promote Local Food
- Youth Curricula in Gardens and Schools
- Farm Bill
- Food Advocacy 101
- Farm to Institution Models
- Eating Local Throughout the Year
- Growing Urban Farmers
- So You Think You Want to be a Farmer?
- And much more!
Stay tuned to www.justfood.org for the complete list of workshops.
Various Artists CPH Postcard Set #1 $12 A collaboration between Justseeds and Stumptown Printers, this is a beautiful letter-pressed boxed set of 16 full color offset printed postcard versions of early Celebrate People's History posters. It's been years since some of the early posters have been in circulation, so this was a great way to recirculate the early posters, like Malcolm X and Mayday. Here's a complete list of the postcards included: Malcolm X, Mayday, John Brown, Dr. Marie Equi, Little Bighorn, Harriet Tubman, Sylvia Ray Rivera, Jane Collective, Emma Goldman, Augusto Sandino, Battle of Homestead, Fred Hampton, Elise Reclus, Wangari Maathai, Phoolan Devi and Mujeres Libres. 16 offset postcards 4"x6" letter-pressed box
three pigs bento box
Originally uploaded by luckysundae.A more practical but no less fun take on bento: Just Bento.
Lucky duck Laren Spirer, food editor of Gothamist, looks like she was in Italy doing some shopping somewhat recently, where she said buon giorno to these residents of the root cellar. This particular photo just said fall to me. Buon appetito!
So I'm a week late on this, but it looks like the moratorium on all baseball-related announcements during the World Series didn't apply to baseball cards. After reading what everybody else has had to say on this, it looks like I'll be in the singular on this when I say that the design doesn't do much for me.
It seems that Topps is big on borders lately, be they black (like 2007) or white (like 2008), and it's not doing it for me. They've always had a border of some sort, but so thick? What's the point of that? It just makes me think that their designers couldn't come up with enough to fill the space. I'm also not a big fan of making the Topps logo a focal point of the card. They could just as easily have moved the circus circle type down a bit and moved the logo to a corner.
You know, I see what they're doing here. This is a throwback, old school/new school design aimed at bridging gaps between my generation of collectors and kids today. But the sets it's referencing, the 1986's and the 1988's, they had thin borders (by comparison). Also, what's up with the foil name?
See other A Pack A Day writer sites for more info:
Cardboard Junkie
Stale Gum
... but now things have changed on all Serious Eats profile pages. Last night we added fields for Location, About, and Last Bite on Earth. Head on over to your profile page, if you'd like, and share a little bit about yourself! (Strictly voluntary, of course.)
Of course it is. Totally predictable. But what's really fun is LATer Suzanne Muchnic's story of how it got there....
One of the most oft-repeated slams against congestion pricing we heard at this week's Congestion Mitigation Committee hearings is that congestion pricing would be a "regressive tax," an unfair burden to poorer New Yorkers.
Is congestion pricing regressive? The data suggests otherwise.
As the chart above shows, even in Brooklyn Council member Lew Fidler's heavily auto-dependent district, households with a car earn more than twice the income than households without. Meanwhile, only 5.3% of workers living in Fidler's distrit drive to work in Manhattan south of 86th Street (unfortunately, Fidler is probably one of them). Fact sheets for Richard Brodsky, Vivian Cook, Denny Farrell, Jeffrey Dinowitz and other congestion pricing opponents' districts are equally revealing and very much worth a download. Cook, for example, represents a Queens district where only 3.5% of workers drive into the proposed charging zone for work.
In testimony before the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign argued the point. From this week's Mobilizing the Region:
Some anti-pricing politicians seem to have dressed up for Halloween as populists defending “working stiffs” from a “regressive tax” on driving. But an analysis of Census data by TSTC and the Pratt Center for Community Development shows that, in all but one State Assembly district in NYC, vehicle-owning households are 50% wealthier than households without a vehicle; in nearly half of districts, average income is twice as high.
Furthermore, only a small minority of commuters drive alone to the proposed congestion pricing zone (CPZ); this is true not only in Manhattan but in the outer boroughs and the surrounding suburban counties. For example, only 5.1% of workers from Rockland County drive alone to the proposed CPZ. In Westchester, 3.4% of workers drive alone to the CPZ. In Nassau and Suffolk Counties, the percentages are even lower.
Fact sheets containing a breakdown of commuting patterns by mode and destination, vehicle ownership statistics, and the average incomes of vehicle-owning households and non-vehicle-owning households are available online. The fact sheets cover counties and City Council, state Assembly, state Senate, and U.S. Congressional districts in the New York metropolitan area.
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will declare his support today for a national carbon tax, according to a report posted this morning on the New York Times City Room blog by metro reporter Sewell Chan:
Mayor Bloomberg plans to announce today his support for a national carbon tax. In what his aides are calling one of the most significant policy addresses of his second and final term, the mayor will argue that directly taxing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change will slow global warming, promote economic growth and stimulate technological innovation — even if it results in higher gasoline prices in the short term.
Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to present his carbon tax proposal in a speech this afternoon at a two-day climate protection summit in Seattle organized by the United States Conference of Mayors. (A copy of the speech was provided to The New York Times by aides to the mayor; the full text is available here, along with the complete Times story.)
Needless to say, Charles Komanoff at the recently spiffed-up Carbon Tax Center, thinks this is a big deal (worthy of an Oscar or a Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps?):
With his speech today, Mayor Bloomberg joins former Vice-President Al Gore as the nation's leading advocates of a carbon tax to cap and reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
And consistent with the Mayor's local transportation policy push:
Bloomberg's support of a U.S. carbon tax is philosophically consistent with his big current local initiative, a congestion pricing plan to improve mobility, economic activity and the quality of life in the Manhattan Central Business District by charging an entry fee for motor vehicles. A carbon tax and congestion pricing both embody the principle that safeguarding “the commons” -- our air, water and public space -- requires that we exact from ourselves a commensurate price for uses that damage or deplete it.
the Orkut sandbox is moderated, so Plaxo Pulse is the only live implementation so far
AT&T's new data plans for iPhone users help to relief international travelers from outrageous phone bills once they return. For an extra $25 or $60, you can get a good amount of data on your iPhone while you make that business trip to China and not even have to purchase an extra phone for it.
I get questions, oh boy do I get questions, and I should really answer more of them here. Maybe not the ones that read "i need that fabric 4 my prom dress and its saturday can u help me pleeeeeeze !!!?!", but more of the ones that are thoughtful, such as this one from Lynn:Your blog is fun to read – am totally obsessed with vintage and quirky attire, patterns, fabrics and such as you publish each day. And so I want to make something to wear more than once for Halloween. Yet, my 40 hour per week day job is working among engineering types who are usually the most dismally, drably dressed humans on the planet. (Exception: a few bridge geeks who love local thrift stores – and keeping their money!)
Yet, since I work here one could successfully argue that my tendencies are also towards introversion and I have plenty of drab-colored basics in my closet. I don’t want to stick out very much. And since I work I have time constraints.
How would you select sewing projects (I can do about 6 or 8 projects per year) that would not stick too far out from the baggy denim and jersey uniforms that surround me? A drab jersey wiggle dress? Or perhaps a brightly patterned skirt with a drab denim jacket?
Your assistance is hugely appreciated! Probably lots more sewing wannabes are in the same predicament.
First off, thank you, Lynn, for the kind words ...
Secondly, I wouldn't underestimate your co-workers. Even if they don't want to wear bright colors and interesting prints themselves, they may certainly appreciate them on others -- much in the same way that I wear completely boring jewelry myself, but am always drawn to people who are wearing interesting pieces. Remember also, that if they're men, their clothing choices are artificially constrained -- not everyone is as dedicated to finding fun shirts as Francis.
But to answer your question, I can't answer your question. Only you can answer your question. And this is how you do it. Spend some time online on one of the sewing pattern sites -- BurdaStyle, or Sewingpatterns.com -- or in the fabric store, looking through the patterns. Make a list of EVERY pattern that catches your eye, everything that you like. Don't do any editing. If you like a wedding dress and you've been married for twenty years, still put it down. If you like some elaborate Issey Miyake outfit where the difficulty level is marked as 'For Issey Miyake Only', put it down. If you like a pair of gauchos, even, put it down. (I think this is better done online, because you can bookmark the pages or even save the images you like to your desktop.)
Once you've made your looooong list, then you can go through it. If you're a beginner, put aside the complicated tailored suits -- just for now. Maybe put aside that wedding dress. (DEFINITELY put aside the gauchos.) But try to look for commonalities in the patterns you chose. Do they all have raglan sleeves? Do they all have full skirts? Did all the illustrations you really show the garment in purple fabric? Try to jot down any similarities you see in the patterns you liked. (My list would look something like 'midriff band, full skirt, kimono sleeve, yellow, gingham, peter pan collar', etc.) Look for patterns on your list that have most of the features that you like, and that are at your sewing level. (Then go check Pattern Review to see if other people liked it!)
Then go look at your closet. You can't make a whole new wardrobe in 6-8 pieces a year (and you should assume a 10% failure rate, so one piece will just flat-out not work, and one will only mostly work). What can you sew that will go with clothes you already love? (If you don't love any of your clothes, you might want to read this post.) If you have lots of print skirts and plain tops, maybe a coordinating easy jacket in a solid color? If you have lots of plain trousers, why not try a tailored skirt or a print blouse? If you can't figure out what will "fit" -- try a stand-alone dress.
I feel sewing is the most rewarding when you're making something you love AND will wear, so your goal is to find that sweet spot where a pattern calls to you AND it will fit into your wardrobe.
And Lynn, I know you said you don't want to 'stand out,' but take a minute to decide what you want more: anonymity, or happiness. If you really love bright green and want to make a bright green dress, just do it! I think you'll be surprised at how positive people's reactions will be. I wear the craziest stuff -- you've all seen it -- and the worst reaction I've gotten has been something like "I'm glad you wore that, dear ... so few people would." Mostly people say things like "I wish I could wear that." (To which I always reply, "Of course you can!")
If you really don't want to stand out, pick drab colors but patterns with interesting details -- pockets, nifty collars, fun seam lines -- most people will only see the color, not the design elements. Or try some stealth fun with color: bright pocket linings or hem facings. (Even my plain skirts have print pocket linings. Life's too short to not have pockets full of fun.)
I know I gave lip service to separates up above, but really -- try a dress. I think you'll be surprised at how fun they are to wear (especially the Duro) and the sense of accomplishment you'll get from finishing one.
So, to sum up: figure out what really really appeals to YOU, and then make it. Then you can make it work, I promise. Happiness in your clothes is the best accessory.
And good luck!
[picture is one of my Flickr favorites, by alexanderdrachmann]
Photo Nicked From Here.
(Thanks, David!)
A few quick thoughts about OpenSocial. As you can see here, outside.in is one of the launch partners for the OpenSocial platform. In fact, our developer Christian Niles was out at the GooglePlex earlier this week for a last minute Hackathon before the announcement. We're going to have much more to say about our OpenSocial application in the coming weeks, but obviously the great promise here lies in combining those two big mega-themes of the past few years: the social graph (as you're now obliged to call it) and the geo-web.
Interestingly, we did not know until a few days ago that the APIs would extend to other social network platforms -- our guess was that it would live inside of Orkut, but that Orkut would become more tightly integrated with other Google applications, like Gmail. Obviously, we're thrilled that the platform is going to be as inclusive as it is. And what a brilliant move by Google. (I suppose as a launch partner, I'm biased, but still: what a brilliant move.) That $15 billion Facebook valuation got a lot of abuse over the past few weeks, but in a way I thought it made sense. Obviously, there was risk involved, but if you thought that Facebook had a reasonable shot at becoming "the social operating system of the Web", then it was probably worth making the bet -- particularly given that Microsoft had other reasons to invest. A company that runs the web's "social operating system" could easily be worth $50B or $100B. But that seems entirely impossible now, just a few days later, thanks to OpenSocial. If there is going to be a social operating system, it's going to be the open one that wins out.
And the open nature of the platform also makes it much harder for Facebook to exploit lock-in, since it will now be much easier for consumers to move over to the next, coolest social networking site. Thus far, the history of social networks sites shows that they are way more vulnerable to the whims of fashion than, say, search engines have been -- no doubt because teenagers and twenty-somethings have been their primary audience. By creating a bigger platform, Facebook was trying to fortify itself against this threat, but OpenSocial will likely accelerate the cycles of social network fashion. Big new networks will pop up every 12 months, instead of every three years.
Posted by Joe Kraus, Director of Product Management
As the web goes, so goes Google, and that's why we care about making the web better. Five months ago, we launched Google Gears to make the web better by making it work offline. Now, we want to make the web better by making it more social.
A tremendous amount of activity is occurring on social networks these days. Hundreds of millions of people share photos, rate movies, and throw virtual sheep at one another. All these social networks are looking to give their communities more and more things to do -- and they realize they can't do it on their own. They need to open up and become platforms for developers to extend. So, many social networks have looked at, or launched, their own APIs that typically do the same kinds of things: give access to user profiles and friend networks, and allow an application to post activities so that everyone's circle of friends knows what the others are doing. All of this has been good news, because developers could get their applications onto a social network.
But there's a problem: it wasn't one or two social networks doing this, but ten or fifteen. Now, to get on all the social networks a developer has had to customize their application for each one. When your "development team" is just one or two people, the proliferation of APIs forces you to make tough choices, because you can't do that much one-off work. Not only is this situation bad for developers, it's bad for consumers too: When developers can't afford to do the work to make their applications work on a certain social network, the people using those networks lose out.
That's why today we're excited to introduce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs that make it easy to create and host social applications on the web. OpenSocial allows developers to write an application once that will run anywhere that supports the OpenSocial APIs.
It's good for developers because it makes it easier for them to focus on making their web apps better; they get lots of distribution with a lot less work. It's good for websites, because they can tap into the creativity of the largest possible developer community (and no longer have to compete with one another for developer attention). And finally, it's good for users, because they get more applications in more places. Global members of the OpenSocial community include MySpace, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
We were thrilled to see so many partners turn out for our very first CampFire One event, a small gathering of developers at the Googleplex. They do the best job of explaining why they support this vision of an open, programmable web. And so in the spirit of being social, we want to share the video from tonight's event.
In David Denby's review of American Gangster, he made an interesting point:
Our loyalties are split between the hero of virtue and the hero of vice. We don't have to choose, which is fine - irresponsibility is one of the pleasures of narrative movies.
david posted a photo:
Foie Gras, Prosciutto, Figs, Basil, Ricotta (?) Cheese, Tomatoes
Atlanta is 110 days away from running out of drinking water? I knew the South was in the midst of a serious drought, but somehow I'd hadn't quite processed the magnitude of the problem.
UPDATE: Here's a blog devoted to the story. It turns out that there are competing estimates on the number of days. And the problem, it seems, is the result of long term forces and not just a short to medium-term drought.
Mark my words - water will be the defining issue of the 21st century.
Spammers have created a Windows game which shows a woman in a state of undress when people correctly type in text shown in an accompanying image.The scrambled text images come from sites which use them to stop computers automatically signing up for accounts that can be put to illegal use.
By getting people to type in the text the spammers can take over the accounts and use them to send junk mail.
I've been saying that spammers would start doing this for years. I'm actually surprised it took this long.
She's actually doing it! Britney Spears is making a huge comeback, of sorts. The singer's new album, Blackout, is selling like hotcakes, and it's looking like Brit is going to knock Carrie Underwood right out of Billboard's top spot. Britney's newest set of tunes has already doubled the amount of sales Carrie had, within the same amount of time, so, if this keeps up, Britney will have five out of five number one studio albums. Not bad for a walking (and driving) train wreck!
To go along with Blackout, Britney has revamped her website, Britney.com. The new site has photos, videos, and a blog (yay!) written mostly by someone named "BRITannica," who claims to be "literally an encyclopedia of Britney knowledge."
Could "BRITannica" be that crazy Chris guy, who pleaded for us to leave Brit alone? Perhaps.
Anyway, my absolute favorite part of Britney's new website is its slogan -- "It's Britney.com, bitch!"
LOVE IT!
New York City residents should check out Milk-n-Honey, "a multimedia theatrical performance about Americans, food, appetite, and happiness" currently playing at 3-Legged Dog until November 18. Each night after the show you can snack on free cupcakes and participate in special events in the After Show Café.
"So the Senator who didn't think Halliburton's war profiteering was worth investigating is endorsing the candidate who wanted to put Bernie Kerik in charge of Homeland Security. Makes sense to us!"— Andy Barr, campaign manager for Al Franken, responding in the Huffington Post to Senator Norm Coleman's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani.
credit: justseamus
In the first of many shorts we will present over consecutive days, The Open Planning Project's Executive Director Mark Gorton tours the streets of the Upper West Side with neighbor Lisa Sladkus pointing out problems in advance of the November 6 Streets Renaissance Workshop with Jan Gehl. Today's topic is: Double Parking.Parking policy is one of the biggest challenges that faces New York City and the rest of the U.S. In this related StreetFilm, Donald Shoup explains how responsible pricing can solve the woes of double parking and pollution, while raising revenues that can be re-invested in communities.
Team Spaces :
Second in a series of Bathroom Experiences : Bathroom Blogfest 2007
There are a lot of great cultural indicators and collaborative spaces in the Adaptive Path office. But my favorite is still the bathrooms. Bathrooms as culture? As collaborations? Um…huh?
The bathrooms at AP are humane, interesting, fun and attractive spaces. As a result, they’ve become places that showcase what we value: human-centeredness, design-awareness, accessibility, smarts, participation and play.
I believe that bathrooms are a key indicator of a team culture. Office bathrooms are spaces that are often ignored, where effort is minimized, where meeting the bare basics are deemed to be enough. What a loss. I think great team cultures create great bathrooms…and I suspect that the reverse is also true.
Want a great team? Start with exceeding expectations in the most surprising of places: invest in a great bathroom.
With apologies to Maslow, I’ve outlined a hierarchy of bathroom needs from the bare basics up to a fully-actualized office bathroom cultural experience.
- toilet & toilet paper
- sink
- paper towels/ air dryer
- trash can
- clean, dry floor
- door
- ADA accessible
Basics +
- a good lock on the door
- mirror
- non-controlled toilet paper dispenser (you know…the kind that give you more than one square at a time…)
- toilet seat covers
- extra basic supplies (paper towels, toilet paper)
Quality space
- 2-ply toilet paper
- accessible storage for extra supplies
- coat rack/ purse hooks
- air-circulating fan
- completely clean and tidy
Quality experience
- supplies area with additional amenities: extra toilet paper & paper towels, first aid kit, pain-killers, air-purifying spray, feminine supplies, etc.
- someplace to sit other than the toilet
- full-length mirror
- color: walls painted non-institutional / non-boring colors
- residential-grade fixtures and finishes
- exterior window
Cultural experience
- plants
- art, especially art created by employees
- unique fixtures / furnishings
- toys / activities
- collaborative / participative work
Probably no office bathroom has all of these, and I’m sure there are some items missing from the list. The the ones that are really special and reflect the unique aspects of the culture do it by focusing on the top of the pyramid.
The point is that bathrooms signal what’s important to the team culture:
- Does the bathroom feel more personal than institutional?
- Do you care about keeping the bathroom clean because you care about the other people that use it?
- Can you get a good look at yourself in a good mirror before that big meeting so that you don’t embarrass your team with spinach in your teeth?
- Do you enjoy seeing artworks created by your team members?
- And the big one…are you trusted not to misuse the supply of toilet paper?
As you move your bathroom design to the higher levels, the more humane, culturally reflective and engaging the space becomes. And that’s got to impact how people feel about working and being together as a team.
In our office, the stuff that get positive notice from visitors, clients and team members are always things at the top of the pyramid:
- the Eames House of Cards deck, and the custom set of staff face cards made to match
- strange art that happens from things lying around, like toys and tchotchkes
- paint colors and art on the walls
- Sticky-note collages that invitate people to post thoughts, opinions or other info
- commentary on team members, taking form as participatory art
- collaborative work that uses bathroom walls
So grab a plant, some art, some toys or some sticky notes and put ‘em n your office bathroom. See how the team responds. And let me know how it goes!
Participants in Bathroom Blogfest ‘07
Adaptive Path | Blog Till You Drop | checking out and checking in | Customer Experience Crossroads | Customers Are Always | Customers Rock! | Diva Marketing | Experienceology | Fast Company Now | Flooring the Consumer | Get Fresh Minds | K+B DeltaVee | Library Bytes | Life and its little pleasures | Practical Katie | Purple Wren | Qualitative Research | Results Revolution | Spirit Women | The Curious Shopper | The Engaging Brand | The Ultimate Corporate Entrepreneur | Transcultural
Anthony Bourdain tells Time that the worst thing he has ever eaten is fermented shark in Iceland, adding that "[Icelanders] celebrate their hardy Viking roots by eating shark that has essentially been rotted and then marinated in lactic acid for six months. There was also the warthog rectum in Namibia. Steer clear of that." On why he picks on Rachael Ray: "She genuinely offends me ... When Rachael tells you that it's perfectly OK to buy pre-chopped onion from the supermarket, I mean, how hard is it to chop an onion?"
Couple empirical-data-backed arguments that the whole “Userss don’t scroll” rule is BS: from boxes and arrows and the clicktale blog.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has revealed that the company is planning to add new functions to its DS handheld that are 'more practical than entertaining'.
Although he didn't provide hard specifics, Iwata told the Wall Street Journal that the features would be useful in train stations, amusement parks or museums and use wireless functions.
Ooh. GPS, I bet, for starters.
The Psychologist has just made an article available that looks at the parallels between the most recent David Lynch film, Inland Empire, and what we know of the psychology of psychosis.
The article looks at some of the proposed pathologies of psychosis, drawn from cognitive science, and suggests how these are represented in Lynch's latest movie.
Paranoia comes with an inherent sense of personal threat and concomitant fear. Inland Empire’s dark and chilling world is produced in part by David Lynch’s use of story. While fear is generated with genuinely unsettling imagery and dark shadowy lighting, it also comes from the carefully managed attrition of any recognisable storyline. The audience, who have been led through the early stages of the plot with some of the conventional devices of storytelling (coherent dialogue, linear chronology) are suddenly thrown into a world of unfamiliar film cuts, unexplained locations and wordless acting. We are forced to jump to our own conclusions and build what narrative we will from scant concrete evidence as to events. Our sense of sense itself forces us to put something together and, given the presence of ominous emotions and apparent malice, what we put together is a paranoid and terrifying vision of the intentions of the characters in the film and even the world we inhabit.
Lynch's hallucinatory style certainly suggests altered realities and this is not the first time that it has been linked with mind-being reality distortion, as countless interpretations of Mulholland Drive testify.
Link to article 'David Lynch and psychosis'.
We have only one motivation for doing this website. And that's to share with you those things that inspire us.
In the five years of updating this site each day, we have never disclosed the identity of an artist without their permission and understanding.
We know that many of you have sent us emails and links with good intentions, but please know that featuring photos that allegedly show the identity of an artist who wants to be anonymous is just not something that we are interested in doing. We have no idea if any of the numerous photos we receive each week are real, and in truth we couldn't care less one way or the other.
Plain and simple. It's not what we're all about.
At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. Many of you out there remember snacking on pistachio nuts whose shells had been dyed red. Heck, as kids half the fun was watching your hands change color. The other day we found some pistachios that are just as fun to eat, but decidely more grown-up. While browsing among the dried nuts and fruits at Mazal Kosher Foods in Forest Hills, we came across a bin of pistachios that seemed larger than the supermarket variety. The nuts were also studded with coarse salt. When asked by the shopkeeper to try some, Gothamist entered pistachio paradise. They had a wonderful roasted flavor and a lemony kick that combined with the coarse salt made them impossible to stop eating. Rather than continue noshing in the store we promptly purchased a pound. We can't wait to try them with cocktails at our next dinner party. Don't want to travel to Forest Hills to get your hands on some Iranian pistachios? No worries, they're also available in Manhattan at Kalyustan's. Mazal Kosher Food, 63-66 108 St., Forest Hills, 718-459-5707 Kalyustan's,123 Lexington Ave., 212-685-3451
I love this awesome ghost cupcake with innards of green buttercream frosting and a gumdrop for a brain that Jill Davis found at Wheatberry Bakery in Pasadena, California. The only way I could imagine it being cooler is if they had used a red or licorice gumdrop instead.
Are people really going to maintain multiple sets of front-end pages for their web sites for Facebook, Open Social, etc.?
I think so, yes. I think any web site going forward that wants maximum distribution across the largest number of users will have a single back-end, and then multiple sets of front-end pages:
- One set of standard HTML and Javascript pages for consumption by normal web browser.
- Another set of HTML and Javascript pages that use the Open Social API’s Javascript calls for consumption with Open Social containers/social networks.
- A third set of pages in FBML (Facebook Markup Language) that use Facebook’s proprietary APIs for consumption within Facebook as a Facebook app.
- Perhaps a fourth set of pages adapted for the Apple iPhone and/or other mobile devices.
From Mark Andreessen, [via Lee Semel]
Four versions of every front-end! It’s worse than the great Browser (incompatibility) Wars of ‘99-’97. This sounds like hell.
Oftentimes, there is perceived to be a disconnect between making money and winning ballgames. This is perhaps inevitable, because it’s easy to see how expenditures on talented players can negatively impact a team’s bottom line, but more difficult to see how the extra wins those players generate can positively impact a team’s top line. But they do, sometimes profoundly, like when those wins lead a team into the playoffs or toward a championship.
I believe that professional baseball clubs should be run with the objective of maximizing long-run profits, but I also believe that there is strong alignment between this goal and winning championships. It doesn’t take long to look at the attendance turnarounds at places like Comerica Park or U.S. Cellular Field — or the vacant upper decks at Camden Yards and PNC Park — to see what I’m talking about.
Now, that doesn’t mean that reconciling wins and profit is easy, so teams need some kind of a framework to orient their decision-making. There are two fundamental ways to go about it.
The Payroll Budget: Maximize the number of wins, holding payroll constant. In other words: “Let’s build the best team that we can for $80 million dollars”.
The Wins Budget: Minimize payroll, holding wins constant. In other words: “Let’s build the cheapest team that we can expect to win 92 ballgames”.
The payroll budget is, of course, the more traditional way to go about it, and the way that the overwhelming majority of major league clubs align their decision-making. You’ll read all kind of statements in the press this kind of year like “The Rockies have approved a payroll increase to $65 million” or “The Red Sox want to keep payroll in the $130 million range”. But this is the improper framework. Payroll is not the thing that you want to hold constant.
The reason is that a fixed payroll figure does not tell you anything in the abstract. How do you set your payroll figure? It does not tell you how many games your team is likely to win. The Yankees spent $190 million last year and won 94 ballgames. The Indians spent $61 million last year and also won 94 ballgames. Nor does it tell you how much profit your team can expect to make, because it looks only at the income side, and not at the expense side. Perhaps the Blue Jays can spend $80 million next year and make $80 million dollars. Or, they can spend $90 million next year and make $100 million dollars. Which one should they choose? Well, the answer should be obvious to anyone with a fifth grade education. But it doesn’t seem to be obvious to a number of major league baseball clubs, who can’t see the revenue forest for the payroll trees.
The Wins Budget resolves this problem because the number of wins that we choose does mean something. For example, a “budget” of 90 wins means that a team is going to reach the playoffs as often as not, and a budget of 95 wins means that a team is almost always going to reach the playoffs. Moreover, we do have some idea of which wins figures tend to maximize profits. Generally, there are two equilibria, one of which comes at 90-95 wins where the team becomes very likely to make the playoffs, and the other of which comes at some much lower figure — perhaps 60 or 65 wins — where a club is fielding a team’s worth of “freely-available talent” (either players picked off the waiver wire, or players from their farm system whose salaries are substantially below market because they have not yet become free agents).
The concept of the Wins Budget looms large in the Hot Stove Preview that I just completed. As you’ll see from reading that series, setting a Wins Budget is not always straightforward. Teams are not just trying to maximize profits in 2008; rather, they are trying to do so over the long run. There may be times when some budget between the two equilibria makes sense. This might be because the team is moving from the 60-win pole to the 90-win pole but can’t get there in one off-season, or because there are certain inflection points at which a team’s product offering becomes credible or non-credible to its fans. Moreover, the Wins Budget is impacted by the strength of a team’s division, by the peculiarities of its fan base, and by the expectations that the team has established for himself. An Wins Budget of 88 would probably be fine (e.g. profit-maximizing) for the Brewers. It would probably not be optimal for the Red Sox. Nevertheless, for the most part teams should be gravitating toward one of the two equilibria: the “Playoff Contender” equilibrium and the “Rebuilding Year” equilibrium.
The Wins Budget was a particularly important concept my discussion of the Dodgers. Suppose that the Dodgers set a Wins Budget of 94 next year, which means that they’re almost definitely going to make the playoffs, and quite possibly be the best team in their league. (Let’s ignore for a moment the question of whether 94 wins is a more optimal choice than 88 or 71 or 102). What is the cheapest way that the Dodgers can build a 94-win team?
Well, it certainly does not involve Alex Rodriguez. The reason is that they already have a third baseman in Andy LaRoche who is (i) very cheap and (ii) could be pretty good. On the other hand, the center fielder is Juan Pierre, and the fifth starter is probably Esteban Loaiza, both of which are significant problems. Suppose that instead of spending $30 million on A-Rod, the Dodgers instead spent $25 million on Curt Schilling and Aaron Rowand. I would guess that when we run the PECOTA projections for those players in a couple months time, we’ll come up with something like the following:
Player VORP 3B Alex Rodriguez 70 CF Juan Pierre 10 SP Esteban Loaiza 5 Total 85 Player VORP 3B Andy LaRoche 25 CF Aaron Rowand 40 SP Curt Schilling 40 Total 105The Rowand/Schilling bundle of players is not only likely to be a little cheaper than the A-Rod bundle, but also a little better, by a margin of about 20 runs (or two wins). This does not really have anything to do with A-Rod, but rather with the configuration of talent that is already on the Dodgers. For the Phillies, who have no kind of third baseman at all, bringing in A-Rod could well be the optimal strategy.
The point is that, once a team establishes its Wins Budget, there are any number of ways to achieve it. It’s not that the Dodgers should sign A-Rod because they shouldn’t try to win 94 games. It’s that there are more efficient ways to accomplish the same thing.
Alex Frankel recounts his experience as an Apple Retail Store employee, and in doing so reveals why the stores have done so well.
