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Josh Gets the Money Shot for Signage Fetishists

Confesion: I have a thing for signage.  I rave about good signage, and contantly harp about the perils of bad signage.

When I see a new stop sign - without warning signs about the change - all I see is a lawsuit.  When I can barely navigate a parking garage because the signs are hard to read, hard to understand and poorly placed, I vow not to return to that mall (well, for a few months, anyway).

When I speed up after the super speed bumps, only to find out someone mistakenly placed the 50 km/h sign before the last speed bump, instead of after it, I start to fantacize about painful procedures mistakenly performed on city engineers.  (Try going over one of those extra large speed bumps at 50 K when your spouse is recovering from whiplash.  Now go look up pain and suffering in the dictionary.)

So, I'm a signage fetishist.  I'm not ashamed.

I was particularly pleased to come across Josh Hallett's photos from an Ikea.  The signage - like the rest of the store and product design - is simple, elegant and extremely functional.

The spotlight trained on the arrow on the floor is a particularly nice touch.  Thanks for sharing, Josh. His Flickr photos. Check his blog, too.

Tangential linking:  For a different take on design, check out Ross Howard's post about ambient signifiers, and how the use of sound on the Tokyo rail system suggests ways to subtly help website visitors find their way (and no, Ross isn't suggesting musical websites).

Tags:  signage, kea, retail, signs, joshhallett, functionality

Significant Moves Kick off Fiscal Year

I always keep my eye out for startling news on April 1.  For a few years I couldn't figure out why so many shocking stories broke on this day.  Then I realized, it's the start of the fiscal year for many companies!

This year's crop:

Josh Hallett does some sleuthing to uncover a new venture by previous blog combatants Steve Rubel and Jeremy Pepper.

Hey, Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft and joining Google. Also check out the Scoble dashboard.

Speaking of Microsoft, apparently they're buying Open Office for a sum reported to be "in the billions."

And then there's this announcement that a Canadian government MP wants journalists jailed if they provide distorted coverage (via Antonia Zerbisias). Oops -- that item wasn't from April 1, yet it seems even more bizarre than the other ones.

Rubel, for his part, points to a valuable service provided by Wikipedia this year.

Tags: aprilfools, pr, public relations

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Drive-by Blogging: My PR Blog Neighbours Are Revolting!

The appeal of snarky, bitchy blog posts is undeniable. And, quite frankly, reading blogs would be boring without some of the raw entertainment of celebrity-style journalism thrown in for good measure.

So I'm not entirely sure why I have such a negative reaction to the shoot-first-check-facts-later approach that has burbled into my RSS feed aggregator lately.

I think it's because I'm uncomfortable with the basic premise of gossip -- that someone else's pain is a source of entertainment. It's bad enough when a writer highlights some embarrassing or unwise moment in someone's life (I've done my own share of calling people out on mistakes when I spot them).  What's worse is when the writer manufactures a controversy, and hammers their target quickly and harshly. I call it Drive-by Blogging.

Gossip-mongering entered the often bland world of blogs about PR and business communications this weekend. A Gawker-style blog was started by someone who claims to be a woman, with a provocative I'm-naked-but-covering-my-breasts photo in the top banner without actually saying it's a photo of the author. "Her" first target is an obvious one - the top PR blogger Steve Rubel, and the agency that recently hired him with great fanfare. None of the "facts" in her post solid enough to prove or disprove, right down to the supposed office pool paying out on the exit date of Rubel from his new firm.

(Do I believe the author really exists by the name she gives, and that "she" really heard about an office pool as "she" describes? Nothing I've seen so far leads me to believe this was based on a real event. This could just as easily be one of those Penthouse Forum situations, where some nerdy guys write fake letters from women about their hot sexual encounters.)

A nasty little post, with lots of innuendo and references to male and female sexuality. The first post to the blog was accompanied by an e-mail campaign to many PR bloggers (myself included), leading to lots of enthusiasm expressed by the iconoclasts and traditional males of the bunch, and lots of traffic to the new site. Giddy does not begin to describe the response (see links below).

This comes hot on the heels of the lambasting by Allan Jenkins of a company that republishes others' blog entries for cell phone users, calling out a European blogger who appeared to be connected to the company.

Unlike attack-and-run artists, Allan sent an e-mail asking for clarification. After a fair bit of digging, Allan discovered the blogger in question wasn't involved in the company, and the company was more naive than devious. To his credit, Allan revised his post and published a follow-up describing what he'd discovered. But the post had already been published, complete with accusations of stealing content for commercial gain.

There are dozens of examples of nasty attacks on A-List bloggers like Robert Scoble, all of which no doubt serve the purpose of gaining the attacker some attention.

Despite evidence that this sort of behaviour is remarkably effective at attracting links, site traffic and buzz, I'm sticking to the Phil Gomes Golden Rule of PR Blogging.

Long-time PR blogger Phil wrote a new year's post promising to focus more on persuading people about effective communications and less on finger-pointing and superficial tricks of the Web 2.0 trade. Phil hasn't let this get in the way of his sense of humour, but I've noticed him being less fixated on the popularity of his blog. He's taking the high road, and I respect him for it, even if it comes at the expense of large spikes in site traffic he isn't getting from the salacious posts he isn't publishing.

I'm not adding to the link love that has already given the new Strumpette blog a big boost. If you want to find the original post, click on one of the links below, and you'll find the new blog easily enough.

Strumpette blog buzz: 

• How to Get Ahead, Andrea Weckerle;
• Bad Character Blog Falls Flat, Robert French;
• Amanda Chapel, Fishing for Comments, B.L. Ochman;
• New 'Naked Journal' on PR Business Doesn't Read On Message, John Wagner;
• Strumpette's First Post - 41 Comments and Counting, Scott Baradell;
• If that Is your Real Name, David Parmet;
• Naked PR, Neville Hobson.

(My headline is an obscure reference to the old joke about the courtier rushing up to the king and saying "Your majesty, the peasants are revolting!"  "They sure are," replies the king, "but you're no beauty yourself.")

Tags: strumpette, gossip, gawker, drive-by-blogging

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New Additions to My Blogroll

I've been meaning to add these to my blogroll for a while now.  Check them out:

Tech

• Darren  Barefoot
• Michael Geist
• Peter Rukavina
• Robert Scoble
• Thomas Hawk

Communications/PR

• Andrea Weckerle
• Kami Huyse
• Eric Schwartzman
• Rob Cottingham

The blogs have fairly interesting names, from New Millenium PR, to Spinfluencer, but I prefer to just list the author's name, since that's how I typically refer to them when I link to them.

Some bloggers have dropped blogrolls, partly I suspect, because of the hassle of keeping them current (if you don't have an automatically generated one, based on your actual blog reading habits).   I still think they serve a purpose.  When I find someone who fascinates me, I check their blogroll to see if they're reading something that I should check out.  I almost always find something worth looking at, even if I don't add it to my regular reading list.

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Technology Doesn't Preclude Ethics

  Elizabeth Albrycht 
  Originally uploaded by PROBLOG.

I've long thought there should be a way to link web-based and text messaging tools to all the information that's gathered about the ethical behaviour of corporations. Why can't I take a web-enabled PDA to the mall, to help me choose between brands, based on which company does the least damage to the environment, for example?

Elizabeth Albrycht examined a similar issue at the recent Les Blogs conference, asking panelists these questions:

• Does the ever-increasing rate of change that we face every day have an ethical component to it? 
• Is the rapid pace of technological change, which often precludes any discussion of social implications, unethical?

She found the answers unsatisfying. Faced with the allure of capitulation to the speed and volume of technology change, she refuses "to believe we are at the mercy of technology."

She warns of the danger of using "too much information" as an excuse for not exercising your good judgement. And she asks for others to join in the discussion. I'm looking forward to that conversation.

Bob LeDrew pipes in:

"I think her point should be taken up by others. In fact, Annette O'Connor of my university and the Ottawa Health Research Institute, a world-leading expert in the development of 'decision aids' for medical patients, has created a "Personal Decision Guide" that can be used to make decisions. Is this something that could lead to things like Albrycht suggests? Quite possibly."

Tags: lesblogs; albrycht

Man Bites Dog, Takes Public Transportation

  Pretend Passengers 
  Originally uploaded by hyku.

Josh Hallett blogged about his experience on the public transportation system in his part of Florida.

The fact that taking a few buses for a day merits a detailed examination of the experience says something about our dependence on the car (or SUV, or minivan, or pickup truck).

I've spent a few years busing it to university and work, riding my bike and walking. But the majority of my school and work life has involved a vehicle, usually driven solo.

Hallett's experience is not surprising. Trying to fit his consulting travel around the transit system resulted in hours of unbillable time spent waiting in bus depots. Most public transit systems are designed to move large numbers of people during rush hour from the suburbs to downtown, or to industrial parks and college campuses. Movement from one suburb to another is sometimes easy, but often it involves a circuitous route. Setting up meetings, then trying to force fit the transit timetable to match your schedule will usually result in wasted time, which Hallett admits when he writes up his experiment.

In the end, a collision involving the bus he was waiting for caused him to miss his connection, which set off a chain reaction of delays. The result was a four hour bus ride home that would have take about 35 25 minutes by car. (See all of Hallett's postings about his experiment.)

(The "Joshworthy" category this is listed under is an inside joke. See the posting and comments on Hallett's Hyku Blog.)