Archive for May, 2009

Sustainable business models, and why ABC has LOST their way

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

lost-logoIf you’re wondering about sustainable business models, bear with me while I rant about ABC’s free episode streaming, or just skip the first bunch of paragraphs to the Sustainable Business Models heading.  Ohterwise bear with me, I’ve got a couple lung-fulls to spend talking about why I’m not having the best time I could be having finally watching LOST.

After years of resisting, I finally decided that I should watch LOST and catch up on everything I’ve been missing (that damn near everybody’s been telling me about).  I’m watching it straight through from Season 1 on ABC.com – and I’m afraid I have a few complaints about how they’re handling their free episodes.

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Tweets on 2009-05-20

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
  • Just saw an honest to goodness commercial on cable TV for .. Google Chrome? “A new way to get online”? Adsense would’ve been cheaper! #
  • @whitneyhess hey Whitney – can you play devil’s UX-advocate with me regarding my double wrist-watch idea : http://bit.ly/CnTB7 #

Wrist Watch – why settle for only one wrist?

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

96261016im6I have to confess, I wear a wrist watch perhaps once .. (wait for it) .. every two years. At least that’s my best estimate over the last 6 years or so. I use my blackberry exclusively for my time-telling needs (and all the appliances that tell time – my computer, microwave, cable box, tv, alarm clock, etc).  So you could say I’m the last person to have any sort of useful input on the subject of wrist accessories.  But after seeing this image on the right, I had an idea (assuming the watch on the right doesn’t already do what I’m proposing here – I don’t know the manufacturer unfortunately, so can’t check).  What if wrist watches came in pairs? Think about it – that way you don’t have to wear a bracelet on the hand opposite the one you wear a watch on.  That way you have twice the room to accessorize and you don’t have to go through all that “my accessories have to match” hooplah.

The example on the right seems to suggest keeping an analog version of time on one hand and a digital version on the other.  That would indeed be interesting – if you’re righty, keep your digital time on your left hand so you can use your good hand while looking at your bad hand.  If you’re being artistic with your left hand, use the analog time on the right.

But here’s an even better idea – instead of trying to cram the time, the date, the year, the day of the week and all the other features onto one display – separate them onto different wrists.  This also opens the wrist watch up for use as a cell phone.  Set the right half to be the earpiece, and the left to be the microphone.  The reason regular wrist watches can’t be used like this is because they’re just not big enough (and you don’t want them to be that big honestly) to both be the microphone and the earpiece.  But this way, hold your right wrist up to your ear – you’re doing that in any case with your cellphone.  Whenever you want to say something, hold your left wrist to your mouth and say what you need to say.  Have the two halves connect via bluetooth.  Add accelerometers or something else that’ll let the phones know which one is where, and if your right arm gets tired, switch and hold up the left wrist to your left ear, and that half becomes the earpiece (and vice versa).

Of course, as an engineer, I also can’t help but think of the value of redundancy.  You lose one half of your two-part wrist watch – have a button that switches function on the other side so you can always see your digits.  The optimist can also say “wow, there’s less of a chance I’ll forget to put on at least one of the watches”.  The pessimist of course will say “its just as likely for me to forget to put on both halves of this watch”.

So who’s gonna work with me to develop this idea? While I’d love to see this in a Rolex or a Breitling, Omega, TAG Heuer or whatever your favorite luxury watch brand is – I think its way more likely that a more technology-oriented brand like Seiko or Casio would probably be more up to this sort of exercise.  Actually, I wouldn’t mind an Ed Hardy branded two-part watch, I might actually wear something like that.  Or perhaps a nice Nokia watch that doubles as a phone, I’ve already seen some idea sketches for a watch-phone with a separate earpiece.

Am I totally off base here? Anybody else think this might be a good idea?

Tweets on 2009-05-19

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
  • Enjoying a little Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major at the end of “There Will Be Blood” while working on code #

Bacardi Mojito commercial with music by Matt and Kim – genius

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Whoever’s making commercials for Bacardi is a genius.  I usually don’t even drink rum, but this new commercial certainly has me thirsty for a mojito.  The music is by “Matt and Kim”, the song is called “Daylight”.  They’re on Green Label Sound (who seem to be some sort of musical offspring of PepsiCo/Mountain Dew – and also have some sort of relationship to an artist I’ve heard of before – Flosstradamus). Matt and Kim have an official website too!  You can download an honest to goodness MP3 of the song from the label’s site.  And finally there’s full access to a video of the commercial on YouTube!  Unbelievable, I guess after all those years of having to search out your favorite commercial’s songs, lyrics, videos, etc. are over and done with.  Now all this media is at our fingertips and I’m pretty sure the folks running the show at the companies that come up with the commercials, that make the products and that create the music … finally get it!  Thank you social media!



Here are the lyrics for anybody who’s trying to decypher the words:

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