Understand, rubberband?

· long story short

The old junglejims with their rubber jigsaw mats beneath to break your fall had given way to more conceptual installations. Large wooden structures with chain-link bridges, rope swings, tire obstacle courses now stood rooted in deep sand. Each playground was slightly different. Only one had the tire swing. Another had a fortress or a wall of climbing ropes.

The old corrugated-metal manually operated merry-go-rounds were still there. You’d run alongside, holding one of the metal tube handholds and jump aboard once you got it up to speed. Sometimes a kid’s older brother would get the whole thing spinning faster than our stubby legs could do on their own. Rarely did anyone fall off and even more rarely did someone throw up….

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(read the rest of Understand, Rubberband? at Fictionaut.)

There's no 'I' in 'corporate brand' (or is there?)

· AOL, long story short

Jeff Gothelf has just published an article in Smashing Magazine on How to Maintain Your Personal Brand as a Corporate Employee. He interviewed me, as well as David Armano and Luke Wroblewski, while researching the article, and I’m quoted a few times in it.

Here’s part of his conclusion:

Be respectful of your employer and their policies but find creative ways to promote yourself while promoting your company at the same time. Personal branding enhances corporate branding. It makes the company appear more “human” and approachable. It makes people want to work there and it attracts good press. If balanced correctly, this is a win-win for all parties involved.

Note: I was scouring the net for images to illustrate this post with (if scouring constitutes typing “brand” into image search engines) and came across this interesting article questioning the concept or value of personal brands entirely.

My shattering mophie case

· Design, long story short

UPDATE: Bless Mophie’s hearts – they say this post and sent me two replacement caps. Thanks, Mophie!

my broken Mophie caseWhen my friend Bill De Rouchey showed me the external battery he was using with his iPhone at Web Visions a few months ago in Portland I got excited. Whenever I’m out all day at a conference or other intensive event I tend to use up the battery on my phone. When on the road this leads to a frustrating inability to phone home in time for timezone-shifted goodnights.

As soon as I got home I marched down to the Apple store in fake Bay Street in Emeryville and bought an nice black Mophie case for myself. I also noticed that the “I’m the decider” t-shirt I picked up at the first iPhoneDevCamp was from Mophie as well. Small world!

Better still, the Mophie case really did the trick. It’s not as grippy and protective as ruggedized Speck case, but it solves a real paint point for me.

There’s just one problem, and it has more to do with industrial design than anything else. I was having to switch from case to case a lot, and the top part of the Mophie has a very thin plastic strip where it surrounds the volume buttons on the side of the iPhone.

Very quickly this area snapped, and then a large piece broke off (see the photo above), and ultimately more of it is chipping away still. At this point the aesthetic value of the case is nil although the functionality is still nearly as good as when I first got it.

I’d like to get a replacement. I’d like the Apple store or Mophie to give me a replacement, but I’d really like to hear that this design flaw has been fixed and that my replacement doesn’t have it.

A complaint posted on twitter fell on deaf ears so this is the old-fashioned blog product customer rant. Let’s see if it helps.

Designing for Play (updated for Web Directions @media)

· Best Practices, Chef of the Future, Design, Events, Games, Information Architecture, long story short, Social Design

I gave the latest version of my Designing for Play talk at the @media conference (now run by the amazing John Allsopp / Maxine Sherrin team famed for their other fantastic Web Directions events) in London two weeks ago and was very pleased with the comments and feedback I got.

The sage Scott Berkun even gave me a pat on the back, as well as some useful constructive criticism (I was saying “um” a lot, as the audio will no doubt reveal – this is something I’ve worked on eliminating but I think in this case it was a “tell” that I am still feeling my way through this train of thought.)

Anyway, here is the latest version of the slides:

Designing for Play (at Web Directions @media)