Whoa. This blog is four years old.

I can say now, looking back, that starting this blog was the best decision I’ve ever made in my career. The day I started it, I was an Account Executive at a 5-person advertising agency in the West Loop of Chicago. I had very little idea what I was doing, and I wanted to be a planner…mostly because I couldn’t easily become a “creative”.

Four years, 460 posts and 1,937 comments later, I’m in New York working with an incredibly smart and creative group of people, doing work I had always wanted to do.

And I have this blog – and importantly, the people who were so kind to have read it over these years – to thank for it.

So, thanks.

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• January 18, 2009 — A new logo design (4)
• April 12, 2010 — Size Does Matter (7)
• April 10, 2010 — Report Up @ Canvas8 (1)

I coulda sworn I wrote about this video a while back, but it seems that I was mistaken.

Cordyceps is by far the coolest fungus genus I’ve ever seen. It’s also perhaps the most disgusting.

Some highlights from the video:

• Cordyceps is a genus of parasitic fungi that tend to infect insects; the spores of the fungus, once inhaled, take control of the infected insect’s mind
• The infected insect crawls up a branch to a prescribed height, and latches on to said branch with its teeth just before death
• The fungus then replaces the tissue inside the host, and eventually bursts through the insect’s exoskeleton
• The fruiting body of the fungus then distributes the spores onto the forest floor
• The Cordyceps genus contains thousands of species, each of which is designed to attack a single host species
• All of this is simultaneously awesome and disgusting

So…

Design for one particular host? I can dig that.

Design some thing that creates behavior change in the host, such that it is compelled to spread the…um…contagion in the most effective possible way? I’m still on board. Look at Farmville: as repulsive as it may be, the game is designed to reward people who share the most. For a happier case study of this kind of design, have a look at Dropbox, AKA my favorite web service EVER (sorry, Flickr).

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned

In particular, check out slides 28-30. After a failed attempt to get users via search – and spending upwards of $200 per acquisition – they incentivized digital word-of-mouth by offering two-sided referral bonuses. If a new user shares a link to the Dropbox signup form, and their friends sign up via that form, BOTH players get extra storage. And Dropbox wins because it gets a new customer for the cost of (potentially) a couple gigs of storage space. Win.

And that’s that.

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• March 7, 2010 — Microsoft Courier Interface: Awesome (2)
• May 26, 2009 — Ask Focus on Energy (7)
• August 21, 2008 — A night off (0)

Woo woo! We’re going on two months! If you don’t know how it works… you better ask somebody.

Or just send me your charts via Twitpic, yFrog, Flickr, email, whatever.

Bud drops some knowledge.

Mike talks etiquette.

Sam Chotiner, our newest Undercurrenter, describes a hotly debated topic from last night’s beer-ing session.

Mark explains how to make a million dollars. I imagine this is the same way most business plans are made.

Simon’s illustration of his productivity over time.

Rye’s iPad-drawn chart about charts.

Nate’s mutually exclusive/comprehensively exhaustive look at society and twitter.

Tim gets the award for first photographic chart of the week, as well as the first to introduce toilet humor (there’s always at least one every week).

Emily’s comparison of platforms and happiness.

Two more from Mark.

Christy, as always, nice work.

Colin’s distractions.

Undercurrenters can attest to the veracity of Sarah’s chart.

Nice one, Uberblond.

Ian is now a future-caster.

SUSHIMEAT, via Len.

This is perfect, John.

Nice design here, Hazel.

A lulzy contribution from Hank.

Nice, timely work from my favorite San Franciscan creative director, Guthrie.

Whoa. Eric took his honest pills today.

The results of a lunchtime taxonomy discussion.

From David.

The Pocket CMO relaxes on Fridays.

Sad, Dave.

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• July 9, 2010 — SXSW: People are Stupid, and How to Fix Them. (0)
• April 21, 2010 — Innovation, Money-Making, and Public Services (2)
• April 16, 2010 — Stupid Movie Quote Infographic (0)

Yesterday we were talking about the state of patent and copyright law, and whether it helps or hinders innovation.

Generally, the thinking was that “creator’s rights” encourage people to make things – if your invention is protected, you’re more likely to profit from it – but that after a certain point, competition-eliminating or world-changing innovations ought to be in the public domain. My brand-new colleague Joe pointed out that Jonas Salk famously did not patent the vaccine he created for Polio: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” (Wikipedia)

I tend to agree with that statement.

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• April 16, 2010 — Barrier-Utility Cheater’s Hypothesis (2)
• May 14, 2010 — Friday Make a Chart Day v.7! (4)
• April 16, 2010 — Stupid Movie Quote Infographic (0)

I stole the very good idea and even better design from FlowingData’s Data Underload section to create this “info” graphic about some of my favorite movie lines, from some of the stupidest (and awesomest) movies of all time.

I hope you enjoy it. I enjoyed making it. It was a long, tiring, good week, and doing a bit of design just now was quite enjoyable. Now I’m off to the Foursquare Day party. Hope to see you there.

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• January 27, 2010 — FEED’s Irresponsible Infographics (9)
• May 14, 2010 — Friday Make a Chart Day v.7! (4)
• April 21, 2010 — Innovation, Money-Making, and Public Services (2)

In theory, people maximize their lives by weighing costs and perceived utility for goods and services. What this chart presupposes is…maybe they do the same when it comes to (a) Sex and (b) Digital Things?

This isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but it was worth a quick discussion yesterday at work and (as usual) a quick whiteboard diagram. So if you’re faced with a scenario where you have the opportunity to cheat (on your wife or on your favorite digital service), use these handy charts.

High barrier, low utility? Don’t cheat. This is why VIRB never became a serious part of my life, and Facebook continues to be my leading lady. It would take too much effort to recreate all my connections elsewhere, so it’s very hard to tempt me with beautiful design and cool features. Sorry, VIRB. You’re hot, but not hot enough. However, it’s my position that creating artificially high barriers to cheating is actually a bad thing when it comes to digital experience.

Barrier-Utility Equilibrium is the likely source of many marital problems. In the case of Tiger, the barrier should have been high: gorgeous wife, child, potential multi-billion-dollar losses due to a tarnished image, etc. But his perceived utility was able to overcome any mental barrier, and the rest is history. This equilibrium, I imagine, occurs mostly with new services, where both the barrier and utility is low. Why not try Gowalla AND Foursquare, if the winner in location-based services is unclear?

High utility, low barrier? Definitely cheat. If it were easy for me to move everything to a brand-new and clearly better system – including connections, photos, permalinks, etc. – that would be pretty attractive, right?

Interestingly, Wordpress and the 37signals services encourage cheating: they allow users to easily take their data and migrate it to new platforms. But as far as I can tell, they don’t suffer much churn because the alternative services don’t provide enough utility. It’s also my belief that the creation of a barrier-less platform actually reduces the perceived utility of other services.

But perhaps I’m not thinking straight. Happy Friday!

May I offer another post?

• April 21, 2010 — Innovation, Money-Making, and Public Services (2)
• April 9, 2010 — Friday Make A Chart Day (v2) (4)
• May 14, 2010 — Friday Make a Chart Day v.7! (4)

Where I grew up, there’s a special tree called the Coastal Redwood. It doesn’t grow anywhere else in the world, and it’s by far the tallest (379 feet at the reported maximum) and nearly the oldest (up to 2,200 years) tree on Earth. They’re simply stunning. And for a long time now, I’ve wanted to get a marker of home on my body, and in particular, a representation of these trees. Now it’s done. And I love it.

Sorry, mom! I know you hate it, but I love it. And many of your favorite internet people have tattoos, so…  ?

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Click for full size.

In the spirit of Bud’s amazing idea from last week, let’s make some charts!

Make a quick diagram and send it to me, either by leaving a comment with an URL or by posting to twitpic/tweetphoto. I’ll post them below for posterity.

Matthew Carlin

Rachel Tipograph

Magda Maslowska

Marisa Zupan

Daniel Prager

David Zaza

Jennifer Beio

@illick

Len Kendall

Ian Sohn

Studio Number One

Matthew Scott

Maxi Molly

Mike Arauz

Paul McEnany

And now, a word from the president: Bud Caddell, creator of Chart Friday.

Click to expand this gem from Jonathan Stern, our newest Undercurrenter.

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• April 16, 2010 — Barrier-Utility Cheater’s Hypothesis (2)
• March 12, 2009 — On Super-Users and Self-Selecting Networks (2)

This Lego replica of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 resides squarely in the center of an enormous Venn diagram describing everything I like.

The detail is incredible:

• A working 7-speed gearbox (with reverse!)
• Independent suspension assemblies
• Adjustable spoiler
• Retractable targa top
• Mechanical brakes!

So, so awesome.

Via NOTCOT, and re-embedded here because the site they link to is a little fishy.

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First there’s this, a video showing the amazing mimicry of the Wonderpus, otherwise known as the Indonesian Mimic Octopus Thaumoctopus mimicus.

Via NOTCOT.

More here: Indonesian Mimic Octopus, on Wikipedia.

And then there’s this, a video showing the awesome, devastating and quite frankly terrifying power of smallish flying/ground robots with Jerry Baber’s AA-12 recoil-less shotgun attached to them.

Jerry Baber, if you didn’t already know, is an…eccentric guy living in a place called Piney Flats, Tennessee, who for the past while has been investment-casting gun parts. Investment Casting, also known as Lost-Wax Casting, is a process where an artisan (or a machine) creates a positive mold out of wax, surrounds that wax with some non-meltable substrate, and then subsequently melts the wax away, revealing a negative space that can be filled with molten metal. The process is slower and more expensive than other metal-forming techniques, but it yields more precise parts that require less finishing.

Aaaanyway.

This Jerry fella, with all of his mad-scientist gun-making know-how, has figured out a way to make a shotgun that has almost no recoil. So little recoil, in fact, that you can rattle off 20 rounds in a few seconds with one hand. Tiny robot + recoil-less fully automatic shotgun = frightening killing machine. And that’s before you pack it full of Jerry’s special shotgun-cased mini-grenades, that can be fired at the same rate, and explode on contact.

THIS is why I think we’ve only got a couple years left to live. The approaching singularity + amazing robot hands + recoil-less fully automatic shotguns = Terminator.

Enjoy humanity while it lasts, people.

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