quickbites

the iphone shuffle

From Macworld 2008: the iPhone Shuffle, which has no display and a single button that dials a random number from your phonebook. “Our research showed that people don’t care who they call as much as they care about being on the phone,” said Jobs. “We also found that most cell phone users hate routine, and prefer to be surprised. That’s just as true for people answering calls as it is for people making them. It’s much more liberating, and far more social, to call people at random than it is to call them deliberately.”

shoes and compliments

“Getting a shoe compliment from a woman is like having Bobby Flay come up to you at a party and tell you your seven-layer dip was incredible, like having Whitney Houston (pre-crack, of course) duck her head into your car window at a stoplight and tell you that she overheard you belting out “I Will Always Love You” and that you’ve really got something there, like having Mario Testino tap you on the shoulder when you’re posing for Myspace self-portraits in front of your bathroom mirror and saying “You’ve got a good eye, kid.”

love vs noise

How Jennifer Love Hewitt Made The Web More Usable. “Back in the day, before they became known as the internet’s premiere usability gurus, 37Signals was just another web shop, putting up brochure-ware for McCompanies riding the bubble. It wasn’t until they hired Jennifer Love Hewitt that they really refocused and began creating the kind of productivity software that makes the lives of web consultants and small business owners easier.”