Oprah WinFrey

James Frey reminds me of a little boy caught in a lie, trying to get the smallest punishment possible. Oprah reminds me of the cave-in mother who knows she should ground the kid for life, but ends up letting him do whatever he wants the next day.

And both of them are loving it.

Neither Oprah nor James have been ultimately hurt by this. James has secured a spot in literary history as the man who lied in memoirs - and got caught. Oprah will be forever known as owning up to a mistake, and confronting her defamer. If I didn't know better, I would have thought Oprah was a politician by the way she demanded regulation by the publishers and spun the story in her favor.

This is a classic case of any publicity being good publicity. Frey will sell even more copies of his book, despite the controversy, because we have no problem reading his book as fiction. Most people were pretty taken by the story, and it doesn't matter what the cover says: "memoir", "almost a memoir", "fiction based on reality..."

Hmmmm...

Perhaps that's an even better point. Why are we mad at Frey for shifting our perception of his life away from reality, when movies have done that for a very long time as well? Movies that state they are "fictional but based on actual events" shape how we perceive the actual events. And usually these events are more important the drug-addicted life of James Frey (i.e the life of JFK or Vietnam or Johnny Cash).

We've made James Frey a pretty big scapegoat for lies here. I can think of a certain someone whose lies have perpetuated the death of thousands, a disillusioned country, and false ideals of democracy. When is Oprah going to sit him down and give him a stern lecture?

ESPN's "redesigned" site

Today, ESPN offered a redesign of their hopelessly cluttered home page. The ironic thing is that I almost didn't even notice the change. I started ready the lead story about Carmello Anthony when I realized that my eyes were looking more to the left than usual. Then I noticed the logo had shifted approximately 100 pixels to the left.

Wow. What an incredible job. They managed to change everything without changing anything!

One of ESPN's biggest problems is that they reek of sponsorship and marketing. The whole site is bumped down by a banner across the top (not uncommon 5-10 years ago, but certainly we must have a better solution by now). There is advertising in their media player which loads painfully slow and then surprises you with sound halfway through your browsing experience. The written content is truncated and packed into a grey mess of text. One of the worst parts is that all user great user content is pushed below the initial view of the page. You need to scroll to find things like the your personalized team info section or the SportsNation poll (probably the main reason I even visit any more).

Aren't we past some of these problems? Haven't we found ways to integrate sponsorship and content better than this? I can feel the layers of approval and bureaucracy that this had to go through. The approvals, the arguments over pixel height, the bickering over color and hierarchy. The thing is that everyone at ESPN is probably happy with the compromises that each department made, but they lost someone in all of this - the consumer.

The consumer can acknowledge that there is a lack of usability, an over-saturation of ads, and a gross neglect for highlighting interesting content. ESPN has offered up a way to let them know what you think, but it seems they should have done a bunch of this testing before they launched the redesign.

Can anyone tell me the significant difference between old and new here?



:: The old ESPN site (above) vs. the new ESPN site (below) ::

When the server is down...

it's a snow day for designers.

Macworld 2006

It's 1:35 PM (Eastern time) and I am reading live updates from macrumors.com of Steve Jobs's keynote address. New iMacs with Intel chips (2-3x faster than previous G5s). A new PowerBook: called MacBook Pro (not sure if I'm 100% happy about the name change - but there are two processors and at least 4-5x the speed of the older G4s). I am not sure if I should be ecstatic or pissed that I just bought an iMac.

I'll go with ecstatic for now. There's your scoop!

Vista: Windows' version of Tiger.

If you love Apple, the you'll love this video. The audio you hear is from the recent Consumer Electronics Show, where Microsoft unveiled more if it's new operating system called "Vista." Apparently a lot, if not all, of the features on Vista are already available with Apple's operating system, Tiger. The video overlaid with this audio is someone's attempt to prove that point. What you'll see is an Apple demo. What you'll hear is what is supposed to be "new" in Vista. A tremendous piece of editing to prove a great point - Windows is still playing catch up to Apple.

I found this video courtesy of David Pogue, tech columnist extraordinaire for the New York Times.

unINTELligable move

I am certainly not the first to comment on Intel's new logo, but after reviewing others thoughts, I thought I needed to add to the pile. Plus, I was going to comment on it way before Adrants and others did, but I am not in this for the journalistic prize of being first to break anything.

Perhaps I am most interested in this subject because I am brand loyal, in the best ways, to Apple, and with the impending move to the Intel chips in all of Apple's computers, I have been reading more and more Intel stories. I recall when the announcement was made, I was fairly impressed with Steve Jobs' ability to sell me on the move. Of course, no one wanted to allow the "enemy" into the conversation, and especially not into our computers! But when the enemy is really positioned as Microsoft and the prospect of beating the dark side with their own medicine, the idea of changing to Intel sounds a whole lot better (plus it seems like it all works already).

My biggest objection was the idea of having one of those hideous intel logos on my beautiful Mac. I thought a lot about how Jonathon Ive would hide the logo in new computer designs, or if Apple included logo placement rules in their contract with Intel. My best thought was that they would take the original logo (sans loop) and print it in a darker grey with other small logos on the back of iMacs, iBooks, PowerBooks, etc.

At the most recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel launched their new logo (right), and I must say it is hideous.

First off, can we leave the ellipse behind, my fellow designers? Everyone from ESPN to Samsung has tried it, and it's not going anywhere new. We should be shot on sight for showing any client a logo that incorporates an ellipse. Second, the baseline-shifted "e" in the original logo was at least something that Intel could own and use as a point of visual differentiation. Now, the logo lacks little in the way of unique characteristics, and could be typeset for any conceivable technology company.

To prove my point, remember when Steve Jobs announced the move to Intel chips for Apple? All he had to do is say "It's true.", show an image of those words, with the dropped "e", and everyone knew what he was saying - the rumors of Intel and Apple joining forces was more than a rumor.

That dropped "e" had value and could communicate for the entire company. Ultimately, that's why I am so confused as to why Intel would choose to make such a change.

The new tag line is "leap forward" and that has me a bit puzzled, too. "Leap forward" is one of those "calls to action" I don't understand, because I don't get if I am supposed to leap forward, or if Intel is leaping forward, or if it's supposed to mean both and ultimately why I should care.

"Intel inside" was nice because it had equity in the chip... the product. I knew if I saw "Intel Inside" I had some ability to believe that there was a superior chip inside that computer, not because Intel said "We make better chips!" but because they had proven it with market share, reliability, etc. Plus, it was great for PC manufacturers who used the chips, because people actually looked for the logo before buying. I don't' think a label that says leap forward has any believability to it, nor is it compelling enough for me to buy any product bearing the slogan.

Alright, enough bashing. I just wish that if I was going to become brand loyal to Intel, that they would have given me something in this major change to believe in, or just kept their former work going.

On the coal mining accident...

What do you think now GE? Is coal glamorous? Is it really worth it? Do hotties covered in coal dust really help us to understand why GE is creating better coal opportunities?

As we have seen, coal is a highly dangerous enterprise. I'd be very interested to see how long it would take before GE would run their coal miner's ad again. Amazing how tragedy can change our point of view.

:: ::

I had a very interesting experience with this incident. I was awake (thanks to the 3OTs in the Orange Bowl) when the announcement came that there were 12 miners that had survived the explosion. I spent 20 minutes watching Anderson Cooper and others interview the elated Mountaineers who had held vigil or had relatives in the accident. The word "miracle" was thrown around in an evangelical fashion. I kept thinking there is no miracle for the one who didn't survive.

Then, I read the news this morning that, in fact, only one miner had survived, and his outlook was in question. People looked for who to blame for the miscommunication. I look to the people who were so eager to see a miracle that they couldn't get the facts straight.

Don't get me wrong, to have faith is one thing, and I do believe is wholly good. But to have an unreasonable belief that something impossible will happen... well, that is more dangerous, and it taxes people's emotions in a serious way.

I know the people of West Virginia fairly well. I have spent many summers working in the communities of coal fields, hearing the stories of coal and religion and both their influences. The people of Appalachia know this news story too well. Their memories reminded them that often this story ended in loss of life. But I wonder, if the state of affairs was helped or hindered by an overwhelming proclamation of unfounded hope in a miracle.