Archive for January, 2007

The zero-handled mug

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Note to Donald Norman:

Hello –

After reading your Good Design page, I just wanted to make a comment
about Tygs. I made a Tyg in a pottery class a few months ago, and while
I think it’s a nice idea, the reality is unwieldy and takes up too much
space in the cabinet. One handle on a mug is bad enough, why have two?
In fact, why have one? Consider the zero-handled mug.

Thermal issues aside, the sharing of a zero-handled mug with someone
would be a more intimate, emotionally positive experience for both
parties than a one or two-handled mug. The transfer would be simple,
too. You might have to briefly touch the other person’s hand, though.
You might have to get physically intimate with your friend, this person
with whom you’ve been discussing gardening or the Super Bowl.
You might even accidently share lip space with them, if you’re not
careful.

Is that so bad? Maybe in the late 1700s it was, but today? Today we are
frequent bathers. Today we have anti-bacterial soap, and it is good.

So I’m proposing that in the modern world, Tygs are not for sharing a
hot drink with friends, they are for sharing a hot drink with enemies.
People who you want to keep at mug plus arm’s length. People with
communicable diseases. The Tyg is a social, physical, and emotional
barrier, while the mug with zero handles is exactly the opposite. It
builds intimacy and connection. And we need more of that in this cruel
world.

Here’s a zero-handled mug I purchased last week, which I want to propose
as a Tyg alternative for urban dwellers with small cabinets who don’t
mind touching their friends on occasion:

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B0009WX41Q/

best,
Carl

He wrote me back and said I had convinced him to buy the Bodum mugs.

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locked into DRM

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

This article really gets at the center of the issues around digital music distribution and why “encrypted” music, at least as it is today, serves no one but the hardware manufacturer whose line of music players you’re now locked into using.
Apple’s employment of DRM drives me crazy. The iTunes store was the first big digital music store, and I think their DRM is a relic of early deals with fearful record labels. It may not be very (legally) easy for them to shut off at this point. Apple is a lifestyle, so I understand why it’s important for them to control the horizontal and vertical, the hardware and software. But in my opinion, proprietary standards like FairPlay do not last. Sure, it has seen a lot of use because of the iPod’s popularity, but I think MP3 will win in the end because it is open.
I also think services like Rhapsody, where you can subscribe and stream any music you want for a fixed monthly fee, ala NetFlix, could win out in the end. It’s a funny psychological difference—between purchasing music and having a subscription to listen to music. It really depends on people’s feelings about music: do they want to “own” it or do they just want to listen? You never really own music, though. You own a license to play it, and you own some packaging material. So the idea of music ownership is really about the sentimentality felt by a collector about the packaging, and so far there is no replacement for that sentimentality in any digital service. The extreme music collector hardly even has a CD collection, because they know the only real emotion—the only true sentiment—is cut out of vinyl, not plastic.

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