A friend of mine recently sent me an animated info-graphic that depicts America’s unemployment rate, broken out by county, over time from 2007 through 2010. As you watch it, you can see how increasingly devastating the unemployment picture looks after 2008. It looks a bit like a black plague of unemployment is consuming America. This animated info-graphic paints a petrifying picture, and he shared it with a group of friends to reinforce the dire situation. It’s not too far

At the All Things D conference earlier this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs articulated what I felt was a substantial brand-driven statement: “All we want to do is make better products.” This statement might seem quite obvious and insanely simple, but I see it as a clear, concise and incredibly effective positioning of his company. He used the words “better” and “products,” which tells us — and his employees — precisely what he wants everyone in the company thinking about when t

In the late 1990’s, RSS feeds were born. The abbreviation had promise: It was easy to say (“arr ess ess” just sounds interesting phonetically) and it stood for “Really Simple Syndication.” How much more promise could a new technology be when its very name had “really simple” in the title? Well, this seems like a situation where the name just didn’t represent reality. Unfortunately, it seems that the “really simple” was more about the coding side of things than the user

In a recent post on Engadget, Michael Gartenberg advanced a theory that the new “Metro” user interface (UI) design ethos was a refreshing alternative to the trend of trying to make digital experiences look and feel more organic. He claimed that many of the organic analogs in UI were not efficient or effective in the digital space — that in digital, there is more room for innovation due to the inherent lack of physical constraints. He used Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Ph