christianmclean's posterous

A needed resource

After reading this post http://rivershark.com/x/129 I realized that the business I had thought of long ago is a good one.

 A few years back I came up with this idea of a business (ScapeGoat Inc.) where a boss could hire a person to come in to the office and they could vent to this person about any and everything without repercussions. Maybe then bosses would be less irritated and more able to command effectively. Because we all need to vent, but we all don't have someone to vent to that understands that its just venting.

 Maybe I will get around to it someday.

 C.

New Length Measurement standard

I am writing a paper today, and I obsessively keep checking the word count and character count. I do this mostly because the paper has to be a certain length (1500 words if you care).

 As I was doing this I started to think of the idea of the length of a conversation and using SMS. Why don't we measure conversations and papers in how many SMS messages it is, because SMS is becoming the new way to communicate. No one calls anyone any more, and if we start thinking of papers in SMS lengths we would be able to understand truly how long it is.

 I'm really not sure what I'm saying here, but it might be important in some cultural sense.

 Ehh.

Fun iPhone app

Found Footage: Instaviz, graph sketching app for iPhone

Found this little app for iphone, probably pretty useful

Found Footage: Instaviz, graph sketching app for iPhone

12-09-2008

I spend a lot of my time with a dry erase marker and whiteboard sketching diagrams for clients. I draw use case diagrams, flow charts, mind maps, you name it. On my Macs, I use the shape tools in Pages to draw my diagrams, but I often wish for a tool that would let me sketch charts on my iPhone.

Instaviz (click opens iTunes), from Pixelglow Software, is exactly what the doctor ordered. You can sketch out a rough shape (circle, rectangle, square, diamond, or triangle) with your finger, and Instaviz "cleans up" your sketch by turning it into a clean, symmetrical shape. Links between shapes are done by just dragging a finger between the shapes, and Instaviz automatically enters a straight or curved line to connect the shapes.

You can choose colors for the different shapes and lines through a color picker, zoom in or out using the familiar iPhone two-finger pinch/reverse-pinch gestures, add or edit labels, and scroll around your diagram. To erase objects, you tap on them and then shake the iPhone "Etch-A-Sketch" style.

The US$9.99 app can export graphs to a MobileMe iDisk or any WebDAV server in DOT/GV or PDF format. Here's a video showing the app in action:

A new way of writing papers

I sat down today to write a paper for an art history class. In order to gain some bearing the first thing I did was to google my topic. Naturally this brought me to wikipedia.org, don't get me wrong; Wikipedia is defiantly not a research worthy site but what if it were?

 What if this is the way we write research papers in the future, instead of laying claim to our knowledge we allow everyone the right to our discoveries in order to further the whole collective of human knowledge. Wikipedia could become the library of tomorrow, allowing people to better search criteria, full searchable text, not just titles and subjects but the whole article.

 When a student writes a research paper, they could automatically look at what someone else has done and expand on a segment, or choose a different angle completely. I think in education we spend too much time doing repetitive practices, instead of learning from what others have already done and using that as a jump off point. I am not negating the idea of practicing one's discipline to be efficent and skilled at their chosen craft, I just think that we spend too much time rehashing the same topics.

 Let's say for example I were to do a paper on George Ohr, famous potter from Biloxi Mississippi, and I were to publish it on wikipedia then anyone else who were to write a paper on him would then be able to see my research and where my information came from and expand on my reactions and thinking.

  
Maybe I am just a dreamer of democratizing information and grades. Oh well...

Finding your niche

Browsing through digg.com today I came across this article http://www.ridelust.com/the-9-detroit-auto-brands-wed-miss-the-least/ about GM and their brands.

 They do have too many brands, but the real problem is each of their brands are too similar. The difference between the cars from the brands is not distinct enough. This is the problem with the US automakers is not they they don't make quality cars it is that they don't know how to create a product to a specific niche. In todays market there is simply too much choice for a consumer. The more you can narrow down your product's audience the more of a chance of selling it.

 I run into this with my own work. When I submit for a show or a residency I don't just send out applications and money to any show, I research the juror and try to find thematic shows in order to maximize my acceptance.