The Closed Window Effect

I was driving my car today with my brother in the passenger seat.

I had my window open, but my brother Andrew had his window shut. We were driving through a kind of construction area with pylons and as I was driving by one pylon on my side of the car I pretended to reach out and touch the pylon. It was fun.

As we went a bit further, I was turning onto another street, and made a right turn very close around a pylon on the right side of the car where my brother was sitting. I said in a very excited tone "touch the pylon, touch the pylon!"

Andrew went to touch the pylon, but the window got in the way. It was funny, and you might have had to be there to find it as funny as I did. But I wanted to share it.

Know Your Audience AND Your Medium

If you have a cell phone and receive text messages you probably have experienced this.

Quite often, especially on important holidays like St. Patrick's Day and Easter, I receive text messages from friends wishing me a wonderful day. Some, more than others, annoy me a little. Of course I am glad they thought of me enough to send me a text message with the greeting, but its more the way they do it. Here's the basic format:

"I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy _______. I hope all of you enjoy yourselves and stay safe."

Seems great, except that its not a text message to me (which is what I was expecting when my phone beeps) but its a text message to a bunch of people. With text messages you don't know if someone is sending the message to other people, because it is, for the most part, a phone to phone communication medium. With email it is a lot easier to figure out if the email you have received is just to you or to a bunch of people, so the example above could be used effectively when it shows that someone has received this message along with your entire address book. In a text message, my first assumption when I receive a text message is that I am receiving a text message from someone who has just typed it out and wants to send me a little message.

It is obvious these people use the same message over and over again just changing to whom the message is sent, so in my opinion it would be better to make the messages more personal (even without names, as long as its directed to an individual and not a group).

An exception to this rule is Twitter, where someone might wish "everyone a happy ______" but people using Twitter understand that these messages are sent to everyone. This does take the personal touch away from these text messages, but the point of Twitter has much more to do with networking and getting your message out to a lot of people quickly and easily (and again, I believe Twitterers understand this).

I think this text message concept has a lot in common with regular snail mail. People are more likely to open an envelope that has hand written addresses and a real stamp on the front than a a "PRSRT STD" and a little plastic window with your name and address peeking through as the To: line of some form letter. (Of course, I haven't looked up any research on this subject, but I know it goes for me). This is because letters are supposed to be (and started out as entirely) personal messages from one person to another. This is how text messages started out, and I believe still is in most people's mind.

In short, please next time you send out a mass text message, make it less generically directed at everyone and more generically directed at me.

Dubbed Commercials

During my most recent trip to Europe (specifically England) while watching TV I saw a few different american commercials (known there as adverts) dubbed. Now these commercials weren't dubbed into another language to accommodate any number of immigrant groups that are residents of the great city of London. Rather these commercials were dubbed over with an english accent to mask the harsh sounds of the American accent the commercial originally had.

This was strange and possibly even more strange to me since I've been back state side. While watching commercials here I notice a lot more that there are many commercials using a main character/voice with a british accent.

There are marketing implications even in something as simple as an accent. People often associate different characteristics with different accents (whether right or wrong) and companies try to use this to their advantage.

Prescription Drug Commercials - Part 2

Another thing I find really ridiculous about prescription drug commercials is some of the warnings they mention.

Of course, I understand that this simply is a legal requirement that each company must follow in order to advertise their spectacular products, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

One of my favorite examples of this is the warning for many sleep aids stating that "after taking _______ sleep aid you should not drive or operate heavy machinery until you know how _______ sleep aid affects you." Who in their right mind thinks, "Oh, I have to go dig that large ditch by the elementary school with this massive backhoe, but let me take this drug that will probably make me fall asleep first..."?

I have a much easier time understanding the driving part of this statement because a large majority of people in our society actually drive. But if you are going to mention something like operating heavy machinery, why don't you mention other things like flying a plane, shooting a gun, or operating a Tilt-A-Whirl?

Prescription Drug Commercials

There are many laws in the US I'm sure regarding commercials for prescription drugs. Maybe one of the most obvious of these is the inclusion and listing of risks and side effects.

Sometimes drug companies try and spice things up by having "doctors" or friends who turn out to be doctors list these things off as if this type of language were commonplace in everyday conversation. These attempts come off as fake and useless to me.

I'm sure I could find a lot of other stuff that I don't like about these commercials but this is a good place to start.

An infinite number of ________

I'm sure you are familiar with or at least have heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem that states if "a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare." Because of its dealings in the infinite this is obviously more of a mental exercise than a testable hypothesis or idea, but it is still interesting to think about. One of my favorite Molson Canadian beer commercial series used this idea, and plays on the sense of Canadians lacking an identity. Where "an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually define all that is Canada." (After much searching, I can't seem to find these commercials on the web anywhere).

I was thinking the other day about some other theoretical variations of this, and one idea crossed my mind that might be interesting to try. If your shoes are untied and you walk an infinite number of miles your laces might just up and tie themselves. This would be useful if you didn't want to tie your shoe, but I'm a little scared to think how many times one might trip waiting for your laces to tie themselves. I guess the question we all have to ask ourselves is "Is it worth it?"

New TV Remote Concept

Apparently Bang & Olufsen has designed a new remote control for television. It's pretty slick, although it doesn't have as many functions as my 1,832 button universal remote.

via Engadget

IKEA Trip

I should explain some background to the last two posts.

My brother Andrew and I took a sort of spur of the moment trip to San Jose, CA on Tuesday.



Our goal was to go to IKEA in Palo Alto and we pretty much decided the night before that we would go. If you've never been to IKEA you really don't know what you are missing until you go. It's one of my two favorite stores in the world (I'll try and let you guess what the other is).



We left at about 9am, and got to IKEA around 11:30am. Previously we went to Sacramento and the IKEA there, but we decided to try a different city this time around. The drive to San Jose is a little longer than to Sacramento, but the drive is much nicer. The problem with driving up to Sacramento is that its pretty much just a straight shot up highway 99, which can get boring (as you know if you've ever made the trip).

I bought a lot of random stuff, and fortunately did not spend as much money as I did last time I went. This time my bill was only about $115. I purchased some side tables, pillows/shams, and various kitchen items. Andrew and I were seriously considering buying a new kitchen table and chairs, but we decided not to because we already have a decent set.

On our way back to Fresno, we made it a fairly leisurely trip, stopping at some stores and various eating establishments, including the restaurants from the two posts I posted on the way back.

Root Beer

In an attempt to make this trip back to Fresno relaxing and leisurely Andrew and I have stopped at A & W for some refreshing on tap root beer in a frosted mug.

Andrew and I are big fans of root beer and we both agree it is hard to beat one of these cold root beers in a frosted mug.

Jones Organics Green Tea

So I'm at Panera Bread with Andrew and I got a jones Organics Green tea mandarin flavor. It is pretty good, very light and refreshing. I hadn't seen these before and I thought I would try it because of my love for tea and all. There was also a peach flavor but I'm usually not a big fan of peach flavored drinks.