garry's posthaven

Dan Ariely mines up a gem. I'll leave you to come to your own conclusions on this one. ;-)

Man we're going to have to license this design and print a few of these... ;-) Thanks Micah.

http://typemicah.posterous.com/

This is an example of the 'new computer setup' form that gets filled out when you buy a new computer at Best Buy.

Are we buying consumer electronics, or are we getting our car serviced? Because it seems like one way or another, we're getting fleeced.

Consumerist has the inside scoop on the $70 scam of 'pre-optimized computers' that Best Buy has been trying to pass off as a product. All they do is remove some of the Norton crapware that come pre-installed. Isn't that funny? In a mad grab for more consumer dollars, the consumer electronics apparatus has created scam upon scam, first with computer makers over-monetizing their out-of-box experience with absurd preinstalls, and then with retailers charging $70 on top of the whole thing to uninstall it.

Insanity piled upon depravity, is this how the computer industry plans to eke out extra profit?

Label your units... kind of funny to what length larger orgs have to go to in order to hide information from their competitors. Vince was like:

what are we measuring? sec? millisecs? ... minutes?

In 1977, a 22-year-old truck driver named James Cameron went to see Star Wars with a pal. His friend enjoyed the movie; Cameron walked out of the theater ready to punch something. He was a college dropout and spent his days delivering school lunches in Southern California’s Orange County. But in his free time, he painted tiny models and wrote science fiction — stories set in galaxies far, far away. Now he was facing a deflating reality: He had been daydreaming about the kind of world that Lucas had just brought to life. Star Wars was the film he should have made.

30 years ago, James Cameron was a dropout and a truck driver. How crazy is that?

A lot can change in 30 years. Or even 10. Sitting with old friends at a dive bar in the Mission this past weekend, we thought back to 10 years ago -- we were high school seniors. It is funny to think about how far we've come in 10 years... from fresh faced kids to building our grand plans. Its even more staggering to think where we'll be in another ten.

And what about another 10 after that? If we keep moving, who knows?

If I buy an e-book device, I need to know that the service that backs it will be around forever. Kind of like a book. A book will sit on my shelf for-ev-er -- or at least until someone moves it.

I know Amazon has the resources and foresight to see this through all the way. The only other company that probably has the ability to be enduring in this way? Apple.

I'm certainly thankful for the Nook though -- it pushes new features and great ideas like the capacitive color touch screen below. Looking forward to the Kindle 3...

Wow, this is such proof that Chrome rocks. When you delete tabs from the left, Google Chrome doesn't resize its tabs until you move your mouse OFF the tab area -- that way you can just keep clicking X without retargeting.

This is the kind of interaction design attention to detail I can really really appreciate.

Google Chrome is so svelte, it makes me feel skinnier.

Looks like Square went public today. Hot. Its a device and service that lets you take payments from any credit card anywhere via iPhone.

Rumor has it that the device (that hooks into the iPhone audio jack) should be super cheap too.

I think they have the potential to totally change personal payments. Isn't this what PayPal was supposed to be originally?

FINALLY someone will solve that dreaded "How do we split the bill?" issue. I can't wait to get one.