My apologies for the late post, but I spent the bulk of yesterday writing a chapter of my thesis. That said, I have some particularly interesting links this week. Enjoy:

• Designing for consumers
  After fumbling with what sounds like a half-dozen different badly designed digital photo frames, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue points out the primary reason that companies like Apple and Google–companies that focus on design–do so well. A revealing article indeed, especially if you’ve never really given much thought to the ease of use of various products.
• The Feltron Annual Report
  While it’s certainly lovely to look at, and I applaud Nicholas Felton’s gumption for actually creating it for the past several years (especially since you can buy a copy of it, if you feel so inclined), I don’t quite see the point of the “Feltron Annual Report,” which documents such banal things as average cab fare for the year prior or his five most frequented restaurants. It does highlight for me, however, how poorly I document my own life, though I can’t help but think that I don’t really need to remember how many bus trips I took in 2007, and I don’t especially care what album I listened to most in iTunes. If anything this is an artifact that can–and should–promote discussion about memory and the concept of self-documentation; it reminds me, in a few ways, of Gordon Bell, who is feeding every detail of his life into a “surrogate brain” with the end result being that he never wants to forget anything. That may be a fine goal for Mr. Bell, and perhaps for Mr. Felton, too, but I know that there are plenty of things that I would prefer to forget.
• Recording a remote podcast
  Here’s a good how-to post explaining how to create a podcast between two people that are in different places using Skype, GarageBand, FTP and Call Recorder for Skype. Very informative if you want to start a podcast with a buddy who may not be in the same state or even country.
• The business of tech support
  Amazingly, technical support services outside of those offered by computer manufacturers is estimated to be a $300 million industry, especially with the advent of Microsoft Windows Vista. So what do the experts, such as John C. Dvorak, recommend? “I advise everybody to buy a Macintosh because Apple products are the easiest to use.³³ If you own a PC, you have to find a local nerd, a kid, maybe a relative [to fix it]… That’s the only solution.”

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1. I don’t want this to turn into a Mac-vs.-PC debate, since that leads nowhere productive, but I can tell you that one of the less-than-tech-savvy producers that I work with recently bought a Mac and I’ve not heard a peep out of her, even though I’m apparently her de facto technical support system.333

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