Scott Bush

First, check out this new smartphone. Makes the iPhone look like a Nokia 5160:

http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

Now, if you’re done exploring the phone’s built-in projector, shaver, and coffee-brewer, you may have noticed this spoof was put on not by Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, or Nokia. Nope, not even by an advertising agency, the now-defunct Sharper Image, Brookstone, or even AirMall. It’s a marketing video for… Nova Scotia.

No, Nova Scotia is not some crazy name for a new frozen-yogurt shop. It’s the actual province in Canada (you know the Canadian provinces, don’t you? Nova Scotia is the one on the east coast of Canada, with all the fishing? Yeah… I thought you knew it). This well-designed marketing concept really is a stretch, but I think it will work. Most people probably haven’t heard of Nova Scotia, or if they have they think it’s “just some place in Canada.” Well, this site does a good job catching people’s attention and may actually increase the tiny provinces’ poplarity–or, at least recognition–among the younger demographic that the NS government is appealing to.

After teasing the techophiles with the multiple features of this “smartphone,” the site tells viewers that “one day you’ll be able to get everything you need in a phone,” but that “today you can get everything you need in one place” and then whisks them off to this page. There are equally well-produced vignettes here of people living, working, and enjoying life in the province. It’s a smart way to get people looking at and talking about a place that might otherwise never get noticed. But is it effective? There are certainly a lot of people discussing the campaign, that’s for sure. This commentator in Halifax doesn’t think so. Time will tell, but I salute the Nova Scotian (or is it Novan Scotia?) government for their efforts.

Today, I logged into my Gmail account. “That’s strange,” I thought, seeing the color scheme and slightly-altered edges of page elements. I was busy and didn’t pay too close attention; I merely wrote it off to an oddity of the aging Windows box I’m forced to use at work.

But when I logged on from home, I noticed one of those discreet messages Gmail employs, this one informing me that Gmail now has themes. What a great extension to an already great product. Gmail is rapidly becoming a popular e-mail client (everyone I know is switching to it and loves it, though Google apparently is keeping total usage numbers to themselves), and these skins are just another step in the evolution of the product (such as the new video chat feature, which I’ve not yet used).

Google is smart to further solidify their popularity with younger users who have become more accustomed to the ability to customize, or “skin,” their desktops, phones, MySpace pages, Trapper Keepers–everything. Choosing one of the subdued, whimsical, or spartan theme for your primary e-mail interface is another way to endear the tool–and more importantly, the Google brand–to an important demographic. Google’s customized home page, iGoogle, has offered themes for some time so adding this ability to Gmail is a logical next step.

I won’t go into a description of the themes available. You can see examples and read more about it over on Google’s blog. But I just had to call out two themes: Terminal and Ninja. I’m running Terminal now, but I don’t know how long I can actually take this ASCII-style monochrome throwback.

UPDATE: I agree with Sean’s comment (below). The fact that the message composition area is not skinned is a bit of a distraction. It’s especially problematic with the high-contrast themes like Terminal and Contrast Black. Here’s a sample with the Terminal theme:

I know this area can be skinned, as the chat window follows the aesthetic of the theme. Perhaps it was more complicated to skin it if Gmail is using a framework like TinyMCE for the composition area. But Sean’s right—Gmail is eternally in beta so perhaps when it officially launches this area will respect the theme choice?

I saw this on XKCD today:

(XKCD is a great web comic, but probably won’t interest you if you’re not a 1) programmer, 2) mathematician, or 3) a generalized geek of some kind.)

This comic struck a chord with me because I’ve often wondered this exact same thing. Calling Asian countries “the East” and Europe and North America are “the West” never made sense to me. First, it shoehorns some countries, like Iceland and Australia—not to mention entire continents like Africa and South America—into groups to which they might not belong. Second, cardinal directions are completely a matter of perspective, as shown so clearly in the comic.

I know that “East” and “West,” in their capitalized senses, have more to do with ideological divisions than longitudinal ones. The concept of “Eastern” vs. “Western” philosophies is interesting, whether it be in medicine, diet, religion, art, or any of a dozen areas. But couldn’t there be a better way to draw a distinction than overloading these geographical terms? I don’t pretend to be smart enough to suggest any, but I will note that these sorts of labels can change. Remember the term “third world country” (which I always thought meant countries founded after World War II, but maybe not)? It’s now better to call them “developing nations.” So it’s possible to change these labels. If we did, maybe XKCD can get back to really incredible comics, like this map of the universe on a logarithmic scale).

I’m pretty excited to introduce to you a new punctuation mark: the Questlamation mark. It’s gonna be the biggest thing since the asterisk.

What is it, you ask? Much like “Spenglish” (Spanish + English) and “Brangelina” (Brad + Angelina), the Questlamation mark is a combination of the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!). I found myself needing to add emphasis to a question and decided there was nothing wrong with simply using both punctuation marks together, as in: “You did what for how many green jellybeans?!” But in the never-ending quest for optimization, I created a hybrid, and I present it to you now:

It utility is matched only by its potential for variation. While the version above is the ubiquitous standby, Times New Roman, I’ve also created a version using the sans-serif font Verdana:

Note the slight irregularity of the shared dot. To create the proper alignment of each mark’s stem in relation to its dot, I had to warp the sides of once-regular dot. I think it gives this example a hand-crafted authenticity.

And, to avoid any claims of bias toward the interrogative over the emphasis, I created the questlamation mark a cousin, the exclamestion mark:

Sadly, neither of these extremely useful punctuation marks can be found in your favorite fonts. But don’t despair because the introduction of the Euro symbol showed us that such an undertaking is possible. I suggest you write your congressperson and ask–no, demand–legislation be introduced requiring the questlamation mark be required in all fonts and on keyboards no later than 2012. Oh, and also have them see about adding the word “questlamation” added to dictionaries so that all these red squiggles under the word go away!

Only one thing can temper my joy on this, the day I introduce a new punctuation mark to the world: the knowledge that I’m not the first to do so. The folks over at FontFeed.com have a post about the “Interrobang.” (For those non-Unix and non-programming geeks, this name is derived from “interrogative—to question—and “bang,” which is for some strange reason, shorthand for the exclamation mark to that group). But, just like Newton and Leibniz, I swear I came up with the idea independent of anyone else. What’s worse is they link to two separate fonts that include not only an “interrobang” character, but two other exclamation mark hybrids. Here’s an image of them in Amplitude Wide Bold:

Well, I shouldn’t be sad. The more exposure the world has to this punctuation mark, the greater its acceptance and adoption will be. (But id better be called the questlamation mark instead of interrobang!). So, will you please get out there and start asking questions with a lot of emphasis

My adoration for WordPress, the open-source blogging and website tool, is well-documented. As I worked in it this evening I noticed something that simply had to be shared:

(Briefly: WP has two content constructs: posts and pages. Posts are time-related, pages are not and instead let you assign a hierarchy like a traditional website. This panel lets the user assign a page’s place in that hierarchy.)

If you can’t read it, the panel gives instructions and then a caveat about the quality of its purpose:

Pages are usually ordered alphabetically, but you can put a number above to change the order pages appear in. (We know this a little janky, it’ll be better in future releases.)

C’mon, how great is that? The developers know it’s not as intuitive as WP’s other features but rather than exclude it, they left it in with this tongue-in-cheek note. Good stuff.

I ran across a strange photo tag on Facebook the other day: the rear-end of a horse tagged “Joe has such a pretty face” that had been associated with another person with whom I’m friends on the social-networking site. Luckily, it was just another friend of ours, Dustin—himself a savvy web user and analyst—pushing the envelope. You can read his post on the subject, which he aptly calls “assault-tagging” at his blog, Web Connoisseur.

I read the post and decided to comment, which I’ve copied below.

Ah, a funny joke to be sure. And certainly, if you hadn’t started it, someone else would have at some point. But these sorts of things are what lead services like Facebook to have to implement restrictions (such as requiring users to approve tags in photos) that make the whole process more cumbersome.

Of course, the other view can be taken: you’re a white-hat “hacker” exposing potential issues with Facebook so they can set up safeguards (like my example above) before any “real” damage might occur.

This is the sort of thing I’d expect to see on MySpace with its younger-skewed demographic. But time—and the sort of people you’ve friended—will demonstrate how wide spread this tactic will become.

What do you think about this?