Andrew Spittle is tumbling

I mean it’s marketing 101. Do you remember what the ads for the original iPhone looked like? You remember seeing anything in those ads about the BlackBerry or the Treo? No. It was a whole new thing — sui generis, as the French say. It had to be. If all we could do was to make a slightly less shitty BlackBerry, and offer it for a few bucks less than what RIM was charging, we would not have bothered to make the product. Honest.

It’s interesting to note that sites like Hulu and TV.com are becoming successful simply by dusting off an old format and making it more palatable for online audiences. Instead of loading up shows with commercials, just throw in a few ad spots here and there. Instead of running shows at a specific time, put them online for a limited run and let people enjoy them at their leisure.

If anything, the essence of Web life is that we are impatient to discover the next installment in our planned programs of very patient long-term interest. That’s a kind of impatience we can be proud of, just as a mother might be impatient to receive a call from her teenage daughter away at college. It’s a sign of caring and commitment, not superficiality.

The Indiana Pacers are on the clock … for going bankrupt. And for making a pick. The pick? Tyler Hansbrough. That launches the N.Y. fans into an “Overrated!” frenzy. Hey, I’m excited for Indiana’s 2009-10 local marketing campaign: a photo of Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy, Jeff Foster, Hansbrough and Travis Diener with the UPS-like slogan, “WHAT CAN WHITE DO FOR YOU?” (All sarcasm aside, I liked the Hansbrough pick. Good seventh man. Like a much better Luke Walton. As Jackson says, he’ll “make every Pacers practice better.” Is that what you want from the 13th pick? Of course not. But this isn’t a normal draft. I keep telling you.)

It is not a good sign when a government feels the need to imprison even the dissidents it has already shot.

Another body of web user experience research shows that website users are powerfully influenced by aesthetics, and that positive perceptions of order, beauty, novelty, and creativity increase the user’s confidence in a site’s trustworthiness and usability. Recent design writing and interface research illustrate how visual design and user research can work together to create better user experiences on the web: experiences that balance the practicalities of navigation with aesthetic interfaces that delight the eye and brain. In short: there’s lots of evidence that beauty enhances usability.

Yes, it was flaky and probably even reckless for Mark Sanford to go AWOL. Returning to work, say, sometime on Monday would’ve been a whole lot better than his planned return tomorrow. But I hope that amid the ridicule and retribution people will also stop to ask when it became outright bizarre for a man to to want to—god forbid—unplug and enjoy a little solitude. Especially in a world like this.