I knew that headline would get your attention.
Moleskine porn isn’t what you’re thinking it is. Moleskines aren’t animals or weirdo fetishists. They’re notebooks. (And good ones at that; I own a couple myself.)
For the best in Moleskine minutia, check this site out. And this one. This one’s pretty good for pics, too.
But my favorite moleskine site is micronomicon.com, which gives the Codex Seraphinianus a run for its money; the author also has a cool travel blog. (Micronomicon link via DY.com.)
I am a passionate believer in the importance of Web design usability. Web sites, more than anything else, should be easy to use. Simple. Straightforward. Focused. No bells and whistles.
In my work as a Web strategist for nonprofits, I often argue for Web usability from an aesthetic and functional standpoint: people like the way simple Web sites look, and such sites communicate information more efficiently than cluttered ones. Web sites that are visually initimidating are frustrating to navigate.
But needlessly fancy Web design also has financial implications.
I was talking to my buddy Benny C. last night, and the subject of a gourmet rice pudding restaurant in New York City (yes, you read that right) came up. Our pal David Z. visited the place and sent their link around to us the other day and raved about it.
So Benny, being a foodie, went to the restaurant’s site and tried to place an order for some $50 worth of rice pudding. Note that I said tried — the joint’s awful Web site, which features music and dreadful flash animations, was so complicated that he couldn’t figure out how to buy their pudding — and Benny’s a very smart guy. But he got frustrated and gave up.
Think about that. The restaurant, which I’m sure provides an excellent product, went from having a complete stranger evangelize them — our friend sending their link around and talking them up — to losing a $50 sale and the future business of a potential customer. And all because whoever built their site was more concerned with coolness than effectiveness.
It’s a shame, if you ask me.
…with custom chrome emblems.
(Link via Kottke.)
(Personally, when I go shopping for bling, I go straight to this site. Don’t hate the playa hate the game.)
The My Twinn doll is just plain creepy.
In an ongoing email thread, my Dad and I have been pondering an interesting question he raised: since Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch, did the native population ever take to wearing clogs?
He writes:
Newl-
Did you notice that the NC [Ed — he’s referring, of course, to the previously-mentioned Nap Cap] is $99.95! Your brain would already need to be asleep to order one!
By the way, I’ve been reading the history of foreign occupation in Indonesia, and it seems very unlikely that anyone other than aristocrats who profited from the Dutch presence ever chose to wear wooden shoes…
Anyone out there got an answer for him? My googling reveals nada.
I’m lookin’ at you, Frans V…
UPDATE: My buddy Frans V., who in fact grew up in Singapore and is of Dutch heritage, writes:
Newley,
The Dutch never wore wooden shoes. In fact, it was a dutchman named Johanas van der Vooran van Wuden who came up with the idea after the decline of the Moluccan spice trade to invent the wooden shoe and market them for tourists. The dutch had hoped that tourists would buy their famously large wheels of cheese, but they kept rolling off the sides of the ships as tourists returned home. The wooden shoe however proved quite popular and before long you could see tourists clogging clumsily down the cobble stone streets. Pickpockets soon picked up on this correlation of cash carrying tourist and poor mobility and the great Clog Crime wave took place in Amsterdam in 1872. Soon after the wooden shoe fell out of favor and the dutch tourism board lobbied to have Holland’s nuclear power plants replaced with windmills. So in fact, the dutch never really wore wooden shoes and people in Indonesia during colonial times for that matter wore Tevas, which have since been replaced by the locally produced Nike Aquasock.
Who knew?
Andi G. sends along this exceptional product. I give you The Nap Cap.
