I was delighted to see that my hometown, Kalamazoo (“Boiling Water”), made its way onto The Atlas of True Names. Read more
Informational
Cicada Invasion 2013
After 17 years underground, the cicadas are about to have their time in the sun. Millions of these root-sucking insects will come out into the open and spend four to six weeks calling for mates, mating and then laying eggs for the next generation.
Delete All Mail on iOS 6+
It always frustrated me that you have to delete POP3 messages individually on iOS 6+. If you have IMAP set-up for your accounts, they’ll automatically delete with each deleted message on your PC or other devices, however,POP3 doesn’t sync in the same way that IMAP does.
Naturally, Google implemented the easy and obvious option of deleting all mail on your phone with the click of a button. Apple, however, is a company that consistently thinks they know what’s best for you. Deleting emails individually is a surefire way to ensure you’re not accidentally deleting an email you need or haven’t yet read, spam included. I think of this as Apple’s version of eating your vegetables.
After much searching and tinkering, however, I’d nailed down the process of clearing my inboxes at the end of the night, an arduous task that used to involve 100+ clicks while sitting on the train-ride home. This process has reduced the number of clicks substantially to just five.
Note that I’ve added an additional step to clear the badge from the home screen mail icon, which taunts of phantom messages if this step is excluded.
- Click the Mail icon and go to “All Inboxes”
- Press the “Edit” button and select the first message.
- Hold down “Mark” and, with it still depressed, deselect the first message.
- Release the “Mark” button and click “Mark as Read”
- Click the “Edit” button and select the first message.
- Hold down “Move” and, with it still depressed, deselect the first message.
- Release the “Move” button and click the Trash folder.
That’s it, you’re done!
Update: 04/01/2013: Well, it truly is April Fool’s Day. Apparently, using the above method, the emails are deleted from the inbox and moved to the trash until you switch mailboxes and return to the “All Inboxes” folder, where they mysteriously return. Bah, Apple. You’ve done it again. Either way, you can still use the above method to “Mark as Read” all messages, removing the badge from your home screen mail icon. But, you’ll still see the “read” messages in the list when visiting “All Inboxes” and the folder size will continue to grow until you manually delete the messages one-by-one. Frustrating, innit?
It’s ugly so it doesn’t work.
The Thickness of Napkins
“What does a napkin tell you about a restaurant? Quite a lot. A restauranteur friend told me about a survey that showed a massive correlation between category of napkin and customer satisfaction. That’s not to say you can hand out deliciously thick napkins in a shitty burger joint and immediately win customers over. It’s a cause and effect thing. The napkin represents a degree of care, preparation and devotion that goes above and beyond asking if they want fries with that.”
This brief, but poignant article by Des Traynor, COO at Intercom, reminded me of a lesson I learned in developing Lyrek CEMS for the Fashion & PR industries back in 2007.
I sat down during a training session with a woman that ran the PR for many industrious fashion designers and started walking her though the product, then called Reserve-U. Her response:
“It doesn’t work.”
I rebutted with confidence that the product had been thoroughly tested and I assured her there were no bugs in the system.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s ugly, so it doesn’t work.”
Read the rest of the article on ERA404’s web site, here:
http://www.era404.com/press/building-a-better-mouse-trap/
Read the rest of “The Thickness of Napkins” on Contrast:
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/the-thickness-of-napkins/
(via @raf)
The Creative Process
Oftentimes when approached by clients and agencies, we’re asked about our creative process at era404. While people can easily see a step-by-step diagram of our development process, broken down by time, cost and client interaction, we have never really outlined how the creative process works here. This is partially because development, which is creative in its own right, is considerably more objective, pragmatic, and analytical. The process is linear, relying on previous checkpoints to proceed to latter ones.
Design, on the other hand, grows organically and chaotically. It pushes forward and outward in untraceable trajectories. If one thinks of development as a relay race with the baton being passed at regular relay points, design is more like a quixotic multi-player game of capture the flag. It’s undoubtedly the most challenging, gratifying (and possibly frustrating) part of our job here, riddled with stops, starts, reorientation, redirection, hidden doors, trap floors, exploration, and trial and error, relying purely on experience and gut instinct to reach the goal. And while the description above sounds daunting, it’s the primary reason we love our jobs so much.
So, depicting our creative process in a linear diagram like our development process is impossible. But each design roughly follows the same objectives along the uncharted path, which, coupled with client feedback and critiques, act as polestars in guiding us to their completion. Below are those objectives, distilled and organized as they would be in a perfect world, free of the organic and beautiful growth of real-world scenarios…
Growth of the NYC Subway
Here’s a link to an animated map that shows the growth of the NYC subway over time, from Appealing Industries Appealing Industries (via Spacing Toronto). Unfortunately there’s no time legend, which would have seemed like a no-brainer to include. Still a very interesting animation, though. And if you want to see about eleventy billion more maps from throughout the history of the NYC subway, go here.
Found on The Map Scroll
A Decade of Lessons in Small Business Management
As we round third plate to complete our 10th year of business at era404, it’s impossible not to reflect upon the previous decade’s successes and lessons. In fact, despite the enormous pride we have for our successes—the awards we’ve won, the opportunities we’ve been afforded, the pieces we’ve created—it was in the lessons that our company grew the most. We can only assume that the same way the triumphs and tribulations of a child’s first ten years shape his or her personality, a business uses its own experiences to analyze the risks it will take and the directions it will pursue.
The first ten years weren’t always easy. Read more