Author: Carl Setzer

Is it too incongruous to listen to Springsteen’s “Born To Run” in Prius?

I’ve been using my left brain cells scanning business cards for one of my managers (his collection from many of his wanderings). One thing that has stuck in my mind while performing this mind-numbing task is the affects of format. A few years ago, we were going to beam our “cards” to each other (ala the Palm, et al), completely eliminating paper-based cards. Ha! I say. However, with technology such as the CardScan scanner, we’re getting closer to this sort of e-utopia. However, in an effort to stand out in a sea of business cards, some have taken to unique shapes, fonts, colors, what-have-you. Some of these are truly creative, but many are just obnoxious. The scanner hates pretty much all of them, though. So, my friends and colleagues, if you are considering a new business card format, consider a few things carefully. First, non-standard colors and fonts get garbled in these scanners. Second, save the uber-creative stuff for your website. Keep in mind that the spiffiest card design can’t make up for content. No one will keep your card, or reach out to you, unless they want or need to. Lastly, try really hard not to put a massive array of data on these things. They’re pretty darn small, and putting a book’s worth of information makes them numbing to read. My advice is to put more data on your website, and then print the link. Easy!

With all of this, I’ve been considering this sort of data. It’s not hard to envision a future where you just give out a social id, and some can grab your information on Facebook, or some future incarnation. In this setting, I picture the ability to select how much, and who, can see what. So, in this Facebook of the future, I see the ability of my friends and family to see nitty-gritty details, where co-works can see less, or more specifically relevant information, and so on the less related someone is.

I often see headlines such as this, “Travelers not too satisfied with Sea-Tac airport: study”. It seems rather damning at first glance. However, I’m left to wonder. What does this really mean? Does this mean that Seatac has a problem? I’m not too sure. As I read the study (at least the little bit reported here), one of the first things I notice is the small range of scores (top: 690, Seatac: 656, bottom: 647 range: 43 points). Being last is not that much worse than being first. Also, this seems to be, in its sum, a customer satisfaction survey. It isn’t a sample of the same group of people experiencing all 19 of the airports. There’s a huge amount of subjectivity to this.

Of course, I’m one of those folks who distrusts the “wisdom of the masses”, which (I’m sure) colors my perspective on surveys such as this. I also tend to work hard to find logical inconsistencies and other “issues”. Perhaps I’m more cynical than I thought.

Anyway, I find this sort of stuff more annoying than informative. It’s not like the airports in question really need to modify any of their offending behaviors. It’s not like there are other options. Well, not without serious aggravation.