Blogless

Particularly delightful is this one. Please note, the correct answers are 2, 3, 5, and 7.

Word to Today and Tomorrow.

1. Hotel Fakeout Photos

Photos from Oyster.com — Hotel pics on the left; real pics on the right

FatWallet ran a story last week about some “creative” photography resorts use in their advertising. Hotel review site Oyster.com, which encourages users to send their own photos of hotels, has a gallery full of examples.

Of course, it’s the photographer’s job to make things look as good as possible, but it’s a slippery slope.

2. ‘The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell’

MIT newspaper, The Tech, ran an interesting opinion piece this month about a student’s ethical dilemma in Dubai. But it’s probably not what you think.

The story is not about Dubai or the culture there, but rather the troubling practices of a consulting company the author worked for after leaving MIT:

…[C]lients usually didn’t know why they had hired us. They sent us vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals, and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why exactly we were there. I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual.

3. The Ethics of Flying Gaming Press to Hawaii

Ars Technica asks: Is it ethical for journalists to accept an free trip to Hawaii, in order to view presentations from a game company?

I would add: what about the CO2 from all those trips? Hawaii is a long ways from just about anywhere.

4. Is it OK for vegans to eat oysters?

Okay, so this one is not related to design or business ethics, but as a story about ethical complexities, it made me stop and think. Apparently, oysters are okay for vegans to eat.

I thought vegans didn’t eat any animals or animal products. It seems I didn’t understand vegans or oysters.

According to Professor Dan Harvey of the University of Toronto, all-glass buildings should never be built. In a recent interview, Harvey details the (not-so-surprising) reasons why. Many new buildings are designed with primarily glass exteriors, lack operable windows and require extensive air conditioning, yet somehow manage to be considered green. Harvey:

There’s no way you can make an all-glass building green. There’s no such thing as a green SUV. You shouldn’t be building SUVs in the first place; you shouldn’t be building all-glass buildings in the first place. And no amount of high-tech or fancy stuff can turn an inherently bad design into a green building.

I agree with Harvey: we need to rethink what it means to build green. His proposed solution is to create consumption-based standards for buildings, which would take into account energy (per square foot per year) for all heating and cooling systems that the building will require. These consumption-related standards would be particularly useful when deciding between retrofitting an already existing structure and building new.

These [all-glass] buildings are uninhabitable without massive air-conditioning systems…And the problem is, these buildings we’re stuck with for 50, 100, I don’t know how many years. I mean, even a coal power plant is only going to last 40 years. A brain-dead building – and that’s almost all we’re building – is going to last 100 years.

Full interview here.

Ich konnte bei dieser ganzen Tag anstarren.

Via Aber ist es Float?.

1. Take Note: New Facebook Privacy Changes

Did you see a new Facebook service agreement the last time you checked your status feed? The EFF warns that users should be aware of the latest changes to Facebook Terms of Service:

Today, Facebook removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users’ profiles, “including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests” will now be transformed into “connections,” meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don’t want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

Read on for an explanation of why Facebook is doing this and what users can do about it.

2. Dribble

I’m digging on Dribble lately. It’s a new website where designers can show tiny (400 x 300px) snippits of what they’re working on. Kind of a visual Twitter.

So far, the work seem to have a high level of quality across the board. Despite the small size of the images, there’s big inspirado inside.

3. Planes or Volcano?

Image via Information is Beautiful

Another wonderful info-graphic from Information is Beautiful.

4. What’s in a Brand Name?

I get a kick out of design trivia, like this Mental Floss article explaining the brand names of 10 top companies. I thought the story of Asus name was interesting:

Netbook computers are the hottest gadget out there, with around 14 million of the cheap little laptops sold in 2008. One of the big names in netbook production is the Taiwanese computer company, Asus, which gets its name from the winged horse of Greek mythology, Pegasus. But if you took a quick glance at the phone book, “Pegasus” wouldn’t have been too high in the directory of computer companies. So, to increase their visibility in alphabetical lists, they dropped the first three letters of their name. It was an unusual strategy, but apparently it worked.

(thanks for the tip, Jamie.)