I am (as they say at Microsoft) super-excited this morning.  I have just ordered two prints from Michael Light from his Full Moon exhibition.  There is also a gorgeous book.

I have been a space enthusiast since I was a little boy (I joined the British Interplanetary Society aged 10).  I met Buzz Aldrin briefly once at a computer games trade show and Charlie Duke at a dinner in London.  I have signed photos of both on my wall in my study. I’ve been to KSC twice and Houston once (I flew NASA’s Space Shuttle simulator - cool!).  Like I said, I am a space enthusiast.

Michael Light pored over the NASA Apollo archive and converted over a hundred of the original negatives into stunning, bright prints which have been exhibited around the world.

The first is Walter Schirra gazing out of the Apollo 7 hatch window.  When I saw the exhibition for the first time in London, I was awestruck by this picture which seemed to capture exactly what it meant to be an astronaut.

The second image, which I cannot find on his website to share with you, is a picture of a command module in orbit over the moon.  For me, this captures the technology and ambition of the moon missions.  I agonised for a long time over the second choice.  I only have room and cash for two pictures and I thought of getting one of the more obvious images, like an Earth shot or a footprint on the moon, but I love spaceships and I wanted a picture of one. 

The pictures come soon and once they’re framed I’m putting them up in my study. I know they will inspire me.

Technorati Tags: Michael Light, Apollo, space, BIS, Full, Moon, Earth, photography, exhibition, prints

NOTHING to do with writing but very cute anyway, this airport animation uses symbols from airports and public transport to tell a story. Hat tip to web zen, which I’m also adding to my list of favourite sites.

In a similar vein, the wonderful, wonderful Airtoons which mocks government safety advice and those flight safety cards in seat back pockets. As a pilot in my little plane, my only advice is “there’s a toilet at either end of the flight, there are no inflight refreshments but heavy drinking before embarking is strongly advised.”

Technorati Tags: Airport, graphic design, cute, zen

Wired’s Bodyhack blog reports on the complexity of medical jargon and the patient safety problems it poses.

Earlier this month, the Joint Commission, a hospital accreditation organization, put out a report on the problem of medical (il)literacy. “Far too often,” they said, “ordinary citizens are placed at risk for unsafe care because important health care information is communicated using medical jargon and unclear language that exceed their literacy skills.” The report recommended everything from medical interpreters to better consent forms and training staff to speak in plain language.

The comments are particularly interesting as they recount personal experiences of this problem.

Parallel problems exist for health care professionals who have to use computer systems to enter and review patient records. Controlled vocabularies, consistent user interfaces, even entering dates and times in a standard way become vital for patient safety. Microsoft’s Common User Interface (CUI) programme in collaboration with the UK’s National Health Service addresses some of these issues. Their introduction to the CUI describes some of the steps that required:

For example, it has put resources such as the British National Formulary into the research pane [in Microsoft Office], so they are easier to access. “At the moment, if a medical secretary needs to look up a drug name, she will probably have to go through a dictionary on her desk that might well be six months out of date,” says Mr Nolan. … Similarly, an NHS Abbreviations Manager has been created that will automatically ask the user exactly which condition is covered by an abbreviation that they type and encourage them to code it correctly.

(Full disclosure: I co-wrote this introduction for Microsoft which is one reason why I’m interested in the subject. Another reason is that a good friend of mine is a GP and he tells me scary stories of miscommunication in the medical world.)

Technorati Tags: Doctors, medicine, plain English, communication, user interface, design

Kathy Sierra at the righteous Creating Passionate Users blog compares bad customer service to bad marriages.  At first, all seduction but then all complacency.  The bit that struck me was the comparison between brochures and product manuals.  It’s an interesting observation that I get asked to write a lot of marketing brochures but I’ve never been asked to write a product manual.

Technorati Tags: Manuals, brochures, Creating Passionate Users, marriage

I wrote a long piece about a Second Life story that Slate picked up from the LA Times about ‘virtual terrorism’ in Second Life. It quoted anonymous sources from an ingame interview. (See previous post on SL.) Then, I thought, if I write about it, I’m just playing the game of hyping Second Life. So I decided to highlight some websites that deserve more attention (they are also being added to my favourites page).

• Away with Words. Nancy Friedman’s delightful site about names, brands and writing.
• Business Writing.  Lynn Gaertner-Johnstons useful and informative site.
• Manage your writing. My favourite business-writing blog (aside from my own, of course).
• The Copywriter Underground. He writes for a living, you know.  Nice site.
• Creating Passionate Users. Consistently interesting posts and cool diagrams.
• Escape from Cubicle Nation. Pamela Slim’s blog about entrepreneurship. She brings hope to corporate drones everywhere.
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Blogging from the 17th century. Courtesy of star actor and website wizard Phil Gyford.
• Presentation Zen. I’m trying to avoid big traffic sites, this ones a true gem.

According to Anne-Marie Nichols’s The Write Spot, NBC asked the top 130 New York bloggers how much they made from their sites. The results are revealing:

• 17% - over $1,000/month
• 14% - $200-500/month
• 4% - $100/month
• 14% - less that $100/month
• 51% - NOTHING

Guy Kawasaki, a top 100 blogger and hero of mine, reckons he earned $3,350 in his first year from Google ads; although the advertising on his site now is much more visible and perhaps he’ll earn more. I don’t think he’s going to give up running his VC business or writing books to live off his blogging income.

My own experience? I get about $10 a month in Google ad revenue on ModernPilot.com, my flying website. I don’t run ads on Bad Language but there’s a trickle of income from Amazon Associate links, perhaps a few pounds a month on average.

Having said all that, blogging is fun. It brings in business (my blog is my marketing department). It builds connections with interesting people. Readers’ comments and feedback inspire me.

Technorati Tags: blogging, income, advertising, revenue

I gave a presentation about Web 2.0 last December to a PR company in London. For two hours, I told them all about blogs, wikis, social networks and all that good stuff. Polite interest.

At the end, as a bit of fun, I showed them a slide of Second Life. They went wild with excitement.

This was the moment when I started to be sceptical about Second Life. I admit that Second Life is a cool idea but I was amazed by the unquestioning enthusiasm. Me? I prefer to swim upstream.

The PRs hoopla seems to be shared by many respectable journalists, especially in the business press (you know, those guys who thought Enron was a great company). It’s been featured in Business 2.0, Harvard Business Review, Business Week etc.

Now, Shaun Rolph deconstructs the ‘new, new economy’ of Second Life in The phony economics of Second Life in The Register. And, guess what, the emperor is naked. Roplh ask the questions that any self-respecting business journalist should have asked.

Here are some highlights:

• Yes, 3.1m have registered.
• But 85% of registered users never come back after 30 days.
• Rolph estimates the number of regular users at 250,000.
• There are only around 15,000 people logged in at any one time.
• Only one in five users are economically active in Second Life.
• So, perhaps only 3,000 paying, economically active people online at any one time. Hardly the economy of the future.
• The game struggles with more than 100 avatars in one place. So much for concerts.
• More than half of the 21,000 ‘in world business owners’ make less than $10 a month.
• There is no guarantee from Linden about the convertability of Linden Dollars to real world cash. You can’t take it with you.
• Property rights are unenforceable without expensive federal lawsuits.

Rolph hints at the biggest problem but doesn’t fully explore it. Money has to be a store of value as well as a means of exchange if it is to be effective. In the real world, governments can erode the value of stored money with inflation. Economic history is full of countries that bought themselves pain by printing themselves a pay rise.

In Second Life, Linden doesn’t even need a mint to print more money. They can produce more Linden dollars, more land and more objects simply by clicking a button. What is the value of your Second Life space station or exclusive island if anyone can have one and it costs nothing to replicate?

In fact, the only thing that seems to be in short supply in Second Life is participants. It looks like the people have more sense than the business journalists.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, hype, scepticism, The Register, phony, economics

I really enjoy the holiday between Christmas and New Year. I like weekends. I also like getting up early. It just occurred to me why this was the case. Without distractions I can actually get my work done.

Put simply, I love writing but I hate meetings.

My clients on the other hand think that writing won’t happen unless it is co-ordinated, scheduled, managed, debriefed, reviewed, discussed and generally met over on a regular basis. I love my clients and I like talking to people but it is just getting silly.

This post is just a cry of frustration. This week I have three meetings with clients at their offices plus four other conference calls. Call that two and a half days. I still have to do at least five days of writing.

Does anyone (please!) have any suggestions about how to make meetings more efficient, less time-consuming or in any way transmute them into productive time?

I just listened to an insightful, acute and funny radio show by legendary writer Clive James. He attacks companies that change their names and the verbal gymnastics they go through to come up with new words. Here’s a snippet:

Such changes of name were once made by freshly appointed executives who wanted to announce their arrival, and who, unable to change what they should, changed what they could. But by now, surely, it’s done out of a kind of desperation, as if words could work magic. It happens throughout the culture, and the misguided use of the word “culture” is a disturbing further development of what is essentially voodoo.

You can read a transcript on the BBC’s website [Corrected link]. It’s worth scrolling down and clicking on the audio button so you can listen to Clive James reading it - his delivery is part its charm.

• Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us. (Hat tip to Manage your writing.)
• The Child, which features a version of New York made of words.  Very cool. (Hat tip to fade theory.)