You can hear my interview with the National Council of Women in Information Technology here.

The best part of this interview (in my opinion), is realizing how completely I’ve come full circle, working on revolutionizing the telephone interface that so fascinated me even as a preschooler. Phones interfaces have come a long way since 1975, but not yet far enough.

Little gaggles of women wearing t-shirts shouting their favorite TV shows (”Price is right!” “BRIDE” — she’s also wearing a back veil with her jean shorts). Others with little name tags semi-stuck on to their shirts.

Lots of carefully important studio types in polo shirts, thick-rimmed glasses, lanyards, smartphones in belt holsters, clipboards under their arms, swapping favorite Coffee Bean recipes.

German, Swahili, Spanish, Japanese and Skype being spoken at the tables around me.

Taschen, a so-cool artsy publisher’s bookstore where I could blow $500 in 20 minutes very happily (A History of Type, Simple Diary, Collecting Design…)

It’s a totally different atmosphere from The Grove, just steps away. The Grove is for shopping and enjoying. The Farmer’s Market is for Seeing and Being Seen. No wonder they don’t validate parking for one another.

It’s funny, I don’t remember CBS being as much of a tourist hot spot in my childhood as it is now. They used to give out audience passes at Universal and Graumann’s to get people to come watch pilot screenings or game shows. Huh.

The only real things here are the three little sparrows hopping around under my table, cleaning up the crumbs.

I gotta get me some better sunglasses.

I don’t want to know about it. I don’t feel elevated by sharing in the pain with the klal right now. I just feel sick and scared and unhappy. The world feels dark and neglected. Why did I have to know about this? I keep thinking: I wish I didn’t know the news.

Why do I have to know? Maybe, Ribbono shel Olam, you’re telling me that I need to know something:

I always feel better when yissurim are directly from Your hand (well, I feel better without yissurim, but when they happen…). When it’s You directly, I can respond to You directly. I know You are interacting with love. But when it is someone else as Your messenger… I don’t feel You so well. My attention is diverted by the wicked, the selfish, the cruel. I don’t handle that well. I don’t know how to deal with people who don’t see that other people have feelings. Even with the small stuff. You know that when I say:

ונא אל תצריכנו ה’ אלוקינו לא לידי מתנת בשר ודם… כי אם לידך…”

…I think that not only that I want the sweet gifts, the “tatzricheinu” that is “provisions”, but also the “neediness”, to be from Your hand, not through a person. I need to feel You there.

Why did I have to know about this story?

Are You telling me that at this time — summer, shemesh, heat, galus, fatigue — there are people who are evil and wicked… but that this is not Your neglect? It is another side of how You interact with us. It is the side I don’t want to see. I only want to see Your sweetness, love and kindness. I don’t want to see punishment, justice, darkness, confusion, terror. I don’t want to imagine the feelings of either family right now.

But there is pain and there are people whom You use as sticks. There are “teikus“, as Rabbi Horowitz puts it. Places where we can’t fathom what the reason is. Places where people suffer, are hurt intentionally, are terrified, are tortured. Moments that seem to defy everything You’ve created the world for.

And somehow, I need to develop in my Emuna and Bitachon enough to be able to embrace you there, as well. To see past the stick to the hand that holds it. And to know that You are holding the stick with all the same infinity of Love and care as when You are clearly present, supporting me.

שבטך ומשענתך המה ינחמני”

I don’t actually think I’m there. No, in fact, I know I’m not there. But maybe that is where You are telling me to go. Maybe that is where you are telling me to grow.

Please, Ribbono shel Olam. Please don’t make me learn this lesson directly. Not through myself, or my family. Not through anyone else, either. Do not turn Your back to us. Do not plunge us into darkness. Hold us in Your hands, cradle us to You, let us rest in the warmth of Your he’aras panim shining on us, and grant us the security to grow and to give to others.

יברכך ה’ וישמרך. יאר ה’ פניו אליך ויחנך. ישא ה’ פניו אליך וישם לך שלום.”

But, yes, don’t hide the message from me. Thank you for telling me that I still have far to go, and for giving me a signpost for the way.

What is most notable about Eight Winter Nights is the atmosphere of Chanuka that it evokes — the illustrations are simultaneously soft and vibrant, creating a safe, happy visual environment that my two younger children (3 and 5) were happy to be drawn into.

Eight Winter Nights is not a storybook, it is a series of little rhymes strung together loosely like beads where the string is the procession from the first to the eighth night of Chanuka.

On a first level, the book reviews the most common holiday customs and activities a child can expect to experience in a Chanuka week — dreidels, menorahs, cousins coming over, music, gifts, traditional holiday foods. As a way of gently preparing the littlest ones for a holiday they are too young to remember from years past, this works well.

On a second level, the rhyming couplets and friendly illustrations depict a comfortable, secure, even nostalgic Chanuka spent with family. What I liked best was the focus on time together reading, singing, playing and cleaning up the house, rather than on getting presents. (”Opening Presents” appears only on the seventh night, paired with “Tzedakah” [Charity] — a subtle expression of non-materialistic values which I appreciate.)

Eight Winter Nights won’t win any awards for its poetry, and the occasional burst of whimsy shoots right over the heads of my in-house preschool audience. That said, the kids found the rhymes a relaxing accompaniment to the delightful illustrations, and wanted to hear the book again — a sure sign of success.

The publisher is recommending this book for ages 4-8; in my judgement, the book works well as a Chanuka experience for children 1-4 years old (older children will be underwhelmed by the text).

Eight Winter Nights: A Family Hanukkah Book makes a good choice as a gift for a family with small children, especially as it is written without preference to any stream of Judaism.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of Eight Winter Nights from the publisher, Chronicle Books.

Seeking an English teacher (mail/femail) to teach boys English, evening hours in our home.

Sounds like the parents might want to sit in on the lessons.

The SweetPea3 is an MP3 player designed for young children, 1 - 5 years. Essentially, it replaces the Fisher-Price record player of my youth and the Fisher-Price tape recorder of my 18-year old daughter’s youth with the modern equivalent. (Note: At the time I was ordering our two SweetPea3 players, Amazon.com was showing a product listing for a new Fisher-Price MP3 player due to launch in a couple of months. No product details were available at that time. The product image looks an awful lot like those kiddie tape recorders of yore, including the sing-along microphone… and the size.)

I bought two SweetPea3 players — one lavender, one blue — from the SweetPea3 website. (Also available from Amazon.com.) My main motivation was to give my two youngest children (ages 3 and 5) access to music without buying yet another tape recorder for our old collection of music cassettes.

At $49.95 each, the SweetPea3s were a substantial investment. I admit to spending some time wondering if I should just buy low-end “grown up” MP3 players, instead. Ultimately, I went with the SweetPeas, and was glad I did. Here’s why:

1. Speaker. The SweetPea3 is primarily designed to play over it’s (very decent sounding) speaker. While it can accommodate headphones (not included), they are not the intended playback method; something most parents will prefer for small children. Not only are headphones something I don’t want to give my little ones (a strangulation hazard, especially in bed), they interfere with communication and make it hard for me to monitor volume levels.

2. Size. Sometimes, bigger is better. The SweetPea3 is sized and shaped for small hands. About 8″ long, it’s large enough for them to carry comfortably, and large enough not to slide between the sofa cushions (you wouldn’t believe what slips between our sofa cushions…). In addition to being more comfortable for kids to use, the larger size is safe for children under 3 years, who could easily choke on, say, a Sansa Clip+ or an iPod Shuffle.

3. Design. The player has a nice circular handle just right for little hands. (The product is shaped sort of like a hotel’s “Do Not Disturb” sign, only smaller.) The handle/hole is also perfectly sized for attaching plastic links, so that you can attach the player to a stroller or crib.

4. Rubberized exterior. The players are reasonably cushioned against shocks… and tantrums. Being thrown on our stone floors hasn’t done the blue one in yet.

5. Age-appropriate controls. The SweetPea3’s controls are limited to three buttons: Play/Pause, Back, and Forward. Limited controls means limited opportunities for confusion and frustration. Wisely, there is no Delete function.

6. Parental controls. A parent-accessible menu (hold two buttons down for six seconds to activate the menu) allows for volume control, playlist selection, and a couple of other settings. (Some settings I didn’t understand the need for: “Show Song“? “Pause“? Why wouldn’t I want those features on?)

7. Long battery life. After a week of reasonable use, the battery indicators still show full.

Purchasing from the SweetPea site was easy – the website is nicely designed and simple to navigate. Delivery was prompt and timely. Each box contained the MP3 player, some product guides and ads, and a USB cable. Showing a fine understanding of the target audience, the players came charged and pre-loaded with several songs and stories (some stories are just snippets), making them ready-to-go right out of the box.

Transferring files to the players was odd but not hard — because I’d seen the helpful information one Amazon customer posted. The players have 2 GB of memory, which is plenty for audio content (the website claims over 32 hours).

(On a Mac, the trick is NOT to drag files directly from iTunes to the player, but rather to find the music files in the Finder, and from there, drag and drop to the player’s icon on the Desktop (just like you might copy files from the Finder to an external hard drive). Double-clicking the player’s icon will reveal three playlist folders, into which you sort the audio files. It seemed to me that Playlist 3 does not accept new files; even if it appears to, they won’t be accessible from the player.)

The SweetPea3 was a fabulously successful gift — my daughter and son are delighted with the music players, and a week later, are having a ball with them. They love the control and fun of having their own “iPods” (a marketing coup for Apple), and take them everywhere. And I feel like a great Mommy for buying them.

SweetPea boasts that their player won the 2009 Best Toy Award. That may be so, but the player’s interface — while adequate for a first product — does not live up to the rest of the design, and really requires an upgrade if this product is going to take off.

Here’s what needs to be updated:

1. Larger buttons. The existing buttons are all right for my 3- and 5-year olds, but would be frustrating for the under-two set, or children with below-average fine-motor skills.

2. Volume buttons. These can be on the side to distinguish them from navigation controls. I like the concept of full parental control over the volume via the hidden menu, but not every song is equalized at the same volume as every other song. I’d like my control to be over an absolute maximum decibel volume, and for my kids to be able to control the volume up to that point. Perhaps for the youngest children (up to age 2) this would be overkill, but for the 3-5 year old set, it would be preferable. After all, the volume buttons can always be inactivated via the Parental Control Menu.

4. Playlist selection. Currently, switching between playlists can only be done via the Parental Controls menu, which limits the kids’ ability to choose what to listen to. With 2 GB of memory, there are an awful lot of songs to scroll through to find a specific one. Perhaps the solution is to add an album-sorted list.

5. Color display showing album images in addition to song titles (for kids who can’t read).

6. Faster response time. I was startled by how slow the SweetPea3 is to respond to button presses. My kids have the patience for it, but many won’t and will find themselves pressing furiously to try and elicit a reaction, only to find they’ve overshot.

7. More color options. This isn’t an absolute requirement, of course, but it would be a bonus if there were more color choices. The blue and lavender colors are really nice (nicer than they look on the screen), but if I’d had two girls, which one would have to take the blue? (I know it’s sexist, but you’ll have to live with it.) With small kids, color is the main distinguishing factor; writing their names on the players would not only be useless for the pre-literate ones, it would deface a lovely product.

Overall: The SweetPea3 MP3 player lives up to its tagline, “The MP3 player Made for Kids”. It is a solid choice for young children (birth to 5 years, or older children with motor or developmental delays), but the product is ready for a design update. The SweetPea3 was a fabulously successful gift — my daughter and son are delighted with them. Kids love the control and fun of having their own “iPods” (a marketing coup for Apple), and take them everywhere. And I feel like a great Mommy for buying them.

“almost destroyed my android phone today of rage, because of the time I lost trying to make it a great phone and realizing I won’t succeed. I will stick to my love-hate iPhone for now and patiently wait for WIN7 phones to show up. cannot wait to synchronize Outlook with my phone, and mirror my inbox etc. […] will always be a fun tool for application developers, a phone for geeks and Google adepts, but for a simply rooted guy like me using MS Outlook and few cloud apps, this is not going to work.”

I expect it’s just a little too early for most people to move to Android, unless you are either a programmer, or someone who keeps most of your data in Google’s cloud, anyway (GMail, GMail contacts, Google Calendars, Google Reader, etc.).The upshot: Choosing a smartphone depends on how you really behave when you are mobile. Your real smartphone choices are a QWERTY-keyboard Blackberry (if email and calling is a big part of your day); iPhone (if you mostly want a great iPod and a phone rolled into one, or you’re on a Mac and desire seamless syncing with your computer and MobileMe); and Nokia enterprise phones (if you value great calling functions and sound quality above all else, and don’t want to sacrifice any other features, even if they take a few more keytaps to reach. Nokia phones are fabulously hardy, and gorgeous, too.).Good luck, ima2seven, and I hope you’re happy with your new smartphone!

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) by Robert Cialdini

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

See What I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses by Lawrence Rosenblum

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz

Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

Fear No Evil by Natan Sharansky

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

(Note: I recommend reading the first half of this book; after that, it gets pretty repetitious.)

PRODUCT EXPLAIN:The product for voice,light,elecericity.incorporate.the material adopt all wooland a yard wide .excellent maked and have speciality of defiant,stimalate recreational.it be propitious to children touch and mind enhanceing.atthe same time adult as well as sportful fine toys.

GAME RULE:From jumping–off pointalong pathe end 100cent the pontil go ahead on the way not blow and reach astandard.good luck !

Got it? Good.

*Actually, The Power of Babel is the title of one of my favorite books on language.

Product Reviewed: Tawkon (www.tawkon.com) version 1.0.1 tested on a BlackBerry 9700 (Onyx).

The upshot: While documentation and online help for purchasing and troubleshooting are still sketchy, Tawkon is a remarkable application, and comes as close as I’ve ever seen to achieving the Holy Grail of “Set It and Forget It” as any application out there. Tawkon should be considered a vital utility for every mobile phone.

Tawkon describes itself as “a mobile phone application that gives users information and tools to avoid mobile phone radiation as much as possible, with minimal disruption to normal phone usage.”

Go back and read that sentence again. There are an awful lot of promises packed into that claim:

[1] a software application for your mobile phone (not a hardware measuring gadget); [2] delivery of information about your phone’s radiation emissions from its various radios; [3] tools to help you minimize exposure to cell radiation; and [4] a usable interface that lets you get on with your calls. 

Does Tawkon deliver?

[Disclaimer: After some initial difficulties purchasing and activating the application, Tawkon provided me with the application and asked me to test and review it.]

I’ve been using Tawkon for a week on a BlackBerry 9700 (Onyx). Navigating to the Tawkon website [http://www.tawkon.com/m] on my phone’s web browser, I clicked the big green PayPal button. This took a leap of faith, actually, since no price was noted (Tawkon costs $9.99) and I associate big buttons like that with “one-click” purchases. I clicked anyway. Much to my surprise, I was taken to BlackBerry’s AppWorld and the message “This application is not available on your device or for your carrier.” Hm.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just closed the browser and gave up.

Within hours, and much to my surprise, I received a classy email from Tawkon, thanking me for my interest and asking about my experience downloading and using the application. This was a first for me, and tipped me off to the fact that the Tawkon team is serious — really serious — about getting the user experience absolutely right, every step of the way.

Who could resist a letter starting, “As a young start up, we’re eager for constructive feedback…”? I wrote back: “Today I finally got my AT&T Blackberry 9700 working with my Orange (Israel) SIM. Tried to download Tawkon, and got a message that it’s not compatible with my phone or my operator. Don’t know which. So, I’m disappointed.”

Four hours later, I got a personal email reply from a real person — one of the company’s founders. After some troubleshooting, he explained that the problem was that I had chosen to purchase via PayPal, which meant purchasing through BlackBerry’s App World store, which is not supported in Israel (who knew?). Instead, I needed to click the other green button, and opt to pay using my credit card via the Mobihand store. Purchasing via Mobihand was indeed quick and easy.

Obviously, this gateway to purchase is confusing and difficult to use, and Tawkon will have to make sure that customers see only relevant buying options, or they will lose many bewildered customers along the way…

…which would be a pity. Because once the aches and pains of getting to the right web page to purchase Tawkon were over, and once the application was installed (important — and undocumented — note: you need to restart your BlackBerry after installation in order for Tawkon to launch properly! You can tell if it’s working by checking for the Tawkon mini-icon in the top margin of the BlackBerry home screen), everything went as smooth as silk.Tawkon has done this application right. They have obviously put a lot of thought into making the application function seamlessly, so much so that it’s hard to believe this is just a first release. Once they cross a few T’s and dot a few I’s, you’ll never guess this is a start-up. Tawkon feels like a mature mobile app from an experienced first-tier company.

I launched Tawkon from the Downloads folder on my BlackBerry, and was taken directly to a Tawkon Prediction screen that scanned my system and reassured me that my phone’s radiation levels were low. The Real-Time Radiation Indication Bar is liquid mercury; it’s so sensuous and fluid you’ll want to walk around mapping your radiation environment just for the pleasure of making the colors flow.

Keeping that screen open, I placed a call from my cell phone to my landline and took a tour of my home. (When you’re not on a call, Tawkon scans using a “Prediction Mode”. When you’re on a call, Tawkon goes into “Call Monitoring Mode”.) The results? My home and office are in good shape, although I won’t be making any calls from the bathroom. It’s just as well.

In fact, you don’t even have to open the Tawkon application to see your phone’s emission status. That little mini-icon on the home screen changes color from green to yellow to red to cue you in, say, before you even make a phone call.

Where Tawkon really shines is when you’re on the move. Most of the time, I never even noticed that Tawkon was there, running automatically in the background. But when I answered a call sitting in a mall café — bzzz. I walked into an elevator while deep in discussion — bzzz. My phone vibrated and a message appeared on the screen, an alert from Tawkon that my phone was emitting high levels of radiation. I switched to a bluetooth headset or the built-in speakerphone and was pleased to see that Tawkon registered the change and let me know that it was helping. Tawkon also records the emission patterns during calls, letting you go back to review your call history to see how much you were exposed to — or avoided exposure to.

How the heck does Tawkon work? Tawkon says it monitors and analyzes your mobile phone radiation as a function of  three key parameters: your phone’s specific absorption rate (SAR) – different for each phone model; environmental conditions – rural versus urban area, mobility, and distance from a cellular base station, terrain, etc.; and personal phone usage – the way the user holds the phone, distance from the user’s head or body, etc.

How reliable is Tawkon’s feedback? I’ll have to leave it to someone with a lab equipped to independently check Tawkon’s results against their own measurements. (Tawkon claims to have tested its results in collaboration with In4Tel, a strategic partner.) What I can say is that the feedback makes sense. Tawkon buzzed me in places where my phone would be expected to boost its power to get a signal — in elevators, enclosed stairwells and basements.

What is the impact on battery life? I don’t know how to gauge that, but I would expect it to be minimal, since Tawkon is a software solution. I spent a day at a convention and used my BlackBerry heavily all day for email, some long calls, Bluetooth radio on (WiFi was off), taking pictures of slides and constant Twittering during panels and sessions, and still had plenty of battery life left at the end of the day even though Tawkon was running in the background.

How does Tawkon know what it knows? Beats me, but I feel a lot better with Tawkon installed. You can read up on WHO’s most recent findings regarding cell phone emission risks here. I set out to purchase Tawkon because I wanted to feel some sense of control over my mobile risk:reward ratio.

The upshot: While documentation and online help for purchasing and troubleshooting are still sketchy, Tawkon is a remarkable application, and comes as close as I’ve ever seen to achieving the Holy Grail of “Set It and Forget It” as any application out there. With the risks of cell phone emissions still unclear, Tawkon should be considered a vital utility for every mobile phone.

Tawkon is a keeper. It’s earned a home on my phone.

PROS:

• “Set it and forget it” convenience
• Gorgeous interface
• Responsive, helpful customer service straight from the development team.
• Provides valuable information about what’s going on in your hand and near your head.

CONS:

• Instructions are not part of the application (you can find information in videos posted at Tawkon.com and on YouTube here and here, but it’s up to you to find them).
• Purchasing process become confusing if you’re outside the BlackBerry App World zone. (I guess it’s an “App Region”, not an “App World”, yet.)

…a Burger King in Hillside, New Jersey tried out the MotionPower energy harvester from New Energy Technologies to see how it would hold up to the heavy traffic flow they experienced over the holiday period. As drivers wended their way to the window to get their Whoppers, the cars ran over a metal speed-bump affair that, using the weight of the vehicles to depress a plate and turn some gears, produced 2000 watts with each passing.

As it was just an initial durability test, the fast food franchise didn’t actually benefit from the “free” electrons but customers were treated to a very small light show that was installed to demonstrate the that system was working. The manufacturer envisions larger MotionPower machines installed in places where traffic is slowing down to prevent the scheme from requiring extra energy input from vehicles. [via autobloggreen]

• Waiting for the Wite-Out to dry
• Clumpy application of the correction fluid after the first use; the fluid dries and sticks to the brush and the neck of the bottle
• Having to paint over the same words two or three times because they show through even after the first application
• The smell (some people like it, some hate it)

What jumps out here is that improvement in any one of the first three areas will have a negative impact on one or two of the others. If Wite-Out dried faster, it would dry (and clump up) on the bottle and brush applicator faster. If it clumped less, it would take more time to dry; it would also be a thinner fluid that would be less opaque once the liquid evaporated.It’s a no-win scenario, which is probably why there were no major changes in Wite-Out technology over the first 20 years of my life: the product designers had found the best balance — or perhaps the least-bad compromise — between drying quickly and maintaining wetness (smoothness), and were sticking to it. But it must have been frustrating if you were trying to make a better product and increase market share.I popped over to Bic’s Wite-Out site to have a look. Guess what? As of 1994, there are four different formulations of fluid Wite-Out: Quick Dry,  Super Smooth, Extra Coverage and Water Base (low odor). Hm.I suppose a cynic might say that there are four different packages for the same product, and the formulation label just panders to the public’s varying degrees of Wite-Out insecurity. In fact, the proliferation of Wite-Out recipes reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s classic statement from Howard Moskowitz that “There is no perfect spaghetti sauce. There are only perfect spaghetti sauces.” In The Ketchup Conundrum, Gladwell expresses it thus:

The answer appeared almost immediately: a specific recipe that, according to Moskowitz’s data, produced a score of 78 from the people in Segment 1.  But that same formulation didn’t do nearly as well with those in Segment 2 and Segment 3.  They scored it 67 and 57, respectively.  Moskowitz started again, this time asking the computer to optimize for Segment 2.  This time the ratings came in at 82, but now Segment 1 had fallen ten points, to 68. “See what happens?” he said.  ”If I make one group happier, I piss off another group.  We did this for coffee with General Foods, and we found that if you create only one product the best you can get across all the segments is a 60—if you’re lucky.  That’s if you were to treat everybody as one big happy family.  But if I do the sensory segmentation, I can get 70, 71, 72.  Is that big? Ahhh.  It’s a very big difference.  In coffee, a 71 is something you’ll die for.”

I’m guessing that a similar process went on at Bic: if you can’t actually improve a product’s features without making some other problem even more annoying, then instead of finding a compromise balance (as was done historically), optimize for each problem separately. Voila! Four kinds of Wite-Out.Of course, you can then go ask Barry Schwartz why having four correction fluid options won’t make your life happier…P.S.: I just realized that Wite-Out also now has a sponge-wedge tip instead of that inconvenient shaggy bristle tip. Nice!

Poka-yoke (ポカヨケ^?) (IPA: [poka joke]) is a Japanese term that means “fail-safing” or “mistake-proofing”. A poka-yoke is any mechanism in a Lean manufacturing process that helps an equipment operator avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka). Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur. The concept was formalised, and the term adopted, by Shigeo Shingo as part of the Toyota Production System. [Wikipedia]

Peter Abilla offers a great new example of design that accommodates human frailty: Embeda, a newly FDA-approved pain-killer with

…an interesting property: If you take the medication as prescribed, it works fine; if you abuse the medication, it ceases to work.

…EMBEDA(TM) contains extended-release morphine pellets, each with an inner core of naltrexone hydrochloride, an opioid receptor antagonist. If taken as directed, the morphine relieves pain while the sequestered naltrexone hydrochloride passes through the body with no intended clinical effect. If EMBEDA(TM) is crushed or chewed, the naltrexone is released and absorbed with the morphine, reversing the morphine’s subjective and analgesic effects.

After all, if pain killers can’t relate to human weakness, what can?

1. Of, relating to, or of the nature of an illation.
2. Expressing or preceding an inference. Used of a word.
3. Of, relating to, or being a grammatical case indicating motion toward or into in some languages, as in Finnish Helsinkiin, ”to Helsinki.”

(American Heritage Dictionary via Dictionary.com)This word also seen in Five Days in London: May 1940 by John Lukacs, in this context:

“Yet the immediate effect of these speeches [of Churchill’s] on the British people was limited. Their effect was cumulative (or, to use Cardinal Newman’s favorite adjective, illative).”

It’s an interesting use, since in this context, illative implies a significant effect produced by a prior accumulation of insignificant impacts, whereas the dictionary definition suggests a subtler manipulation.

…now Halifax asked Churchill ‘to come out in the garden with him’ for a talk. Before that Halifax told Cadogan, ‘I can’t work with Winston any longer.’ Cadogan: ‘I said, “Nonsense: his rhodomontades probably bore you as much as they do me, but don’t do anything silly under the stress of that.”‘ (from Five Days in London: May 1940, page 153 by John Lukacs)

(Do you think Cadogan actually used the word “rhodomontades” in conversation?!)

The Wonder of Whiffling

Discover all sorts of words you’ve always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one’s money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

Even better, there’s a blog at the book’s web page with some interesting word discussions.And even better than that, you can follow @wonderwhiffling on Twitter, and get words delivered right into your Twitter feed. For example, the three most recent tweets:

NEW WORD: tyromancy (1652) fortune telling by watching cheese coagulate

new phrase: ash cash (UK slang 1989) a fee paid to a doctor for signing a cremation form

today’s word: pingle (Suffolk) to move food about on the plate for want of an appetite

Enjoy!

It’s almost like a pain path: when a person has physical pain, it stimulates the nerve path to the brain. The more often that path is traced, the more developed — and responsive — that nerve path grows. And the more sensitive and exquisite the pain.

I don’t know if the identical neuronal process applies to emotions. If it doesn’t, it surely provides a useful parallel, a useful analogy. Once an emotional route is traced — a certain type of event, a certain interpretation of that event, a certain emotional response to that event — that same route is more likely to be retraced the next time an event of that type occurs.

[I suppose this is the foundation of behavioral psychology: to encourage a desired emotional response by forcing interpretation (either positive or negative) to a controlled event combination (grafting a contrived event onto one that otherwise occurs spontaneously). And by repeating the process over and over, to “retrain” the interpretation to that type of event, thus leading to a different, more desirable, emotional response.]

Musing on Using

All of this led me to think about how the best products or interfaces take positive advantage of this quality: of the ability of one small experience to somehow tap into a depth of prior, more emotional experiences.

In some ways, this is the goal of great User Experience design: to create a series of positively felt interactions that build upon one another to create a superlative overall experience of a product.

Every “Little” Interaction Counts

This is why every “little” key press, every symmetry of interface, every tactile feedback, every sound, every visual transition matters so much. It’s why people like Steve Jobs and Jon Ives are totally obsessive. Because the User Experience as a whole is created by tens and hundreds of little interactions, little trigger events.

On the one hand, this means that the system can tolerate a certain degree of bad experience (think Symbian S60 menus), if the overall experience is positive enough (think Nokia phones). Because the positive emotional reaction will still be triggered often enough to keep the overall experience positive.

On the other hand, this means that the first series of experience event absolutely has to be wonderful, to establish the desired User Experience pathway (think original Palm Pilot). If not, a neutral or negative pathway is established, which is difficult to overcome — perhaps impossible to overcome entirely (think Motorola RAZR).

Creating Passionate Relationships

But the really powerful lesson is that if once you’ve established a solid experience path, you can evoke a strong response in it with even a very small interaction (think iPhone). You can leverage the historic cumulation of experiences to evoke a disproportionate emotional response… for better or for worse.

Each little experience doesn’t just add to the effects of the previous ones, it builds upon them. The speed and intensity increase, up to a certain point. You get more bang for your buck. And you create passionate user-device relationships.

Play the 10 Days in Google Books gameWelcome to the world of books! The 10 Days in Google Books game consists of 5 questions per day, each day with a different theme. Find the answers using Google Books!Daily PrizesEvery day is a new chance to win. Here’s how: after you answer today’s questions, write a brief creative entry on the topic of books. Each day, the top 3 submissions will win Sony Readers. The first 20,000 people to play the game will also get Google Books laptop stickers.

An interesting twist to the game is that you also have to provide a 50-word entry with your take on the future of books and reading. It’s this blurb that is considered when they choose their Sony Reader winners.

Here’s mine:

The sensory experience of the context, geography and tactile feel of the book as it meshes with the story is not replaceable. We’ll use ebooks, smartphones for reference and mobile purposes. But for pleasure, we’ll have reusable folios instantly printed from online downloads. The best of both worlds!

 What do you think the future of books will look like?

Thanks to Michael Danziger for the tip. 

I’m thinking (…can’t stop thinking…) about the bereaved young family not far from here who lost their 3-year old darling daughter in a sudden, tragic accident. Thinking about their loss, their pain. How the preschool-teacher mommy will be able to bear teaching her students again. How the babysitter will face herself, her friends, her future children… and on and on….

No meat. No music. No luxuriating in the shower. No swimming. No fun… Why not? “To remember the destruction of the House of G-d.” What does that mean? Why do we mourn now, today, this year?

Others have taught about learning the lesson from the past to the present; to repair the sins rampant then and now. “If the Temple is not rebuilt in our time, it is as if we destroyed it.”

Others have taught that the Destruction goes on until Redemption. We live in a world where humanity, the Jewish Nation, and the Expression of G-d’s Presence are in constant suffering. “One who mourns the destruction of Jerusalem shall merit to witness its rebuilding.”

I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking about “nosei be’ol im chaveiro”. Shouldering the burden with your friend. How putting yourself truly into the experience of another person makes you both stronger.

I’m thinking that the Nine Days is also about keeping in touch with the global, historical Nation of Israel. Feeling a part of it, being a part of it. Maybe feeling a part of it IS being a part of it. In good times and in hard times.

“Getting through” the Nine Days misses the point entirely. Will that family whose daughter died be thinking about “getting through” the Nine Days; “getting through” their shiva? They’ll be the week in the deepest form of grief, finding expression in rituals of mourning that the Nine Days only shadows dimly. Will they be griping about the lack of chicken? About sitting on the floor in torn shirts and unpressed trousers? About not listening to music? About not having fun?

And why not? [I don’t mean: “Because the minor inconveniences are overshadowed by the enormity of grief.”] And why not? Because the actions suit the emotional state. They won’t be wanting to take a vacation this week. Or shop for new clothes. Or eat a steak… or much else. They won’t want to listen to a capella singing groups. They won’t want to be drawn out of their grief; they will want to experience and share and touch and reach and be drawn close. They will want to feel held by G-d and know He is carrying them to somewhere good.

Their pain, as almost-impossible as it is for me — a stranger — to bear, is right now. It is only my own pain for as long as I am willing, capable of sharing their burden.

Holocaust survivors know that the world is forgetting their pain. It isn’t gone. But we aren’t always willing to shoulder the emotional burden with them. We want to have fun. We want our meat and music. Despite an individual and human burden of pain that is so vast compared with that of a single family. (”Compared with…” is unfair. There is no “compared with”. What I mean is the vastness of numbers of individual sufferings, each unique and whole.)

The Churban Bayis. The destruction of the Holy Temple. It wasn’t just a demolition, a political or military casualty. It was a whole, long, agonizing war. A siege and famine. A Holocaust, if you will. The nearly complete destruction of the Old Country, the cities, towns, villages, educational system, government. A whole country, a whole people, a whole way of life. A thousand — nay, a million and another million individual sufferings, each unique and whole.

Experiencing the Nine Days is not about “getting through it” until the melave malka on motzaei Shabbos Nachamu. If you feel the pain, you aren’t trying to have fun. You are seeking meaning in the tragedy. You are seeking to experience, to share and touch and reach and be drawn close. To feel held by G-d and to know that He is taking you somewhere good.

You aren’t yet feeling the pain yourself?

It’s about shouldering the burden with your friend. Which friend? Your grandparents. And their grandparents. And theirs. Which friend? G-d, your Father. He does not experience time; it is all fresh, new, raw to His Shechina, ke’v'yachol.

“Kol rodfeha hisiguha bein hametzarim. All who pursue her [the Shechina] shall grab hold of her during the Straightened Times [of Mourning].”

Can you stop thinking about your meat and music long enough to sit down in the house of mourning? To shoulder the burden with your friends? To honor the freshness of pain by taking it into yourself, by acting as one with the body nation of Israel? To become the realization, the actualization, the embodiment of Jew, of Human, of Tzelem Elokim (image of God)?

“G-d is your Guardian, G-d is your Shadow at your right hand.” 

*The “Nine Days” count from the 1st to the 9th day of the Jewish lunar month of Av — this year, beginning Wednesday, July 23. They are part of a three-week process of increasing mourning, culminating in the Fast of the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av). During the Nine Days (or the week of Tisha B’Av for Sephardic Jews), the Torah teaches to avoid eating meat; enjoying significant new acquisitions such as clothing, houses, cars; restricting bathing to cleanliness (as opposed to pleasure); and listening to music. A summary of the Laws of the Three Weeks, Nine Days and Tisha B’Av may be found here: Halacha For Today.