Noticing the little things.
Posted July 17th, 2008 by asiegelI was always fascinated by the little details. For example, did you know that restaurants paint the area of the wall near tables a darker color. This is because people rub the wall with their elbows, wearing the paint, if the wall was painted a lighter color, it would need to be repaired or repainted sooner than a wall of a darker shade, because scuffs are less noticeable in the darker paints.
The fact that bottled beverages or fountain drink cups are designed so that they fit in a car cup holder.
The simple fact that we have dozens of international bodies regulating and standardizing everything. The internet itself could not exist if there was not a standard TCP\IP protocol used to communicate.
The recent formatting wars between the tech companies. I thought it interesting that this shift to Blueray over HDDVD took significantly less time to decide, maybe the companies got together and talked it out. Either way, we have a new standard again. I also found it interesting that this technological shift is trying to force obsolescence of regular DVDs. Personally, I don't need a blue ray player, because it doesn't matter how sharp the fucking picture is when your TV set is a 12" square. Also, who cares how many minutes of special features a DVD has if they all aren't worth watching. I believe that the quality of movies themselves needs to improve before you cram 3 1/2 hours of extended crap into a $150 Box set, which is worth about half the price.
Marketing research being what it is, a company discovered that by moving part of the company logo closer to the middle of the logo, the company could charge up to $.10 more per unit of product sold. That's an extra hundred grand for every million.
So I enjoy sweating the small stuff.
Small Man with Big Ideas,
-Aaron Siegel