Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Embarq (the big players in broadband services) are trying to persuade the North Carolina state government to ban community-owned broadband services.

“The argument is that the big companies can’t turn a profit and compete against a community-owned enterprise that essentially sells service for cost, but we’re not buying it – if anything, TWC and Embarq can invest the extra profits they’ve been earning in …

I have always been a firm believer in the power of personal action and responsibility when it comes to making changes. Such as trying to reduce waste. And that by making personal choices, we can influence businesses to change.

Lately I am starting to wonder if company policies should be accorded more importance than I had originally thought.

Take packaging waste for example. Food outlets in Singapore severely over-package their …

Someone said there are no original ideas. Certainly in the practice of design, it is inevitable that designers from around the world will hit on similar ideas and themes when tackling similar problmes.

But these grabs from TotallyLooksLike.com seem to show that some designers do prefer to copy rather than create.

The Internet has …

In the ongoing, embarrassing, simplistically reactive and hyper-myopic “discussion” about censoring the Internet, Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy recently let on that he expects ISPs to actively monitor the activity of all communications through their networks.

He expressed surprise and disgust that iiNet (one of the largest ISPs in Australia) did not know whether its subscribers were downloading music legally or otherwise through its networks. Clearly the man has …

A little girl went missing. Her mother reported it a month later. Home videos of the little girl singing “You Are My Sunshine” circulated through the media. Then her own mother was fingered, by her grandmother, for the murder.

And now, you can buy a doll of the (dead) little girl that sings “You Are My Sunshine”. Seriously. Weird.

What is truly interesting is the amount of justification, rationalisation and …

The idea for this post came to me while “chatting” to Robert Rath’s friends on his Facebook page a few weeks ago; about the annoying people who put their seats all the way back on a plane.

You know the type. As soon as the seatbelt sign pings off, they got their seat back as far as it will go with nary a glance to see if …

Here’s a clipping from a magazine article on plastic surgery.

The censorship laws (in Hong Kong?) obviously mandated the blacking out of various “sensitive bits”. Protection from righteous offence aside, censorship in this case actually worked against the communication intent of the article. Had this article been about breast/cervical/testicular cancer, the same laws would prevent the magazine from clearly illustrating the various self-examination techniques. …

The first comment on my post Stupid design – two ludicrous examples on stupid design decisions in apartments reminded me of this shockingly bad Sydney apartment I had the pleasure of living in a few years ago.

It was a brand new apartment. I was the first person to move in. And the first one to use the air conditioner. Within an hour of turning it on one …

A display-window-sized poster scaring shoppers in front of a shop in Singapore.

See this article on the Sydney Morning Herald: Nudie’s labels bare-faced cheek.

As I see it, Nudie HAD two key differentiators going for it:
1. A personable brand that projected realness.
2. A product that is made from real fruit as opposed to reconstituted or filler juices.

It is common for fruit juice or fruit drink* manufacturers to pad out their products with apple or pear juice as these …