Joel Hladecek

Ba Da Bing!

It’s cold in hell today.  Well, in my private corner of it anyway. That’s because my default home page – across all my browsers – was just changed to Microsoft’s Bing.com.

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How the Apple Dress Code Undermined the iPhone

I can’t be the only one. The only lifelong Apple fan boy who wears shirts with collars on occasion. Am I? I ask because if there were others, if maybe even one of us worked for Apple on the iPhone team, the iPhone headphones would be designed differently. It’s a fact – no two ways [...]

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Hey Apple, The 90s Called and Wants It’s White iPhone Back

When Apple started using the color white as it’s industrial design foundation back in the late 90s – it evoked all the coolest parts of Star Wars’ Storm Troopers, 2001: A Space Odyssey – and bathroom fixtures all at once.  It was a powerful design conceit that differentiated the company assertively for a decade – [...]

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Just the Big Screen Please

There is one thing I think mobile users have done well.  We generally turn off our ringers when we go to the movies.  Seriously, that’s an impressive thing when you think about it, and we should all feel pretty good about that.  Yes, most of that is based on pure peer pressure, admittedly.  There is [...]

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Why Do Music Ringtones Suck So Bad?

Sorry for the belligerent title. But you know it, I know it, and everyone you know knows it, except maybe those 11-year-old-girls at the mall who smell like strawberry lip-smacker and buy Live Strong-knock-off rubber bracelets that say “I’m Rad” at Wet Seal, that music-based ringtones are so very lame.

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The Myth of Viral Marketing And The Rise Of Status

“Viral Marketing” is a myth. Always has been. It never existed. And as you’ll see, even if it had, you would want nothing to do with it. “Word of Mouth”? Less toxic, but critically, equally incomplete. Social Network Marketing? Swarm Marketing? Mobile Marketing? Just more opaque containers. In a revealing display of the industry’s ongoing [...]

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INTERACTIVE AXIOM #2: The Interactive Trade Agreement

EVERY INTERACTIVE CONSTRUCT MUST PROVIDE REIMBURSEMENT OF VALUE EQUAL TO, OR IN EXCESS OF, THE USER’S SELF-APPRAISED INVESTMENT OF TIME, ATTENTION AND EFFORT OF ACTION. All the rules of economics apply to this system- though nothing physical is exchanged. In this economic exchange the User must perceive being the inordinate beneficiary, where time, attention and action are His currency. [...]

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