Expedient MEANS

Notes on Film, Art, Writing, Technology and other things by Steve A Furman

  • Neuro-Typicals Still Struggle to Understand, But Keep Trying

    New York Universities’ Child Study Center had a great idea. They were looking for a way to raise awareness of children’s neurological conditions. Certainly a noble idea. The ad agency BBDO worked pro-bono to create a campaign to interrupt consumers and get them to read the ads. Their creative execution was to put the message Read more

  • One Laptop Per Child

    I’m sure many of you know of this visionary project from the OLPC Foundation to distribute laptops to less fortunate children across the world. Their goal is to… Empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-aged child. OLPC was founded by Nicholas Negroponte, most famous for his Read more

  • Disney’s DVD Fast Play Technology Isn’t Fast

    If you have kids you know what I’m about to describe. You have wiped the fingerprint smudges from a Disney DVD, loaded it in the player all while your kids are screaming to see it. On comes the FBI warning, then the Interpol warning (sometimes in French, that’s really helpful), then comes Disney’s extra special Read more

  • Sonos Solves Leopard Issues and Delivers a Great Customer Experience

    I’m a huge fan of the Sonos music system. As posted a few weeks ago I was unable to get it to work with Mac OS Leopard. In that post I called for Sonos to develop a new version of their desktop controller software that would be compatible with Leopard. They actually did that in Read more

  • iPod to PC Transfer Programs: Caveat Emptor

    I recently had a some music files corrupted in iTunes. Uncorrupted copies were on my iPod, but iTunes doesn’t give you any option of copying music on your iPod back to iTunes. (Steve Jobs are you reading this? Why not?) So I did what any resourceful digital consumer would do, I went to Google. With Read more

  • Double Fracture of the Left Ankle

    I don’t frequently write posts of a personal nature, but this event seems to warrant one. The Friday after Thanksgiving I was walking from house to garage and somehow I overshot the second step. All my weight came down on my ankle which was now turned 90 degrees from top dead center. The result was Read more