Seen in Seattle

An Event ApartI’m leaving for Seattle, Washington this afternoon for an appearance at the latest An Event Apart conference tomorrow. The two-day design and technology event actually starts today, and I’m sorry to have to miss the opening, but duty calls here at the office. If you’re attending, please introduce yourself and say hello to me tomorrow, I should be around all day. I’m always happy to meet readers.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to stay in Seattle very long, as I’m heading back to New York on Saturday morning. I’d stay a little longer, but I’m a bit tired of traveling already for the year (though I’ve taken only a half-dozen trips or so) All those airport security measures really get to me, as does all that interminable waiting around — what I call ground time. Summer is short, and I really want to enjoy as many weekends as I can back in my new neighborhood. To be honest, the older I get, the more I appreciate just hanging out at home with Mister President.

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Make Music New York

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2 of 5 stars
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Today, the first day of summer, “public spaces in all five boroughs will become informal musical stages for all New Yorkers, amateurs and professionals, to perform for friends, neighbors, and passers-by, turning the city into a festival of live music making.” Could be good. Could be bad.

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I Had No Ikea

Sheepishly, I admit to having had no idea whatsoever that people would be so interested in Ikea when I wrote my post about the massive home furnishings retailer earlier in the week. Something about the combination of reasonably presentable modern design and low, low prices clearly inspires passionate responses from consumers, both good and bad. Also, I admit that the positive notices on Ikea were more abundant than I anticipated.

This interest doesn’t strike me as being about affordability as much as it’s about design. There are plenty of cheap furniture retailers out there, but how many of them inspire the impassioned, trainspotting chatter of Ikeafans.com, where customers trade every possible detail about the products and the store branches? Or the enthusiastic inventiveness of Ikea Hacker, where all manner of novel uses and transformations of Ikea goods are showcased? (Thanks to readers Gong Szeto, AJ Kandy and Jason Beaird for pointing those out to me.)

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Daring Fireball in a Crowded Theater

Holy moley, we managed to book the inimitable John Gruber to come speak for us tomorrow night in SoHo! By “us,” I mean AIGA New York, which thanks to events like this and others, is getting cooler by the minute — get yourself a membership today.

John, of course, is the author and proprietor of Daring Fireball, which is, hands down, my favorite Macintosh punditry blog, period. Not only does he offer some of the most penetrating business and technical analysis of the Macintosh ecosystem available anywhere, he’s uncommonly insightful about the dark art of interface design. In fact, he’s promised to reprise, at least in part, a wonderful talk he’s given before about the difference between consistency and uniformity in the interfaces that Apple users interact with everyday.

If that’s not enough for you, John is just back from last week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference where amazing, amazing things were supposed to have been announced, it was rumored, but for some reason they were not. Hmm. If you’re curious about what went down in Steve Jobs’ town, this is the event to attend.

This talk is the latest in our Design Remixed series, and it too will be held at the Apple Store in SoHo. (If you think it’s an accident that I suggested an uninhibited Apple pundit for an appearance at Steve’s downtown Manhattan outpost, well I’ve got a bridge to sell you. At any rate, it’s going to be interesting.) These events have been pretty popular, so come early to get a seat in the store’s roomy but definitely limited auditorium. The good times start at 6:30p sharp.

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