In order of importance:

Clean: I mean really clean. I’ve been in too many mid-range “nice” hotels with hair on the bathroom door. In the room where I am writing now, there is a fairly wide assortment of black hairs on the ceiling of the bathroom. I get it–it’s hard for many people to reach; get a stool!

Frankly a lot of this has to do with looking clean. Hotels choose materials that are supposed to wear well and not need replaced. However, many of these get funky pretty fast. I generally prefer things like hard floors and less textured walls not because they are comfortable, but because they give the impression of being clean. Likewise, modern furniture isn’t always my favorite, but it often seems cleaner.

Some people, I guess, find peeling wallpaper and worn carpets charming. I do not. Part of being clean is being relatively new, or at least “like” new.

Bed & Linens: I loved the Bed Wars. My current room has the Sheraton bed, which rocks. The linens are a little rough, but generally, this bed is way more comfortable than mine at home. Given these rooms are mostly for sleeping, this is really important. I don’t care if the other furniture is sparse or cheap, as long as the bed is good.

People: Every staff person I see should be the friendliest person I’ve met today. Honestly, a hotel that falls short on a lot of these other things will be saved by the right people behind the front desk. It’s not that I don’t care that you have had a long day, or that you are not thrilled to be working the late shift–I genuinely do. But part of your job is to believe that I am the best thing that has happened to you today, and to make me believe it too.

Dark and Quiet: Why, oh why, do hotels install blackout curtains that don’t close completely. I want a black room. And I want it as silent as a tomb. I know there is only so much you can do about this once a place is built, but given that I lived in an apartment in a pre-war building where you couldn’t hear the neighbors, I don’t know why that’s impossible for hotels. Even with this, you should provide ear plugs and a eye mask in every room. (I bring my own.)

Shower Pressure. I want insane amounts of hot water at a moment’s notice. And I don’t want the curtain touching me. (I’d prefer there were no curtain.) And I want a high shower head. I like the rain shower heads in the ceiling, but the only hotels where I’ve encountered those, I think, are in Europe.

Location / transportation: Of course, location, location, location. But especially in cities with good public transportation infrastructure, I love being across the street from a subway stop, and easy access from the airport. If I have to park, I want to park myself (I hate valets) in a garage under the hotel. I also love hotels that are across from a market, and an easy walk to a wide range of restaurants.

No Waiting: I should be checked in no more than 3 minutes, and out instantaneously. Even if you are friendly, I don’t want to wait. I want to get showered and get some sleep.

No Tipping: Unfortunately, much of the world is picking up the US tipping culture. I would happily pay more for a room where they payed their staff a salary that did not require tips and instituted a no tipping policy. It’s not going to happen, I know.

Usable Fridge: In the room I’m in, there is a fridge with minibar stuff. They charge you $25 if you empty it and put your own stuff in. They charge you $25 to rent a fridge. It’s not about my comfort and convenience, it’s about how much discomfort you want to inflict for those unwilling to pay. The principle of the thing annoys me. I know there are people who pull stuff from the mini bar. If it were only marginally more expensive than the market downstairs, I would too. But I’m not paying $0.25 an oz for Perrier. And given what I’m paying a night, you could buy me a fridge and send it home with me.

Water. Speaking of which: on a $200 room, you can afford to provide a 1l bottle of purified water. Hell, bottle it yourself, I don’t care. At this one, they want $3 for that 1l bottle. They do give you the tiniest bottle of water you’ve ever seen for free. Do not capitalize on my dehydration!

Net. You would think, given how often this is raised, one of the large chains would really leverage free WiFi. A number of the mid-range and economy hotels do. I want WiFi in my room. I rarely touch the TV, and although I’ve ordered movies for the kids at some point, I don’t think I have for myself in at least five years. I don’t need a phone. But I need net. The hotel I’m writing this in has basic net for $13 a day and higher speed for more. Interesting idea, but make the basic free, and you’re getting somewhere.

Light. I hate anemic lighting, and despise fluorescents that buzz or whine.

Ninja maids: I want my room made up within seconds after I leave it. At the very least, when I’m away for four hours, I shouldn’t come back to a dirty room.

Design: I love hotels that have taken design seriously, and don’t look like every other hotel I’ve been to. Again, the Europeans do way better on this account in my experience. I get that people feel more comfortable with a design they’ve seen before, but I would rather a bit of funkiness. And when in doubt, add water features and greenery.

Note that there are a bunch of things I really don’t care about. I don’t need a fancy lobby; they’re sometimes fine, but I’ll go hang out in the lobby of some other hotel if I need one. I don’t need a giant room: as long as I can move comfortably–especially in the bathroom–I’m fine. Unless it’s a resort, I don’t really care about the pool or gym. And as long as there are good restaurants around or attached, I don’t need a hotel restaurant. I’d far prefer they give me some local delivery options than having to rely on room service, generally. (Though if you are going to do room service, be sure to offer Eggs Benedict with real Hollandaise!)

I realize that hotels have to cater to different kinds of guests, as well as to individual differences. But if you follow the above guidelines, at least I’ll have some places to stay.

Check out how the internet sees you.

My partner’s white shoe firm is one of several known for forgoing the white shoes and encouraging “dress casual,” and now the UN building in New York is encouraging staff to forgo dark wool so that they can raise the temperature in the building and save power and the emissions that go with it. This makes a lot of sense in a walking city like New York, where the shift from inside hits the sinuses and the wardrobe alike.

Of course, at the same time there is a push back to 3-piece suits in men’s fashion; as seems always to be the case during economic downturns, there is a swing to the conservative. Hints of Victorian formality are pushing though as well, not least thanks to the influence of goth fashion in various forms.

I doubt we’ll see a sudden influx of Bermuda shorts or more extreme above-the-knee fashions for men, but if you don’t already have some linen, cotton, and bamboo to balance out the wool in your closet, it might be time to think about it.

So it’s no surprise that I love this design concept called liber toit. Basically, it is a set of bridges and tunnels to connect rooftops, and allow their use for exercise I guess. Yuppie parkour!

I guess, for it to be practical, you would need to have the same ownership of the buildings–like on an urban university campus–but even then, I suspect that construction codes would make it difficult to get this set up. It’s worth dreaming, though.

I’m also wondering about the loss of creative instrumentation. If virtuosi performers on traditional instruments (not that electric guitar is “traditional,” but it is far more traditional than a desktop computer) become more rare, will there still be people who develop instruments like this?

Finally, there are lots of people inventing musical instruments: a kind of makers’ market of such beasts, both using electronics (including circuit bending), and using either constructed or found physical objects (like buildings!). With rare exceptions, these tend to be played only by their inventors, since the sunk cost in learning to play a new instrument requires some common cultural value that can be exchanged. By evolving an existing instrument that is widely known into something that produces a different musical effect, does this encourage greater diffusion? I think the answer is clearly “yes.”

He’s got a bunch of these up on YouTube, including “Social Media Addition.” (via Mark)

I mean, if you “sample” a paragraph from a book, and don’t cite it, you’ve clearly plagiarized, but when you take single words from someone, you clearly haven’t. Musical notes are not as discrete as words–the phrasing of a note by a violinist, or even by a pianist is fairly unique–but once you get down to the note-by-note level, it starts to feel a lot less like sampling.

Send a Message is an interesting site that allows you to dictate a message to be spray-painted on the Palestinian wall. Full employment for Palestinian graffiti artists. Besides, remember back when the Berlin Wall came down and Bloomingdale’s was selling chunks? Maybe in a few hundred years, when they knock down this one, it some part of your message can sit in someone’s living room.

Regardless of which side of the wall you sit on, it is hard not to appreciate this as an interesting way to call global attention to an issue on a person-to-person basis.

(Via Josh Spear.)

Yes, and if Hello Kitty dolls were explosive, they could blow up thousands of children. If chihuahuas were explosive, they could do serious damage to the sidewalks of New York. So, what Boston police are basically saying is that these were bombs without the explosives. Or the timing mechanisms. You know, they had electronics and stuff. And LED lights: which, although they may not exist on most real bombs, are plentiful in movie bombs. Oh, and don’t forget the image of a character from television flipping you off–that clearly screams out “bomb” to me.

Obviously, these guys are not going to do any time: no reasonable person could have predicted that people would thing magnetic lights were bombs. What I deplore is the fascist public arrest and shunning of public artists. OK, maybe that public art in tinged with the grime of advertising, but I would prefer interesting advertising to the carpeting (carpet bombing?) of billboards that is the norm.

The only saving grace so far is the reaction of the two “thought bombers” who refused to answer any questions not related to 1970s coiffures:

Both men were cooperative with authorities, and neither has a previous criminal record in Massachusetts, Grossman said.

In a news conference, Rich told reporters he had advised his clients not to discuss the incident. Stevens and Berdovsky took the podium and said they were taking questions only about haircuts in the 1970s.

When a reporter accused them of not taking the situation seriously, Stevens responded, “We’re taking it very seriously.” Asked another question about the case, Stevens reiterated they were answering questions only about hair and accused the reporter of not taking him and Berdovsky seriously.

Reporters did not relent and as they continued, Berdovsky disregarded their queries, saying, “That’s not a hair question. I’m sorry.”

The mayor has come out and called the advertising stunt “outrageous.” I think that was the idea. “Unconscionable” has also come up–but I think that is the most appropriate way to label the police’s over-reaction. Is it appropriate to call out the bomb squad? Sure, why not. But only an idiot thinks that the device pictured here is a bomb. And as the article notes, a quick web-search would have told them what the device actually was.

Update: Great video of the interview is up on YouTube. Hilarious.

If you like that, you should also check out this sped up Photoshop makeover.

Featuring presentations by ground-breaking electronic composer Morton Subotnick with an interview by David Grubbs, and a performance by the creators of This Spartan Life, a talk show residing in the online Halo© multiplayer universe.

This exciting participatory event will showcase artists, students, and scholars who are mixing media technologies in unusual ways,

Participants will include CUNY faculty working in the field of experimental media, The Graduate Center’s Intermedia Arts Group, researchers from the New Media Lab, and special guests “This Spartan Life.”

I’ve been playing with this for a couple of days now, and it works like a charm. Simple, usable, and very functional. I’ve learned my lesson, and rather than writing a scraper, requested that the creator include RSS feeds. Not necessary for most people, I suspect, but I have been gradually trying to collect life indicators via RSS.

I’ve been thinking a bit about new forms of learning on the Internets lately, and this strikes me as an interesting example because it is really pretty far toward the traditional institutional learning model, though it certainly doesn’t feel like it. It includes a lecture–though elements clearly mark it as part of a different genre. It is, in some ways I suspect, a particularly effective lecturing style for new media saturated students (“You’re soaking in it!”). I can’t imagine watching, or wanting to watch, an hour-long “The Show.” Nor can I imagine the prep time it would require to produce. But it may be that this is paradoxically one of the areas in which massification still has a run. I doubt Frank would continue to produce the videos if he had an audience of a few dozen, but a large audience in some way justifies what must be a substantial investment in time.

Beyond the lecture, he also now has assignments. OK, perhaps the audience considers the ongoing chess game, the earth sandwich, and the contest for the ugliest MySpace page to be games, but many of my assignments are structured that way too. It really can be homework and still be fun to do. Designing the ugliest page possible has been a mainstay assignment in my classes where we do web production, as well as in graphic communication (make the worst infographic possible), for many years. So let’s get this down: here is someone producing a daily talk, which is viewed by a large group, who ask questions and comment on the talk, and who are periodically given assignments.

In sum, while Ze may claim that he is “thinking so you don’t have to,” I am beginning to suspect he might just be joking.