German designer Erik Spiekermann gave a scathing review of the ’06 World Cup logo. The first time I saw it was when my aunt brought me a World Cup t-shirt from Germany.
My 8 year old daughter has had a heavy dose of soccer this spring:
- she is playing on her first soccer team
- I am the team’s coach
- the World Cup is on
For fathers day she made a card which features a hand drawing of me. In the drawing I am wearing my World Cup ’06 t-shirt, logo included. It’s very interesting that she would remeber this logo because I have not worn this t-shirt very often. What does she remember? Three soccer balls with happy faces on them. I would say it’s not such a bad logo after all, Erik.
On the Yahoo Gallery site I am a “Highly Rated” developer. Ha!
There is a nice blog entry regarding RUNNINGMAP on a website called Java Entrepreneur.
I will continue to post about runningmap as a chronicle to its development. Its a project I am putting considerable time into at the moment. It has no ads on it because I believe this is what the web should be like: simple easy to use tools that are uncluttered with superfluous information. Sharp tools.
Other projects I am currently working on are Sonography related multimedia items and a virtual simulation of a phoropter. Both projects will be used in education.
Someone else said it, not me. http://thyaga-susmita.blogspot.com/2006/06/some-web-20-companies.html.This blog post talks about a Internet Marketing class discussion regarding Web 2.0 companies. RUNNINGMAP.com was in the list of 10! Although I knew all along 
RUNNINGMAP.com has been approved as an application featured on the Yahoo Gallery site: http://gallery.yahoo.com/apps/272
This site showcases websites of applications that use Yahoo! services in some manner. Yahoo! is aggresively expanding their API offerings to developers in an effort to build a third party developer community, tapping into the intellectual power of the developer masses.
Today I have updated RUNNINGMAP.com with a key new feature: Permalinks. You can now save a route that you create. Email it, digg it or blog it. There is even a button which loads the bookmark into your del.icio.us account.
Many thanks to Michael Surtees and Jonny Page for the use of their eyeballs. I promise I will return them soon. Also, thanks to Lanny McNie for some ninja php advice. Grant Skinner gets a shout out for telling me about Yahoo Maps. Never mind that he taught me my flash sklills. And Ryan Matsikas … well … ok … thanks to you too for solving my mCom issue last week. And the music starts …
I welcome your feedback and/or bug reports.
Searching Google Images for “medical symbol” returns many versions of the symbol of Caduceus which features a short rod entwined by two snakes and a pair of wings on top.
In mass media we see this symbol all the time. For example, Star Trek’s Voyager used this symbol on the doors of sick bay.
The Rod of Asclepius, however, is the actual symbol of medicine. According to greek mythology, Asclepius was the demigod of medicine and healing. Caduceus is considered the symbol of commerce.
There is precedence for the use of Caduceus to symbolize medicine dating back to the ’70s. But the misrepresentation of this symbol in modern clip art collections has created an almost universal “misuse” of it. The visual impact of the symbol over the Rod of Asclapius certainly has something to do with this too. It looks more cool.
One can make an argument for Caducues in cases where commerce and medicine meet, as in the pharmaceutical industry. But clearly this is a case where “cool” has won out over relevance. If you need to use the symbol of medicine in your design, consider the historical meaning of these two symbols first. And the next time and ambulance passes you, look as what they use on the side of their vehicle. They got it right! (at least where I live they did)
