For anyone creating something new, here’s a wonderful video from Ira Glass, host and executive producer of This American Life, addressing the horror of having the taste to discern you don’t yet have the skills to create something as great as you imagine it, and how to get past it.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

Exactly what I needed to hear this month! Thanks Colleen Wainwright, whose Communicatrix site and newsletter (where I first saw this) are also full of excellent, actionable gifts for anyone trying to communicate and create anything worthwhile.

I’m not sure whether it was “S as in Summertime” or “X as in Xylophone” that pushed my father over the edge, but by the time I finished talking with tech support, his face was bright red. “S as in Sierra! Everybody all over the world knows that,” he said.

I had no idea.

Actually, I had seen a copy of the military alphabet code or NATO phonetic alphabet taped to a friend’s refrigerator recently and laughed at him. Who talks like that? (Please forgive me!) I thought up words every time I spoke on the phone as a form of creative expression and mood indicator.

At least I am kind and resist the urge to say “A as in Aisle, B as in Bdellium, C as in Czar, D as in Djinn, E as in Eureka, G as in Gnome, H as in Honest, J as in Jicama, K as in Knock, M like Mnemonic, O for Ouija, P as in Pneumonia, Q for Qat, T as in Tsunami, W as in Who, X as in Xylophone…” OK, so I’ve used “X as in Xylophone.”

Here is the official military alphabet code/NATO phonetic alphabet: Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey X-Ray Yankee Zulu

Well it turns out everyone doesn’t talk like that. Or at least they haven’t always. I found the Phonogram chart image above in the Southland Museum and Art Gallery in Invercargill, New Zealand.

Here are some other examples:
Western Union Phonetic Alphabet
Adams Boston Chicago Denver Easy Frank George Henry Ida John King Lincoln Mary New_York Ocean Peter Queen Roger Sugar Thomas Union Victor William X-ray Young Zero

‘British A’: Amsterdam Baltimore Casablanca Denmark Edison Florida Gallipoli Havana Italia Jerusalem Kilogramme Liverpool Madagascar New_York Oslo Paris Quebec Roma Santiago Tripoli Uppsala Valencia Washington Xantippe Yokohama Zurich

Bombay telephone directory 1962 (also a later source): Army Brother Cinema Doctor English Father Gold Hotel India Jam King Lady Mother Navy Orange Paper Queen Raja Sister Table Uncle Victory Water X-ray Yellow Zero

Kenyan and Tanzanian telephone directories 1966: Africa Bombay Charlie Durban England Freddie George Harry India Japan Kenya London Mombasa Nairobi Orange Peter Queen Robert Sugar Tanga Uganda Victory William X-Ray Yellow Zanzibar

RAF 1942-43: Apple Beer Charlie Dog Edward Freddy George Harry In Jug/Johnny King Love Mother Nuts Orange Peter Queen Roger/Robert Suga Tommy Uncle Vic William X-ray Yoke/Yorker Zebra

• Here are phonetic alphabets for other languages.
• Phoneticise.com is an online utility to phoneticise any text that you enter.

What does your phonetic alphabet look like?

Echo November Juliet Oscar Yankee!

Last weekend, an uncle asked me “How many hours a day do you go online?” I looked up from my iPhone and repeated the question out loud several times, stressing the different words to understand what he meant, like Jude Law as Brad Stand in “I Heart Huckabees” pondering “How Am I Not Myself?” Go online? 10 or 12?

“All of them,” my wise brother answered. “She doesn’t go online, she just is.” Uncle seemed confused and more than a little worried.

This week’s Economist has a great section on the new nomadism might help him understand the shift that occurs with ubiquitous connectivity. In it, Paul Saffo describes the evolution of the digital nomad from the early astronauts (who must bring what they need because they cannot rely on their environment to provide it) to intermediate hermit crabs (who survive by dragging a cast-off shell i.e. carry-on bag of cables, discs, dongles, batteries, plugs and paper).

In contrast, the new urban nomads, appearing only in the past few years, are defined “not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it.” As the technology becomes more advanced, it becomes invisible — the connection is what’s important.

Highlights:

• New oases – Expect “a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad-hoc workspaces”. The new architecture, says Mr Mitchell, will “make spaces intentionally multifunctional”. This means that 21st-century aesthetics will probably be the exact opposite of the sci-fi chic that 20th-century futurists once imagined. Architects are instead thinking about light, air, trees and gardens, all in the service of human connections.
• Family ties — nomadic technology deepens them, because it enables connected presence. People expect less content but instead a feeling of permanent connection, as though they were in fact together during the entire time between their physical meetings.
• A world of witnesses – ubiquity of mobile video changes the game for exposing human rights abuses, health care and environmental monitoring.

Labour movement, one of the articles in the series, features Pip Coburn, who also co-hosts a weekly participatory podcast with Jerry Michalski. On April 21, 2008, they’ll discuss the issue of mobility with with the author, Andreas Kluth, discussing social effects, business effects, direction of forces, privacy and sense of time and place.

Recognize yourself, global nomad? Check out Janera.com, founded by Janera Soerel, a new online publication and social network for and by the vibrant community of global nomads.

Imagine! Kenya sings for India. Australia sings for Lebanon. Japan sings for Turkey. France sings for USA. (I still prefer Sufjan Stevens’ version of “The Star Spangled Banner”, but the Kenyans singing “Jana Gana Mana,” by Rabindranath Tagore, brought tears to my eyes.) These beautiful short films are part of Pangaea Day, the global peace party on May 10, 2008 that grew from Jehane Noujaim’s TED Wish.

More compelling than Scrabulous, Unype is a Facebook social network application that lets people see, chat and Skype with each other in Google Earth. Unype works with the Open Social API, so you can interact with people from Facebook, Ning, Orkut, hi5 and more to come. See Twitter messages and Upcoming event overlays too. You can mark up your favorite places and share recommendations, videos and 3d models.

There’s also a fun geography quiz game where you answer by flying to the correct place. Highly recommended for Miss Teen USA contestants, and such. .

• Unype
• Unype Blog
• Enter Unype directly through Facebook