The branding of unique diamond cuts for market differentiation continues as the diamond industry evolves to combat bad publicity from conflict diamonds and accomodate new mine sources. Last week the 13.42 carat “American Star” diamond stopped over in a Orinda, California jewelry store on its tour to drum up publicity for the EightStar Diamond Company. EightStar’s story begins with the invention of the “firescope” by a Japanese diamond merchant. Designed to measure how much light leaks out the wrong sides of a cut diamond, the firescope was not a popular tool as it clearly illustrates imperfections in many an expertly cut diamond. EightStar was founded to produce and market diamonds cut to such perfection that a firescope shows no leakage of light. The eight-rayed pattern revealed by the firescope on a perfect diamond inspired the company name. After initially concentrating on the Japanese market, EightStar began focusing its U.S. operations, sending American cutters to train in Japan and, after the conflict diamond issues arose, deciding to buy all their gems weighing under two carats from Canadian mines. They paid a visit to TechTV last year. Priced at $2.4 million, the American Star had no takers in Orinda, but publicity for scientifically perfect diamonds so near to Sili Valley can only help business.

There are some lovely design photos in the Library of Congress’ online exhibition of The Work of Charles and Ray Eames. (via Coudal Partners)

Did you know? French toast was named after Joseph French who first served it at a roadside tavern in Albany in 1724. (thanks Matt!)

UPDATE: Grant Barrett writes in with the following:

The Oxford English Dictionary has a citation for French toast under the
entry for “French,” some 64 years before Mr. French of Albany
supposedly coined the term in 1724. It appears to be the same food,
even if the recipe varies a bit (mainly by the absence of eggs).
Today’s French call it “pain perdu,” for the record.

From the OED, Second Edition:
“1660 R. MAY Accomplisht Cook VI. 162 French Toasts. Cut French Bread,
and toast it in pretty thick toasts on a clean gridiron, and serve them
steeped in claret, sack, or any wine, with sugar and juyce of orange.”

Such folk etymologies are common, but worth verifying.

Grant is webmaster at American Dialect Society and edits World New York. He hits one of my hot buttons by writing in his French Toast entry: “The instant I see a dubious etymology posted on a web site as fact, everything else on the page is immediately devalued. It’s a flag for lack of intellectual rigor.” I’d like to pass this one off as “lack of sleep resulting in lack of research” but I’ll take the blame square across the chin. This type of thing is exactly why I started this weblog. It’s too fast and easy to spread misinformation on the Internet. I should take the time to do the research, not take the easy way out.

Voting for the California quarter is over and the results are in. The governor will choose 3-5 designs to send to the U.S. Mint. None of the steps so far has been binding. The governor doesn’t have the follow the poll results and the Mint doesn’t have to follow the governor’s recommendations, though they will likely refine one of the selections he sends in.

Blogger has been out of commission during my regular weblog writing time, so this is not a typical log entry. Instead I want to write a rant about how Google, being a search services company, should understand how to run a software service like Blogger, but I’m not sure how vicious I want to be about it. The Pyra idea is that they are busy moving things to new servers and improving the service. But, as a paying Blogger Pro customer, I have had to deal with continued outages, minimal communication about such outages, and loss of SSL login capability. Running a software service is difficult; I work for such a company myself. You have customers wanting 99.99% reliability while you struggle with resource allocation, growing server CPU and disk space needs, and security concerns. But it is possible to create procedures to guarantee excellent uptime. If Google were down for even an hour, you’d hear about it. If Blogger wants to grow to the point where it’s newsworthy that it is down for an hour, they’ll need to get their service in better shape. Are any Google veterans even helping the Blogger team out with understanding how a well-run software service should function and how it is possible, with the new resources of Google, to use staging servers and quality assurance procedures to test everything out before it goes live? Based on recent experience, when my “pro” subscription runs out, I am going to seriously consider alternatives. I am trying to be understanding, and I was very forgiving when I knew Pyra did not have the resources for support, but it’s a fact that now that I know they have Google behind them, I am expecting more. Much more. They must live up to the Google name and reputation.

Behind the scenes of Seattle’s public school kitchen. It’s a new, almost $5 million centralized facility of 40,000 square feet to serve all of Seattle Public Schools. Every day: 8,000 breakfasts, 21,000 lunches and 4,000 after-school snacks. The dishwasher runs in five minutes and they claim it could hold a small car.

I drove by the new IKEA site in East Palo Alto today and they are making visible progress. There are even distinctive IKEA-blue exterior walls up already. The site seems small until you see one of the workers perched on the top of the skeleton, dwarfed by the size of the structure. IKEA has made good on promises to hire local contractors and to conform to city-mandated construction hours to reduce noise. Scheduled opening is this summer.

A decade after its first issue, Wired gives us a look at the state of the tech culture in 1993. I remember the ads in their first issues were mostly for high-end liquor (fancy bottles of vodka), and I wondered what their target market really was. Eventually the tech and design ads showed up and I felt much better.

Yawn. Can we get a better spin for a Game Developer Conference article than “Attracting more women customers remains a challenge?” I don’t mind the continued insight that women don’t like playing computer games, but until someone thinks of something new, like making radical efforts to hire female game designers, well, this isn’t news to me. And, while I’m carping over this article, it isn’t just game developers conferences that have no lines in the women’s restrooms. It is like that at all “co-ed” software developer conferences. The only time I’ve had to wait in line at a technical conference was at the Women In Technology event. Sometimes I wonder if we need more women in tech jobs just to break the cycle of men hiring men. Let’s fill up those bathrooms! If it means more female-friendly computer games, I’ll happily wait in line.

I’ve always felt stuck with my Verizon Wireless phone service. Their coverage is excellent and consistently outranks competitors. But their phone selection has always been lacking. Whereas it seems everyone else carries the cute, stylish phones, Verizon seems to be dragging along with clunky looking models. But this NY Times article on cell phone reception may have the explanation. Verizon Wireless will only carry cellphones with external antennas. Most of the newer, chic models have internal antennas which illustrate the article’s point that cute doesn’t mean better reception. By dedicating themselves to their exemplary coverage, Verizon has resigned themselves to the fashion doldrums. We’ll see how long they hold out — or if the phone makers will pony up the goods on fancy phones with great reception.