Off Topic:
Saw this in the Mini2 forum and first thing come to mind is the Monochrome Badge!

Valorgear.com announces the arrival of Deluxe woven lanyards to hold your ID. It has a detachable swivel hook so you can snap off your ID to use at access control stations. In additional, it has a breakaway feature if pulled on so that you will not choke. 

They come imprinted for either POLICE, SHERIFF, SECURITY, SPECIAL AGENT, FIRE and EMS.

Visit www.valorgear.com for a full range of police equipment including these deluxe woven lanyards. ]]> http://policeequipment.wordpress.com/?p=12 Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:33:13 +0000 policefirebadges http://policeequipment.wordpress.com/?p=12 If there is a profession that does not get the respect that it deserves, it is, in my opinion, police officers. Unforutnately we usually hear only about the problems caused by some officers, but that is in every profession. I believe that work that the rest of the police officers often goes without public recognition.  Fortunately, the police department have a long tradition of recognizing the work that is done but these good officers.  As a result, I believe that police officers should be given the very best police equipment on the market. ValorGear.com has some of the best equipment on the market. You can order some of the finest police equipment there including police badges, fire badges, security badges, wallets and cases, batons, flashlights and much more. I know there are other sites out there that claim to be the best but ValorGear.com has the best prices I have seen and the people are extremely helpful and friendly.  So if you're an police officer or just interested in the gear, check out ValorGear.com.  You will not be disappointed.

Turns out there are some changes going on this year for Defcon badge hackers. Joe Grand, designer of the badge for the last 3 years has announced plans to pre-release some of the specs of this years design before the conference. (traditionally the badge details have been a big secret and eagerly anticipated until opening day)

This was a concern to me... There is a contest centered around the best "hacks" of the badges and, in previous years, the winners received a coveted "black" badge (correction, see comments) which (in addition to being really cool) also allowed lifetime entrance into Defcon.

Ever since I found this out last year I've been obsessed with winning one... :)

I sent Joe a message directly asking if they would continue this and received this response... "I'm not sure if DT is planning to this year."

AHH! it's not even that I can't afford to buy my way in every year, it is just my own personal pride that drove me to want to win this contest. See... part of the "cool-factor" for me personally was being able to source the parts necessary and put it all together at the conference and not in the comfort of my home. This, in my opinion gets to the true nature of hacking -- resourcefulness, ingenuity and function before form -- the way our hobby started.

Joe encouraged me to still submit this year regardless of the changes... so in keeping with the spirit of the event I plan to continue with my idea even with the changes. I'm still keeping the details under wraps for now, but keep an eye here for more information once I pick everything up opening day...

Until that time, I will be updating this entry with the leaked details as I discover them:

Defcon 2008 badge details:

• Freescale Flexis MC9S08JM60 processor
• LED integration: "Yes, there are a few 0603 LEDs on board" [1]
• SDCard integration: "Bring an SD card for maximum enjoyment and benefit" [1]

...and predictions from me: (as I brainstorm them)

• the uC supports infrared, and Joe has mentioned it. I predict some sort of communication between badges over infrared. The badges haven't ever talked to each other (that I know of) and I think it would be cool to see.
• SDCard will be used to store transmitted messages. This would make perfect sense for the cards, although the recommendation for 64M sounds huge, so I'm wondering what exactly we are going to be exchanging.

Stay tuned for updates until I get my hands on mine opening day this year...

Sam woke up last night around 2:30 am, throwing up.  The poor baby's never done that before, so it was a new experience for all of us.  He's doing muchmuch better the rest of today, hasn't gotten sick since about 5:30 this morning, and is keeping down fluids and the very tiny bit of mild food he'll actually eat.

At this point would come the clever part about earning parenting badges, as I've now earned my "pukey child in the middle of the night" badge... I even made a graphic earlier.

My ability to function during a day like this apparently depends on whether Sam is awake, or "asleep but needs checking".  That badge was made during his nap earlier, an "asleep but needs checking" time.  At the moment Sam is in the "asleep for the night and will hopefully be fine till morning" period, which means my brain shuts off.

Anyway, maybe more badges will come later if I expand on the idea.  I searched earlier to find if anyone else had done this before, made virtual parenting badges, and weirdly enough, someone somewhere blogged about just such an idea YESTERDAY.  Reminds me of an article in The New Yorker about people inventing things (like the telephone) at the same time in different places, completely seperately.

If you were interested in real life badges, to sew on your... sash?... someone's already got those ready for you, at $5 a pop.  They're pretty cute, but I like the virtual idea myself.

Enough babbling for tonight.  Hope everyone's tomorrow was better than my today (though, all things considered, Sam is a very good little patient, so I can't shouldn't really complain too much).

-me aga[i]n

1) (Font) Size Matters.

Essential badge information needs to be readable at the appropriate distance, meaning in big enough font.

For a yard sale sign, that means someone driving by, possibly one lane over. For an event, that means several feet away -- certainly big enough that somebody standing at hand-shake distance can (assuming good enough vision/glasses/contact lenses) can read your name and title/organization without having to lean forward and squint.

Even for those who don't have aging eyes, tiny fonts force us to get intrusively close, and make it hard to "scan the crowd" rather than having to be hand-shake-close, just to determine whether this is someone you're looking to talk to.

Pick a decent font size -- 36 or bigger. Pick a readable font, for that matter. Make a few test badges and see if you can read them on somebody six feet away.

(This is why, on my business cards, my name is in a large font -- it means I always have a readable name badge with me.)

2) Include Essential Information.

For a yard sale, that's the date, hours, address, and a directional arrow. For event attendees, essential information means first and last name, title, organization.

So if you're doing an event where you're inviting the press (and in general, for that matter, but this is about how to work well with the press), take a minute to check how you're doing badges. It's a small thing -- but how you do it will make a big difference in how easy/hard it is for the press to find the people they want to talk to, and vice versa... and equally, for sales people to determine who isn't a prospect.

And here's some additional advice:

3) Tie a Colored Ribbon!

Make it easy to tell whether somebody's with the press even before their name can be read. Use color -- colored ribbons, labeled PRESS (or MEDIA) -- or colored strips at the bottom of badge holders if need be.

And you should also have differently colored ones for speakers, judges, staff or other honored guests. Don't simply include "PRESS," "ATTENDEE," et cetera in same-color all-caps at the bottom of the badge. Make it obvious, like bird plumage.

Again, you're trying to make it easy for people to spot and sort who's who even before they read the badge.

4) Wear 'Em High

Provide clips, pins or whatever to make it easy for people -- especially women -- to wear their badge as close to neck/shoulder height as possible.

5) Make Sure Your Badge-Readers/Scanners Work

If you're providing badge readers/scanners, make sure they work -- and easily, not after five or six tries.

I've been to too many events lately where they didn't -- leading to a lot of grumbling exhibitors, not just because they'd shelled out hundreds of dollars for the device rental, but because this meant they weren't capturing visitor information reliably.

You should have badges. But they shouldn't be steenkin' badges.

Another post on my cassette badge sets this time on Designboom. The Cassettes have been the most popular of all my badge products recently and have been featured on various leading design and fashion blogs as well as in magazines. They are still available for purchase for a limited time before I leave for Sydney. There is an upcoming feature on them in Web Designer Magazine as well as some exciting news about being part of an exhibition in London where all 12 sets would be showcased together for the first time. Watch this space. Who said cassettes we're dead?

Happily, my beautiful badges arrived today, just in time for tomorrow night’s rooftop launch.

This evening my flat becomes a mini-bakery, churning out all sorts of different Johnny Mackintosh cakes for tomorrow’s party. Before they’re all eaten, I hope to take a few pictures to show you what you could have had!

The weather forecasters are still saying storms and rain tomorrow, despite today’s glorious baking hot sunshine. But they don’t know I’ve done a deal with Bram…

We did got late. I didn't have my bag because it was my dish bag at Gang Show Camp and I left it there. We played a game that 1 will close his or her eyes and we switch corner and she or he will point at a cornor and the people in that corner was out. Then we playe north south east west. Then we made mini gumboots. Then we did an activity. It was to make a picture in the DARK! Mine was funny.

At horseshoe, I got my music badge and Celtic Dingo got his bok reader badge.

I had fun.

They come imprinted for either POLICE, SHERIFF, SECURITY, SPECIAL AGENT, FIRE and EMS.

Visit www.valorgear.com for a full range of police equipment including these deluxe woven lanyards.

There is a moment in High Fidelity when the protagonist can't bring himself to buy a collection of rare records from a women who is selling her ex's collection. I felt like this today. There was too much love and time invested in these badges for them to be sold off for peanuts in a field on a Sunday morning.

Although I wanted them all, I allowed myself just 50p's worth.

Here are some of them:

Hey, There's egg on your teeth!

Surely, nationality should not be the only criterion.

Can you imagine the co-op in Lapland?

ButterflyPolite's motto.

So, what collections have you started today?

Andy

I've spent today preparing all the badges for display. I've used mini cards and postcards from Moo for my packaging. I'm a big fan of Moo, and the mini cards are just the perfect size:

I have forty individual badges, and twenty sets of four. I have no idea whether this is far too many, or nowhere near enough. I guess I'll find out as the week of the exhibition goes on. I have plenty more materials, so I can always put together some more if I need to. (Or sell them at the next Art Market, if I end up bringing them all home again...)

My only concern now is how to display all of the postcards and mini cards at the exhibition itself. I don't really want to spend money on a fancy stand that I'll never use again, and I don't really want to spend all of next week making something wonky out of cardboard.

What I really need is a pretty letter rack, or maybe a vintage toast rack of some kind...

Great opener, buddy, lively conversation sure to follow.

Last year, Mike Davidson wrote a great post entitled "Building a Better Conference Badge", in which he harangues the makers of conference badges for their poor design. He talks about space wasted on non-unique information like the conference name (why would I need to read your badge to figure out what conference I'm at?) and attendee status (does distinguishing attendees from speakers really deserve more space than, say, someone's name?), and he's right.

There's something else missing from conference badges, though, that I think is even more important: Who are you?

I don't mean "what's your name", "what company do you work" for or even "what's your title". I mean who are you, what makes you special and, most importantly why should I talk to you and what should we talk about?

What you really want when you're clutching that glass of wine, trying to stammer something out in that second after eye contact, before it gets awkward, is some information about what the person is interested in.

Well, we took a swing at creating what we hope will be the Ultimate Conference Badge. It responds not only to Mike's complaints, giving more weight to name and less to conference details, but also includes two very unique properties:

• Tags: A list of things the person has said they are interested in. Go ahead and talk about it!
• Matches: A list of people our matching algorithms think you might want to meet. Find them!

We're pretty proud of our work, so I sent it over to Mike for his opinion.

He hated it.

not visually attractive...No attention is paid to gutters or spacing

OK, he's right. We're not done. It could use some style, some pizazz, some gutters. But consider the gauntlet thrown. Pathable will deliver the Ultimate Conference Badge. Mark my words.

View our new Scottish Clan Badge / Tartan / Clan Crest website here:

http://www.tartanclancrest.com

Ordering is a bit difficult though, since they don't offer a regular online shop, UK buyers have to get an order form from their website and send it in with a cheque, while foreign customers need to contact them first. Seems like the 21st century has not arrived everywhere... Oh well, it's their business of course, but I am certain a lot more people would like to buy their items if they had a working online shop!