Category: Work
-
Going out of Business Spam
Spammers are always coming up with new ideas for how to get by spam filters and new ways to fool people into thinking their messages require immediate reading. And these new ideas seem to come in waves, like fashion or style trends. For example, last week (and all in one day) I received about 50…
-
Behavior Profiled by Design Interact
Behavior is the featured studio in the latest edition of Design Interact. It’s a nice short-and-sweet introduction to Behavior, showing the diversity of our work and providing a little of the feel of how we work on projects. The profile includes some mini-interviews with me and my partners about some of the sites we’ve launched…
-
The Team is Integral to the Strategy
You can’t compensate for incompetance with prayer, luck, stubbornness, or waiting until your presidency is over, either. Demotivational poster from despair.com. I read an article recently that pointed out that when members of Congress voted in 2003 to authorize Bush to invade Iraq, they were voting not just for war with Iraq, but specifically for…
-
Video Lingo vs. Web Lingo: What is “Broadband”?
TV snow, soon to join the record-needle scratch and the dial tone in technology oblivion. It’s well-known that the entertainment industry has its own distinct and secret language. Variety magazine’s slanguage is infamous, in which “mitting” is applause, a “skein” is a TV series, an “oater” is a western, and, most confusing of all for…
-
Microsoft Word’s Useless Buttons
It’s not bragging (in fact, it’s probably a little embarassing) for me to say that I am an expert user of Microsoft Word. I can do just about anything I want with it, and I understand most of Word’s idiosyncracies and tricks. Still, the UI has always seemed to get in my way. For example,…
-
Why do Executives use Blackberrys?
Who’s the boss? The only people I ever see actually using Blackberrys tend to be high-level executives. Why is this? It’s simple: Because they can get away with it. Only the boss can sit in a conference room twiddling around with a Blackberry, their attention a thousand miles away, while everyone else is working on…
-
Dell Rips off Large Businesses
On the left is a nicely-configured Dell Latitude D620 laptop as you’d see it in Dell’s Medium & Large Business store. On the right is the exact same computer if configured in the Small Business store: Not only does the Small Business store offer a significantly lower price to begin with, but they also automatically…
-
Morning Subway Demographics
Because I often work very late or come in very early to the office, I have been able to observe some demographic patterns on the subways in the AM hours. It’s interesting to see how the ethnic, class, professional, and gender makeup evolves as the morning hours go by. (Please forgive the generalizations inherent in…
-
Avoiding Distractions with “The Exorcist”
Khoi just posted a great idea for a desktop application, which he calls Blockwriter: It’s a lean and mean text-writing app that (a) hides all other applications, and (b) allows you to disable email and even all network connectivity completely. The idea is to help people focus on writing tasks by blocking access to all…
-
SXSW Confidential, Part 3: Miscellany
Gotta clear out some final SXSW loose ends so I can go on with my life! At least they wont ever change this one, I guess. Virginia Murdoch suggested the creation of a Society for the Preservation of Paul Rand Logos. I could not agree more. I have a message for companies currently sporting a…