It’s the Communication, Stupid. why is that so hard for companies to figure out? via tomalak. 03:56 pm

mortality. 03:50 pm

am i the only one who really just doesn't care about napster, is sick of reading all the headlines, discussions, links to the whole thing? i mean freenet makes the whole thing moot anyway. now, if the founders of freenet were getting sued, it might be more interesting. 03:42 pm

new viral marketing method: go to sixdegrees. gather emails for people connected to you by six degrees (several hundred thousand). send an advertisement for your company disguised as a plea for help. you may wish to use the subject "six degrees friend needs your help", just for that nice caring touch. 02:53 pm

an interesting perspective from Marketing Guru Al Ries. as far as i'm concerned, he's dead on about pr being more important than advertising and that price is the biggest draw for online shoppers. it'll be interesting to see if he's right about business models. via svn. 02:32 pm

i am, like everyone else, tired of the "discussions" over nielsen's latest. i keep thinking of the following, which will probably be on infinite loop, but that's ok because i really like it.

    This is not a black and white world
To be alive
    I say the colors must swirl
And I believe
    That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate

    The beauty of gray

          - Live, the beauty of gray 01:39 pm

A List Apart: Usability vs. Design (Mars vs. Venus). the name says it all. of course via zeldman. 01:26 pm

one of the most useful tools i've seen in a while. Vischeck color blindness simulator. i could never figure out how to deal with something that i couldn't possibly relate to because i'd never experienced it. via zeldman. 01:13 pm

amusing as these 6 warning signs that your job go boom are, they're scarily accurate. i've seen them all. maybe that's a sign of my skill at picking good companies. via dack. 05:27 pm

heh. idiotbox. via zeldman. 04:24 pm

lance's attempt to pass on a virus yesterday reminded me of two things. the bi-monthly chapter of the meme machine (yes, i will finish it. even it takes me 2 years.) talked about how popular songs aren't necessarily good songs, they're just songs that have memes associated with specific verses. thus explaining brittney spears. the other thing it reminded me of is the fact that every day this week i've gone to bed with a song verse on infinite loop and woken up with a song verse on infinite loop. not necessarily the same song. i think i've figured out the cause. while writing this i of course noticed the current verse on infinite loop happened to be the last song jason was playing. until we shared an office, i never listened to music during the day. i also rarely had songs virally implanted in my brain. it's always his fault you know. 04:14 pm

future of email software. i agree with the writer's notion that email clients are not perfect and could be improved. especially the file system tree. but i don't think his solution is necessarily an improvement. not that i have any better ideas. via uidesign.net. 03:52 pm

uidesign.net is one of those sites that i don't visit as often as i should and so i tend to forget about them. i hate that.

Myth of the big screen does a great job of explaining why we won't have one all purpose info-appliance. add bluetooth to the equation and you have multiple devices for specific functions. 03:46 pm

Skinny mice defy obesity. is a magic fat pill on the horizon?

"This research shows us is it is possible to treat obesity by increasing energy expenditure, in this case in mice but it might also be possible in people as well."

while you're at it, you should also read Little Blue Folders which explains why strategy is becoming such a large part of our jobs. 03:22 pm

Big Architect, Little Architect. challenging the threat of architect-in-a-box. it's good to see someone pointing out how broad *and* focused the job can be. 03:16 pm

vincent flanders gives a middle-ground viewpoint on nielsen's latest alertbox. he combines both extremes of the argument in a nice, logical fashion. although, i don't think he's accurate in both his classification of designers as eccentric artists or in the reasons he gives for artists despising nielsen. 03:03 pm

what a waste. caffeinated lipstick. now if it had 1800 mg per tube instead of just 18 mg, it might just be worth it. 02:43 pm

now, if i started writing like this, i wouldn't need to make stuff up. it truly is a thing of beauty. unfortunately it reminds me why i find reading xml so tedious. via svn. 08:01 pm

interesting. 7-Eleven, Amex Test Web Credit Card. if the popularity of debit cards is any indication, this may just be successful. 02:38 pm

joel spolsky describes how Microsoft Goes Bonkers with it's .net thing. 02:28 pm

another rebuttal to nielsen's alertbox. 02:22 pm

Failure Magazine. unlike most of the recent sites, this one doesn't focus on the dot.com debacle. it focuses on all sorts of failures. like kelloggs cereal 'mates'. 11:32 am

jakob nielsen has become so egotistical that he has now named a "law" after himself: jakob's law of the internet user experience. at the same time, he's predicting the end of web design. thankfully, michael sippey has already written a rebuttal. that way i don't have to go into the reasons for nielsen's insanity myself. 11:19 am

life is good. that's bad. my writing is stimulated by having a miserable life and hating the world, especially my bosses and co-workers. not having any bosses or evil co-workers removes 75% of my inspiration. jason is an evil, annoying co-worker, but i'm married to him so i can't complain too much. i did sign up for it after all. i can think of three things that will inject my writing with new life. (1) become miserable again. that way i'll have bitter, cynical things to say. (2) get a life. that way i'd actually do something worth writing about instead of "got up. had coffee. went to work. surfed. played games. went home to bed.". or (3) start making stuff up. since it's a long-standing web tradition, making stuff up seems to be the best option. now the question is, do i make up a wonderful, exciting, sexy life or a bitter, twisted, miserable life. maybe i should start a poll. 10:30 pm

forgot. tuesday i got my tattoos touched up. then i wrote about it. just to prove to the world that i can still write long, pointless, boring entries that no one should waste their time reading. 09:56 pm

we finally had enough problems with our laptops that it was worth a trip to palo alto to get them fixed. unfortunately, that means i'm without my laptop for up to a week. i'm not sure how i'm going to survive. 08:44 pm

after all the ripping apart of microsoft on the standards list, this Word From The WaSP! is a nice reality check. all the wonderful new features of mozilla won't make a difference if it's never released or if no one knows it exists except the die-hard users like myself and web developers. here's chris nelson's rebuttal 10:26 am

more convergence predictions. call me a cynic, but i can't imagine needing or even wanting my cell phone to also be "a television set, an alarm clock, a scanner". well, maybe an alarm clock. but, since my battery drains within 24 hours, it's more likely my phone will run out of juice before the alarm goes off. 02:52 pm

heather's talks about finding money. it reminded me that on monday, walking out of the bookstore, i saw a dollar bill sitting on the ground just inside the door. for some reason it felt good to find some money. completely worthless money that i don't need, but it'll pay for half a latte. i did still look around to see if anybody had lost it tho. 02:05 pm

Flawed Cube thinking?? gives some realistic potential problems with the new g3 cube. it doesn't state that everything about the cube is flawed. but, the first response jumps all over it talking about how wonderful it is and how no consumer product is perfect. i hate it when people justify poor design with the "well everything else has flaws too" argument. don norman's the psychology of everyday things gives some very good arguments against bad design. some doors have bad design doesn't mean they're not useful and people won't use them. they could still have been designed better. via signal vs. noise. 12:08 pm

this insanely long fastcompany article is on a concept called an ideavirus. i find it hard to believe that they're devoting so much column space to an article that basically says: memes (ideas) are the best form of advertising. spread memes through word of mouth (viral marketing). ideas+viral marketing=ideavirus. suddenly, you have guaranteed success (look at hotmail). of course, i may have missed it since i couldn't read more than half the article, but the author seems to have missed the key element: the idea has to be useful, unique, exciting and cool. if it's not, it doesn't spread. 11:51 am

htmlhell is an apt title for zeldman's latest article on standards. 11:11 am

ok. so it sucks that these people were scammed in an auction, but i don't know why they think paypal is responsible. if they'd all sent checks, they would still be out the money, it would just be easier to track the guy down. this is an inherent problem with auction systems. caveat emptor. 02:04 pm

this is an interesting piece about Web Site Trends. "White backgrounds, black text and blue links are almost obligatory, with only a few minor touches of originality." he goes on to state that this is a good thing. i can't even articluate the reasons why i so vehemently disagree with that. lack of originality is a good thing? via mersault*thinking. 01:24 pm

one more in the never-ending creation of conglomerates. CNET buys Ziff-Davis. 09:45 am

the signs on the building and on the door went up today. hopefully, now that the 4lessinsurance sign has come down, we'll get less people stopping in to change their policies. now we'll just get more salesmen. 03:10 pm

i've just started reading the social life of information. i'm only a couple chapters into it, but the main premise is that many predictions of the "future" forget to take into account the social aspects of humans. sure, people now work with information, but information isn't the only part of work. management, for example, involves a lot of social interaction. so, employees can work on information anywhere they want, managers can't easily manage them. it's a really interesting book that i wish i'd starting reading sooner. one day i'll make it through the stack beside my bed. 10:26 am

"it sucks not having any money."
"yeah. but life is great. we've sacrificed money for quality of life."
"if i'd known how wonderful it is, i'd have done it a long time ago."
"you know that carefree feeling you have in high school and college. where you have no stress because you haven't yet entered the 'real world'. that's how i feel."
"we've got responsibilities now tho."
"true. but they only enhance our quality of life." 10:14 am

i know some of these dot.com failures are the direct result of the crash, but there were always startups going out of business or laying people off, it was just happening quietly and the media was too busy writing about millionaires to notice. 09:24 am

when exactly did Dejanews change from being an archive of newsgroups to "we help you decide what products to buy and where to buy them". how could i have possibly missed the connection? 06:13 pm

i know i should just accept it, but i find it so irritating that an article is written purely as an excuse to interview and give press to a new company. since when was the concept of ego-surfing newsworthy? 05:44 pm

while i understand the legal and economic issues of having a global network, i can't see any of the solutions in this article being feasible. 05:38 pm

we had a brief discussion over dinner saturday concerning my incredibly huge ego. actually it was more a discussion of the appearance of my having an incredibly huge ego. (except for jason, who knows me too well, flat out claimed that i truly do have a huge ego. almost as big as his own.) the discussion revolved around the fact that people who don't know me, who don't know that i'm always cynical might actually read my writings and think i'm serious. occasionally, like once every 6 months, i think about this and consider posting a disclaimer. then i come to my senses and remember that no matter what people will judge me and i have no control over that. i can't remember where the discussion went from there, something along the lines of "you're letting the world think you're arrogant and egotistical"... you'll have to excuse me, i need to go play the sims, they may be virtual, but at least i can control them. 05:28 pm

essential office toy: juggling cubes. 05:02 pm

i feel guilty. i feel guilty because i haven't written any long entries in over a month. before you jump to any conclusions, i'm not feeling guilty because i've been neglecting my loyal and numerous readers, but because i've been neglecting myself. on the other hand, i haven't felt much like writing short things over the last month, so it's not really surprising. but, as the days progress, i find that the short things are becoming longer, they're not fitting so well on the page. which usually means they need to be moved to some place more appropriate. sometimes, i get through writing something like this, and wonder why i even bothered to write it at all. then i figure i might as well post it because it's already written and if i'm going to go through all the effort, i might as well put it up. 01:50 pm

trolling through the server logs again. Ixquick Metasearch has an interesting way of ranking results. stars show the number of top ten listings, and then underneath it shows what position on each search engine. i hadn't realized how often the blog portal came up when people searched on "blog". 01:08 pm

i hate one of my cats. he was always trying to get out. hiding by the door and making a break for it when it opened. finally, one day we relented. after that small taste of freedom, he started crying piteously every morning until he got let out. then he started wandering through poison oak in his daily escapades. now i'm very likely to suddenly realize that the skin i've been scratching repeatedly for the last day or so is actually a poison oak reaction. i hate poison oak. i have no self-control i can't stop scratching it. did you know that the most effective way to stop it from itching is to run scalding hot water over it? it's an odd sensation because somehow the pain of the hot water feels like it's scratching the poison oak and once you stop, it doesn't itch anymore. sometimes i wish my cat would get eaten by a coyote. 11:49 am

you know how you happily live your life walking around looking at other people, talking about other people, judging other people. and you don't want to think about it, but you know, really, in the back of your mind, that people are talking about you and judging you. but you don't think about that because then you would drive yourself crazy. then one day someone makes a comment to you that makes you realize that they were talking about you and judging you, and it wierds you out because if they talk about you then other people must talk about you and you wonder what they're all saying about you. so then you have to quickly block it out because you'll drive yourself insane. in some ways, it's kind of like when someone you've never met before walks up to you and tells you they read your weblog. 11:40 am

for the first time in a while, i felt the pain of working on a pc instead of a mac. i looked at a site which used a really cool font, and said "hey, what's that cool font you're using". it turned out the font was sevenet, but i knew sevenet, and this was different. i discovered that it's actually sevenet - varinet as opposed to sevenet - regular which is the one i knew. the reason being that varinet is only available as a mac font. doesn't anyone feel the need to convert it to truetype? 07:18 pm

not only are we treated to a double issue of alistapart, they're both good reading. Why Are You Here? makes me wonder how close the web truly is to a new form of religion. i can certainly draw parallels, for instance, this page could be considered a form of confessional. 06:39 pm

while reading the alistapart story on weblogs, it occurred to me that blogger has become very similar to geocities. the only difference being that blogger makes you have your own server. 06:28 pm

ouch. i wonder how much this suit against razorfish will change the way we do work. 06:00 pm

i will miss lorem ipsum dolor. via signal vs. noise. 06:07 pm

recent stream of consciousness: "damn, i've got to out for two hours and actually play the networking game. ugh. that means i won't get to play diablo, maybe i should have been playing instead of surfing all afternoon. well i could stay even later at work to play diablo but then i wouldn't be able to finish the harry potter book tonight. hmm. maybe i could just skip this webgrrls meeting."

based on the above, i've come to the conclusion that these are the priorities in my life right now:

1. read email*
2. play diablo
3. finish the harry potter book
4. surf the web
5. marketing

being completely self-centered, which i know is unusual for people on the web, i had to go try out EgoSurf (yes, i read about it in memo, you don't think i could actually come up with an unpilfered link do you?). what's sad, is it only returned 20 results. why would i use this when i can go to google and get 3916? i did notice, however, several sites using the trademarked "eatonweb" in their page titles. maybe i should send a cease and desist. oh wait, that wouldn't make me any money. 06:15 pm

i was in the midst of writing about how much i've come to appreciate sites that open a new window so i don't have to right click, when netscape crashed. so instead, i'm writing about how much i hate netscape crashing when i've got 15 windows open all pointing to different pages, most of which i haven't gotten around to reading yet and i've forgotten where the link to the page came from and, and, and... so, i'm thinking about changing my links to open in a new window. 05:13 pm

The Blogging Revolution talks about how we're going to reclaim the web and how industries and products will begin to grow around blogging. warning will be reminiscing again. these conversations took place 18 months ago. blogging is not revolutionary, it's just easy to do. bloggers will never make money off blogs (unless like jim romensko they get hired to do it full time). affiliate mlms won't make anyone money, all they do is cast doubt on whether the recommendation is made purely for money making. why is it that every few months someone else takes up the blogging banner and shouts about how "revolutionary" it is, while at the same time, every few months others realize that it's not really as revolutionary as they thought several months ago? maybe i should just go talk to ben for a while. he'll understand. 03:56 pm

about six weeks ago, i managed to get my thumb caught between a heavy chair and a door jamb. unsurprisingly half my thumbnail promptly went black. i've never bruised my fingernails before. about 2 weeks ago, i was pushing back the cuticle on said thumbnail, and realized that what i thought was cuticle was actually a very thin layer of nail. since i could never resist picking scabs as a child, it's not any surprise that i've been picking at this section of nail ever since then. interestingly, i now have a deep matchhead sized hole in my nail, the bruised black bit is gone from the hole, and there's still nail at the bottom. or maybe i just think it's nail. sorry. i usually try not to talk about this kind of thing. i think it's withdrawal. 03:28 pm

conveniently, the dsl guy who left a message this morning forgot to leave his name and phone number. but, i'm sure he's actually escalating our case and will definitely get back to us within 24 hours with a solution. 03:16 pm

each day has become a learning experience. yesterday i learned that you lose experience when you die in diabloii and that playing games at work is ok with my boss. i also realized that there are some clients that you can't pay me enough to do work for. ironically, those clients are very like me. opinionated, critical, judgemental, controlling. i wonder what that says about me. maybe i'm just misinterpreting my one real demand: competence. today i learned that there is a certain satisfaction in bidding out a $150k job even when you're pretty sure that the client will never get funding and therefore, never actually hire you. it probably has something to do with the illusion of actually having a chance at getting a paycheck in the near future. 03:12 pm

when i got their email yesterday, i thought "hey that's cool, wish i'd thought of it", then promptly forgot about it. little did i realize how much good stuff they would have. more from signal vs. noise: extra bitmap and rotortype. mmm. more yummy tiny fonts to torture people with. although, i will always have a softspot for silkscreen. 03:02 pm

green ketchup? why does that seem so, so wrong? signal vs. noise. 02:56 pm

Disposable Panties. one of those "must share" items. 02:44 pm

i don't know, calling blog a nerdword seems kind of like calling "online journal" a nerdword. if i'd only known it was going to be so popular, i would have trademarked it. oh wait, that wouldn't have made me any money. 02:36 pm

it's true. deckard was a replicant. via bitek processor. 02:01 pm

more boring dsl woes. dsl.net told us that they usually have sdsl in within 30 days. so, we cancelled our indefinite pacbell wait for a portal to open up. 2 weeks later pacbell calls and says a port will open up and we can have dsl in by july 6th. we consider switching again, but think "well, dsl.net said they'd have it in within 30 days, that's only a couple days later. besides it'll be sdsl which is much better". a couple days later, we're still waiting for pacbell to put another phone line in, so that dsl.net can turn on the sdsl. i'm beginning to forget what 24/7 access feels like. 10:16 am

amazon is thinking about a new navigation system. the major improvement being the simplification of their top nav. the major downside, you may have to go to a second page to find the store you use often. unless, of course, they're smart enough to customize those 'featured stores'. although this may be great for new users, i wonder if the fact that they've trained people to completely ignore the currently useless top nav will make the changes moot. does anyone use the top nav anymore? i know i always go straight to the search box. 10:10 am

i was just going through my logs for the last 2 days and found almost 900 failures from people trying to access /portal/'http . trouble is, i can't find this anywhere in my code. can someone who's gotten this error please please tell me where it is? 12:14 pm

for the past couple of weeks, i've been experiencing what i presume to be a common occurence for freelancers. having many bids out on jobs, but not getting any responses. either because of the company dragging their feet, or because we've failed to get the contract. sigh. 11:22 am

my lazyness has come back to haunt me. being too lazy to write my own search engine for the site, i used atomz. now with the new details pages in the portal, i've exceeded my 500 page limit. i didn't have anything better to do anyway. 11:20 am

just so you all know, the reason i haven't been updating is that i'm conducting a test. how long does it take to fall off the beebo list by providing little or no content. so far, it doesn't seem to be working very well, i've only dropped ~5 positions. 11:16 am

this week's interesting referrer. 03:18 pm

well, we finished d2 last night, so i finally got around to finishing the work on the portal. it's now in a database, there's a details page with all the info on the blog, the details can be edited, and new blogs can be added. i haven't gotten around to adding all the new submissions from the last month or so, but i'll get around to it eventually, or if you're sick of waiting, you can add it yourself.

let me know if there's any bugs, or if there's any suggestions on additions to the details page. it's still a work in progress. 04:01 pm

not having the time to read many blogs due to a certain game, i am glad that neale is offering this wonderful update on the current state of weblogging. it saves me a lot of time. 12:09 pm

it's good to know that the "what am i doing? this is getting out of hand. i'm sick of writing for other people and trying to be what i think other's want. i should really be doing it for me" rant is still around. i don't think i've seen one in about a year. back in the old days, it was a regular occurence. in fact it was considered a part of the normal evolution of a weblog. good for you derek. 12:07 pm

in web design and sin leo robert klein makes a convincing argument for ignoring "rules" and "sins" of web design. because the web is such a new medium, "any authority is as good as any other...and quite a few are bound to appear rather silly as time goes on". i can think of a few of those. via zeldman. 11:47 am

after playing d2 for 10 hours straight yesterday, i've discovered two problems. (1) my apparently ergonomic desk set up is not so ergonomic. (2) all i dream about is little characters running around on maps trying to complete quests. i wonder if that's damaging in some way.

a third problem has to do with having our game machines down at the office. not only do we have to drive home at 1am when we can't keep our eyes open anymore, but we also can't immediately get up and start playing again. i'm thinking that a bed down in the office would be a good thing, that and a membership at world gym next door for the shower facilities.

i seem to be cursed with the "everything i touch breaks down on me" bug. immediately after getting my monitor back on tuesday, my docking station for my laptop barfed. no more access to the network or dvd drive. wednesday, i started to notice that my "i" key doesn't always register when i press it. yesterday, my left mouse button started sticking. fortunately, it only sticks on the left side, so it's still usable as long as i remember to press in the middle or on the right. unfortunately, i think my warranty ran out this month, and i have to drive an hour to get it fixed. i wonder what i'll break next week. 11:06 am