Category: General

I just made a new mash-up metaphor: Separate the meat from the chaff.

Sweet God this Diet Snapple is NASTEEE.

I’m starting the move to Movable Type in earnest so things might be a little disconnected over the next few days. Thanks!

From 1983. I remember reading this book obsessively as I tried to develop my own versions of Zork . I was in middle school learning how to write a language parser. Nerd! 470 N=1 480 IF MID$(A$,N,1)=" " THEN C$=MID$(A$,N+1,3): IF LEFT$(C$,1)<>" " THEN 530 ELSE 500 Full text of the book by Tim Hartnell…

Relying on the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to guide you while forgetting that sometimes that produces shoddy folk-art and lowest common denominator output. Technically I shouldn’t use the word ‘tard’ since it is offensive to people with mental disabilities. But the people I’ve met with mental disabilities are about 10x more skilled than some webtards I […]

Andy Sernovitz (blog), author of Word of Mouth Marketing and general marketing bad-ass is hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar. Usually he only does private training for companies at a very large price, so this is a rare chance for 50 people to get the best introduction to word of mouth that there […]

I like how we’ve now coined a word for a vacation where you don’t have enough money to leave the house: staycations. AAA Vice President Mark Brown says the slowing economy and high fuel prices "have pushed some Americans to what we call the traveling tipping point. It’s clear that a small number of us […]

A thread on Metafilter looks back at Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz pizza places where a cavalcade of animatronics would serenade youngsters as they alternately tossed pizza down their gullets and played video games. One commenter boils it down: Robot furries that sing, entertain you, then bring you carbs. That made me smile. (We talked […]

Usability and design touches us all day, every day – every single item around you right now was designed by someone, somewhere with varying degrees of attention to your needs and goals. ATMs are a huge exercise in design and functionality that has to be immediately accessible and useful and obvious. For me they are […]

Downloading the Blurb Bookmaker that helps you make books to then be printed by the Blurb service. Here’s their instructions on installation for a Mac: Drag the BookSmart folder into your Applications folder, then drop it like it’s hot. I love that.