Archives

Email Your President in Several Easy Steps

Seal of the President of the United States of AmericaIn order to send an email to President George W. Bush, it’s no longer possible to simply break out your favorite email client and dash off a message to president@whitehouse.gov. Those concerned citizens wishing to express some opinion or pose some question to the most secretive administration in modern times must now jump through a series of technological hoops in the form of an unnecessarily complicated and laborious series of forms on the White House Web site.

Email Form

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Better Browsers and Books While You Wait

Two reasons why I’m sure there will be another Internet boom (though hopefully one that is not as out of hand as the last one): the continued bursts of creativity in the browser space even in the face of Goliath-like domination by Microsoft, and the incremental yet determined progress of just-in-time product manufacturing. In plain English, I’m talking about Web browsin’ and book readin’.

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It’s a Mac, Mac, Mac World

Macworld ExpoMacworld Expos have not excited me very much since the mid-90s, though every summer, when the East Coast edition rolls into New York City, I make it a point to head over to the Javits Center and see what the Mac industry has to show for itself. Inevitably, I find myself bored after no more than an hour or two of browsing the aisles, and this year was no different. Actually, that may be good news, considering the comedy of PR errors that preceded this year’s New York show (which demonstrated that Apple has no particular desire to see an Apple-focused trade show in New York thrive). It’s kind of a success story in itself that the show floor looked crowded and that everyone seemed pretty upbeat.

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EMusic versus iTunes

eMusicIn just a few days of having a trial membership to EMusic, I’ve already downloaded more songs than I have in months of browsing the Apple iTunes Music Store, and this in spite of how much my bias towards all things Apple wanted to like the that Mac-only service. Once or twice a week, I would browse its catalog, hoping that I would come across some music that was remotely interesting enough for me to shell out 99¢ or more, but more often than not, I came up short — the albums I wanted were missing, or their track listings omitted crucial songs. I think I bought one album and three individual songs from the iTMS, for a grand total of about US$13.

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All Wedded Out

Yesterday was a beautiful day for my friends Nam and Shirley to get married — they were blessed with uncommonly temperate, sunny July weather, and an allaying series of breezes rolled in off the Hudson River and over the deck at Battery Park’s American Park restaurant, where both the ceremony and reception were held. The wedding was kind of a reunion of lots of people that Nam and I used to work with, which made it a lot of fun for me. As a groomsman, my duties included carrying a thick envelope of cash and checks to pay off the various musicians, photographers, videographers and lighting technicians, and also standing around with a big smile on my face while outfitted in a tuxedo — I have a distaste for the pilled blended fabric and ill-fitted tailoring of rented formal wear, but the whole affair was more than enjoyable enough so that I was hardly ever reminded how awkward and unpleasant my senior prom was.

That was yesterday. Today, Monday, was a bad day to go back to work — everyone at Behavior went to the wedding and so just about everyone strolled into our offices late and/or hung over. I drank hardly any alcohol — I hardly ever do anymore — but I need another day to recover, and a long, long time before I ever get married myself.

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Friend of a Friendster

FriendsterFriendster hardly needs an introduction, but for the remaining uninitiated: it’s not, as I assumed when I first heard the name, a file-sharing network dedicated to the illegal trade of pirated episodes of “Friends.” Rather it’s an online method for meeting new people through your existing, real world network of friends, and it’s so frighteningly complete that there are people I know who swear it’s merely the most public expression of John Aschroft’s evil genius for total information awareness. The Village Voice wrote a more accurate and less flippant explanation in their piece on the service last month.

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Rehabilitation of a Coke Addict

Coca-ColaAs vices go, an addiction to Coca-Cola is pretty timid stuff, which may be the reason I developed one so easily. Because of the long hours we work at Behavior, it was only natural that we decided to carry on the dot-com era tradition of stocking our fridge with dozens of bright red cans of Coke. It became a habit for me to drink at least one or two cans of it during the workday, then go home and drink a half-liter more with dinner and another half-liter while I worked on my computer late into the night. It was a nasty habit and I knew it, but I swear Coke tastes so damn good, and I found it incredibly difficult to convince myself to cut it out.

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The Big Business of Little Icons

StockIcons.comIf you’ve used Windows XP, MSN Messenger, AOL 6.0 or a host of other programs, you’ve already been exposed to the exquisite work of The Iconfactory. This small group of iconographers has spiritually led, if not dominated, the business of designing icons for the past several years. They’ve demonstrated again and again that they’re more than just talented icon artists; they’re also savvy marketers. Their latest venture, StockIcons.com, is another example of their gift for expanding the market and mindshare of computer iconography.

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The Power of the Press

Printing PressBehavior is printing a special-purpose marketing piece for which we need only about 50 copies. Taking this to a traditional offset printer — the old school kind, with huge, dangerous, finger-eating mechanical presses, unionized staff brimming with arcane printing knowledge, and storerooms full of noxious chemicals — would have made absolutely no economic sense. We also priced this out with one of the new breed of printers, the kind that straddle the line between traditional shops and digital service bureaus, and even that quote was pricier than we’d anticipated.

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Busy Work

It amazes me how people can find the time, energy and wherewithal to maintain more than one Web site. It’s hard enough for me to keep up with just this one, never mind trying to generate enough content for a second. Tonight was one of those nights when I looked at my watch, saw that the little hand was way closer to twelve than I thought it was, and realized that I hadn’t yet posted anything to this site.

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