From Gooby to AMVBBDO.

To me, switching to an agency whose website is almost invisible in Google is a very bad idea.

95% percent of IT projects don't finish on time.

In other news, water is wet, and the sky is blue.

In the debutante sense of the world, not Ellen Degeneres, et al "coming out".
New MySQL release reaches beta.
I love the ease and price of MySQL for small websites. It's the perfect complement to PHP, and if this release is as stable and robust as previous releases, SQL Server is in trouble.

Coupons delivered via RSS. What took them so long?

Awhile ago, I blogged about the possibility of a consumer blog movement, in the same way there's been a political blog movement. Maybe Consumerpedia is it (Ugh. ASP.Net. Begin the countdown to server explosion...now!). The certainly are drawing from the right inspirations (/., Wikis, and Del.icio.us). I like what they're doing, I hope it flourishs.

Or maybe not.

Whoever put this collection together has an unhealthy He-Man obsession going on...

I'm doing another website for a non-profit (Ravah Ministries, the same people whom I'm doing the golf marathon for), and every website I've built (with one exception) for a non-profit has been a blast.

If you ever feel that your clients don't appreciate the effort you put into your work or that what you do doesn't make a difference, donate your skills and time to a charity. The rewards you'll get won't be monetary, they'll be something infinitely more valuable.

Chet Meisner was right about telemarketing, and he's right about privacy, too. As long as consumers see direct marketing as a foe to be battled (or at least be wary of), we'll be fighting an uphill battle.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

- Matthew 28:1-10, NIV

As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. They came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!”

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”–which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He's calling Elijah.”

Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him.”

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

- Matthew 27:32-50, NIV

Use this.

It helps prevent this.

Ford is cancelling the new Thunderbird.

Yet the Mustang is selling like hotcakes.

A coincidence? I think not.

The T-Bird was a repackaged Lincoln LS. Nice, but not a grab-you-by-the-short-and-curlies power ride. And while it this is non-scientific, I can't recall the last time I saw one being driven by a guy. If 50+% of your market doesn't want one, you may be in trouble...

There's no way that Lou Reed, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Miles Davis("The trumpet thing is good, Miles, but do you sing or dance?") or Bob Marley would have ever been a finalist on American Idol. Heck, they would have even qualified.

And that tells me all I need to about that show.

The market for Hispanic-themed malls is booming, it seems, But the Spanish-language ISP business is not.

A Mac Mini in a PC Drive Bay. Of a Dell, no less.

Oh, the humanity.

I got a chance to fondle a friend's Toshiba convertible recently. Not bad. Of course, it showed typical Windows design sense "Add more buttons! Who cares if it makes sense where we put them!" and achieved it's small size and battery life by omitting an optical drive (something my similar-sized (and cheaper) iBook manages to keep).
We got talking about the future of computer, and while Bill says the PC isn't dead (yet), I think we're heading towards a "data-centric" model, and away from the hardware-based computing environment we now have.
It'll be something like this, only moreso.
Imagine a USB thumb drive with all your data which scales in features according to the hardware environment it's in.
If you want basic access (email, office apps, browsing) plug it into your PDA/Smartphone. For more advanced computing, say, graphics, 3d games or desktop publishing, plug that same drive into a "desktop" machine, and get all the office apps/email/etc, plus the more advanced graphics/memory needed for those other apps. Plug that same module into a "laptop" machine for the same feature set on the run.
Ideally, it will be OS-neutral, cross platform and open standards all the way. It's data on the PC, and what you do with it, that really makes a computer valuable. Hopefully PC design will eventually catch up with that fact.

Only problem is, there'll be $30/month fee.

With more and more municipalities adding citywide wifi, there's an opportunity for the large motel chains: Eat the cost of the access fee for each guest at a hotel in a city with municipal wifi, and advertise "Free city-wide wireless internet!"

Beats the hell out of hi-speed access in just your hotel room.

staying at home, playing Mr. Mom.

"220, 221, whatever it takes."

I went up to the Boyce-Thompson Arboretum to shoot some images for their stock files.
Nice day, nice place, nice photos.

Sometimes, the pictures just take themselves.

It probably is.

Who has the more influential web presence: Gizmodo or MTV ?
If you said MTV, guess again.

Behold, the rebirth of the single. Again.
Brilliant. Absolutely friggin' brilliant. One of the best ideas in music marketing in a long, long, time.

Motorola's iTunes phone is coming. Soon.
If it has the following, I'll be first in line:
- 256mb internal memory, more on an SD Card
- 3G networking
- Buy songs from the phone via the iTunes Music Store
- 1 megapixel or better camera with iPhoto/Flickr integration
- Decent PDA capabilities with iSync
My old V60 has served me well, but it's time to move on.

A BlueTooth Communications Badge.
Warp Six, Number One, make it so.

There is a plague on the Internet, and it's name is Comic Sans.
Fortunately, there is a cure.
Friends don't let friends use Comic Sans.

Wired 's reporting that the first episode of the the new BBC Dr. WHo series may have been leaked to the 'net on purpose.
Brilliant.
How long before every other network catches on to this?
Quite a while. The major networks still see p2p as a force to conquer. They've yet to understand there's no quicker way to generate excitement than an in-depth web strategy, which includes treating the viewer as a partner in the process.

A Slide Rule Watch.
"Say, what's 100 divided by ten?"
*calculates on slide rule*
"Ummmmn, 9999999999, and I'm not sure where to put the decimal point."

McDonald's uses Wayport.
Starbucks uses T-Mobile.
Lots of other places have it for free.

My question is, when I'm out of my calling area on my Verizon mobile phone, I can use another network and pay a slightly higher fee; a roaming charge.

So why can't I have an account with T-Mobile's WiFi service, and pay a roaming fee (say, 25 cents an hour more) when I'm at McDonald's without having to open a Wayport account? Why must I open an account with both services? And don't tell me it's a hardware compatiblity problem.

Pharming combines phishing with a DNS hack, so that the victim thinks he/she is actually at a legitimate website. Nice.

Next question.

This is how it's supposed to be done. (iTunes required).
And yes, there will a test later.

" Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses."

So if I send a photo via AIM, it's now theirs.
If I collabrate with a cow orker via AIM, AOL owns it.
If I send an original poem via AOL, they can use it as they see fit.

AOL is an integral part of my work. These terms are beyond the pale.

Full Terms Of Service Here.

Update:
Talked with Don Giannatti on this, and he thinks it just concerns the content you upload (smileys, icons, etc) onto AOL's servers.

That makes more sense.

Pangea just released an OpenGL plugin for QuickTimeVR, (Mac-Only. For now.), offloading the rendering of a scene from QuickTime to the graphics card.
But of course.
Why wasn't this a part of QTVR from the very beginning? Or at least since Quartz was introduced with 10.2.
Time to drag out the panoramic head and start shooting again.

Very.

First, Virgin Electronics folds up shop. Now Virgin Radio introduces an advertister-funded Podcast.
Sir Richard recognized that his mp3 player's weren't selling and yet still managed to find a way to make some money off the iPod. Not bad at all.

Tim Bray's the CTO of Sun, and he makes some really good points as to why blogging is a good idea in today's business world.
"No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice."
Hell, yeah. I'd also add that most books on jumpstarting creativity I've seen involve daily writing as a way to get ideas flowing, and a blog fits nicely with that.

A bazooka with an atomic warhead.
What in the hell were they thinking?

This personality test is a cut above the usual sucky Flash-based internet quiz. Nice metaphor, well-done and logical animations, but the buttons could be a little more prominent and better placed.

I started photography as a photojournalist, so I understand the need to get the picture and get it first. But last month, the body of an abandoned baby was found in early in the morning a supermarket trash dumpster by my house . I walked out, on my way to work, to the sight of four different news choppers hovering over that parking lot, all jockeying for the best shot of the trash dumpster.
An innocent life was snuffed out and the body left in the most shameful way possible, but all the local news could think about was getting pix of the body.
Do we really need to know these things? Does it help anyone understand their world better?

I can almost understand what the designers at Lowe's.com were thinking:
"Let's build our online design and planning pages so they feel more like an application than a web page!"
A good idea, right up to the time that you want to send someone a link to, say, a backyard planning app.
Oops.
No direct linking to the pages were you can choose which app you want. In fact, no direct linking to any of their design planners. Kind of hard for them to catch on and become popular that way...

Anton Corbijn's new book on U2 should be hitting the stores soon. He's always been a hero of mine. His use of simple light setups (usually not even a fill card) and minimal equipment is inspirational after my past decade of studio work.

Google Sets is shining example of Google's quest for cool features. Enter in a group of related words and then what size set you want returned, and Google will show related words. For example, inspire, lead and drive produced these results. Not bad.

Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion is ahead of the pack when it comes to understanding how blogs are shaping public opinion. He links to this article that talks about corporate blogging. Given the propensity of some companies towards hype and corporate b.s., and the blogsphere's ablility to cut thru that marketing double-speak, I'm not sure that corporate blogging is a fit for most companies.

Online Color Scheme Generator. Why didn't anyone think of this before?

Kyocera seems to be leaving the camera business.
Too bad. At one point, Contax had the same rep for quality glass that Lieca has, and the G/G2 rangefinders were *hot*. Too bad they could never capitalize on those successes.

The Lazy Way to Success: Attacking the Work Ethic is a "motivational" (or lack thereof...) movement I can definitely support.

"If you emphasize hard work to the youth, you will create a generation of most obedient servants. However, if you inspire passion in them, the sky is the limit for what can be accomplished."

This rant against the Google AutoLink Function (along with this review of the rant) make some very good and very troubling points about Google's new Autolink function.
Allowing customers to add links wherever they want radically changes the web, turning any page into a Wiki, essentially. The future uses of this technology need to be addressed, and fast. What if Google started selling Autolink info to Amazon or another online retailer, where an Autolink takes you to a shopping cart? Not the sort of thing that, say, Barnes and Noble would like.
Just because you *can* do this, Google, doesn't mean you should.

Designers Toolbox is a nice little website for commonly-used things like lorem ipsum, form element graphics for various OS's, envelope sizes, etc.

Wired magazine sings the praises of Yahoo! this month, and it got me thinking about how I use Yahoo! and Google. I've had a Yahoo! email address since they rolled out that feature, and still use it over gmail. Google's local search is replacing Yahoo! maps, but I still have my home page set to My Yahoo!, and will for a while. The telling quote from the Wired article: "Yahoo! is what AOL should have been."

1994 called. They want their HTML back.

When I lived in Costa Rica, Racsa, the state-run telecommunications company, was the very model of bureaucratic ineffeciency. Month-long waits for phone lines were common, and their billing system was ridiculous.
And now they want to make any competition illegal.
Nice.
Given Costa Rica's long history of democracy and civil rights, I can't see the people there allowing this.

No one on this planet is a bigger fan of the 80's TV show "Moonlighting" than me. Great writing, interesting characters, and some of the best on-screen chemistry since Nick and Nora Charles.
But there's no Moonlighting DVD box set.
And Wired explains why.
We need a long, hard look at copyright law in this country. Soon.

This new Sony-Ericsson phone is darn close to the all-in-one gadget I need. No iTunes capability, though, and limited PDA functionality.