Everyone claims to be at the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell: And yet, this venue has no mayor! THE BLOGOSPHERE IS FACT-CHECKING YOUR ASS, Das Racist! As you might expect, Foursquare shows some delightful results if you check the venue “On A...

For about ten years, Slate has had an intermittent series of articles that explain how to pronounce names of people who are in the news. As someone whose (first) name is frequently mispronounced, I can appreciate the effort. (For the record: I...

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you’ve been missing out. But fear not! I take care of my loyal blog readers as well, by offering you the highlights of the interesting links I’ve been sharing there: “I find it bonkers, by the way!” That’s Rick...

I have some things to share with you. Alice Marwick‘s extraordinary keynote speech on internet celebrity from last year’s ROFLCon. It was the highlight of the event, imbued with both humor and a conscience. Mike Pusateri: “I am American, so I make...

Those of you who liked my post the other day about not missing anything while I was offline might also enjoy a conversation I had with CBC Radio’s show Spark, part of which will be on the air today. Canadians can hear it on CBC Radio One at 11:30...

I have to admit, I was a little bit gobsmacked when I saw that our little nerd world is becoming so mainstream that Jimmy Fallon had a gadget blogger featured on his show the other night — and it wasn’t even for an iPhone launch! Now, I believe Mr....

While listicles (articles that are simply lists, as cataloged on great sites like Listicles) are often the laziest form of journalism, they can also be among the most delightful. Something about the “I’m just phoning this in” nature of this form of...

Whoa Is (Not) Me is a site that’s a little over a year old, dedicated to defending the career and reputation of Keanu Reeves. It is distinguished from other Keanu fansites by a number of traits, including that it is “possibly the first Keanu fansite...

What makes lolcats appealing is that it’s simultaneously obscure and accessible. It’s an inside joke told in an online lingua franca, but with a bit of effort anyone can become an insider. “An in-joke used to be constrained by geography and who you...

I’ve found some nice responses to conversations I’ve had recently that are probably worth checking out. First, and most importantly, Soundwave: The Touch, the story behind Soundwave’s omission from the recent Transformers movie. Thanks to Nima...

My fellow nerds, the moment we’ve waited more than two decades for has apparently arrived. Soundwave has arrived. He really transforms. And he really plays...

In the New Yorker, Bruce Wagner tries to live my life: The performance began at two in the morning and took place in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was amazing. I was so close to Prince that I was injured during the six-and-a-half-hour...

I don’t know if it’s just that I went to lousy public schools, or that the xenophobic maniacs who resent the common ideals of humanity were successful in their efforts to shield kids from good ideas, but somehow I’d missed ever learning about or...

Behold, It’s (K)not Wood. I hestiate to make such a bold prediction, but it just may be the best blog dedicated to fake wood and woodgrain that you’ll see today. I daresay it’s the one you’ve been pining for. It wood knot leave you...

If you’ve been on the Internet at all in the past, oh, ten years, you’ll have seen the ad for Classmates.com that features an improbable matrimonial matchup of a bookish young woman and a dreamy young man. “They Got Married??!!!” screams the...

Since everyone’s sending it to me, I’ll post the prescient Onion video from last week. The highlight, for me, is two minutes into the clip. Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet...

Nedroid recently got challenged to draw 200 Bad Comics. You can see the results for yourself, and to paraphrase Run-DMC these aren’t bad meaning “bad”, but bad meaning...

Rives is a charming spoken-word artist whom I had the chance to befriend before I spoke at Taste3 this year. He’s got a true gift for speaking to an audience, as you can tell in this clip from TED Talks about the conspiracy that takes place at 4AM....

From the “OMG!” files, a humpback whale giving a piggyback (?) ride to a dolphin. I am just patting myself on the back for avoiding any “blowhole”...

Accidental Blogger capturesDiscover magazine’s list of The 7 Most Wondrous Moments in Science. The entire post is worth a read, but the featured list is: Otto Lowei: discovering the chemical transmission of nerve impulses René Descartes: developing...

From Mike’s Cruftbox, Bud Light + Clamato = Chelada, a recent and spectacularly gross bit of research from Cruft Labs. Meanwhile, Skot’s Izzle Pfaff offers Preparade, a reminiscence of a class reunion which features, you guessed it, beers cut with...

I’ve been holding off on updates about lolcats and related memes for a while because it’s easy to get burned out and probably as boring for you as it is for me. But there are still some interesting parts to it. As I alluded to in Inadvertent Lazymeme...

Following up on Indian Mango Alert Level: Orangish-Green and A Matter of National Security, some data points: The national flag of India has stripes of orange and green on a white background, The orange (“deep saffron”) represents renunciation, and...

Indian mangoes have arrived in the U.S. for the first time, and for me, my family, and my friends, this is a big freaking deal. I’ve got a lot to say about the subject, but if you weren’t familiar with the fact that this is the first time in history...

This one’s sublime: “What’s your favorite kitchen sound?” This one’s the truth, finally. The most eloquent dismissal of User Generated Discontent (or in this case, nominal competitor-generated discontent) yet written: It does, however, drive me nuts...

If you have the particularly first-world American problem of trying to find your way Europe, and then, say needing a place to stay while in Paris, don’t worry: My friends in the blogosphere have got you covered. Here’s some good advice from people...

Following up on Cats, Comics and Closure, Meowchat and PetSpeak (which, surprisingly, came up during a panel on race and class on Friday), and of course Cats can has grammar, I’ve rediscovered the bizarre things that happen after a couple hundred...

As it turns out, there’s more to say about kitty pidgin, and thanks to all of those who’ve emailed and commented with additional links. First, a great example of prior art for the commercial use of lolcats is Twitter’s various errormessages. That’s...

If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you’ll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats. This relatively recent phenomenon is the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and...

Following up on the conversation about accountability, january one discusses the dark side of blogging from the perspective of the knitting blog community. This was particularly instructive for me because I’ve been wrongly using the knitting blogs...

Because it’s still relevant, and people enjoyed it so much last year, I call your attention to Your April Fool’s Joke Sucks, from a year ago. Let’s revisit: I’m trying to help you raise the bar. Thus, a list of things which do not actually constitue...

I wanted you to read this thread on Stripper Web (you know, the community site for strippers?) where the women share stories of farting on their customers. As Harold pointed out, the amazing thing is not merely the stories themselves, but that...

Adults take note: You may wish to not open the box around your children if they may be frightened by a box with a decapitated horse inside. …I probably did take my new found freedom a little too far. Anyway, thank God for Victoria’s Secrets’ new...

Background: I once wore a funny t-shirt for a photo that appeared in the New York Times, and a bunch of people thought it was kind of amusing, albeit juvenile. It’s a reference to Goatse.cx, an extremely offensive shock site. As a result, I get sent...

I’ve learned some great insights into human nature from spending a lot of time interacting with people on the web. You know how, whenever they interview a serial killer’s neighbor on TV, they always say “He seemed so normal!”? Well, online you can...

Erin McKean, frock star and lexicographer, offers some wisdom: You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t...

Interested in the pre-history of the coolest bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe? The Birth of Boba Fett chronicles some fascinating backstory, including what looks like a downright goofy first screen test for the costume, which was then painted...

I’m not much of a sports fan, much less a student of sports journalism. But I know petty bitchiness when I see it, and I figure it’s worth identifying its traits, even if only to help me decide whether I like it or hate it. The immediate prompt for...

There’s been a great hue and cry about the debate over the definition of the word “planet”, and Pluto’s recent change in status. Frankly, I think the whole thing is silly — like a lot of words, “planet” means different things to scientists than to...

Whitney Houston, insane former pop star and provider of bail for Bobby Brown, is a remarkable woman. No, not because her most successful song was spun out from a movie where she had to feign affection for Kevin Costner, but because she inspires such...

What horrifically entertaining punchline finishes this Family Circus take-off at the Perry Bible Fellowship? You’ll just have to click through and find out. (My imaginary dialogue about the strip: “Who’s responsible for this offensive illustration?...

Over at Threadless, “Hooray Cholesterol!” I particularly enjoyed the chainsaw-wielding...

Way back long ago, when the Internet was still in black-and-white, I read Jamie Zawinski’s report of a fire in a tire warehouse across the street from where he lives. I was in New York then, and had never really spent any time in San Francisco as an...

As has been evidenced before, I sometimes wonder strange things about celebrities. So, part two in the series: Do you think Michael Winslow resents...

You want links? You got links. Seth Stevenson defends the word “sucks” in Slate. This seems relevant to me because my keynote at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference last week was callled Trying Not To Suck and because I used to get in trouble with...

Divebars. Jukeboxes. Allen Iverson. Beerball. Super Mario Kart. NetFlix. LiveFuckingJournal. The way my girl looks in that skirt. Everything great about America, and everything great about every place else, all in one post. I love great writing on...

Why are half the pizza joints in New York City named Ray’s? I think A Full Belly had the definitive answer to this question as part of a series of pizza posts a few years ago. Much more illuminating than the New York Times’ brief telling of the...

Right now, the most important thing you could be doing is reading these web pages: Jeff Clavier celebrates his second blogging anniversary and quotes me quoting Jeff Veen quoting Lane Becker. It’s a good post nonetheless. Dean. That would have been...

I enjoy links myself, so I thought you might want some too. Here, then: Graphs as art: Werner Vogels picks up the site graph meme with some nice visualizations of Amazon and A9. Knowing enough to be dangerous: Bad advice about Windows tweaking,...

Speaking of memes from a year ago, last year I created a site called ishavingamassage.com. (That’s “Is Having A Massage”, not “I Shaving…”) The domain is a (gentle) poke at Flickr, which uses the message “Flickr is having a massage.” as its...

A little over a year ago, I wore a funny t-shirt while posing for a photo that was published in an article in the New York Times. The shirt‘s a reference to a popular (and rather offensive) internet meme, and the reaction was immediate and...

Zinedine Zidane’s savage headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final has touched on many things: Race, family, country, terrorism, sportsmanship. But more than anything else, it’s united the entire Internet around the most important thing....

Mr. Henninger, I had the good fortune to review your column, in which you express, at length and in some detail, your extreme distaste for people publishing their own opinions on the Internet. I wanted to let you know that I am glad that you have...

Hey, there! I’m your friend, so I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. But someone had to: Your April Fool’s Day joke sucks. Really, it does. April Fool’s works really well if you’re either genuinely funny or if you make something that’s plausible...

I’m pretty sure that dressing one’s child in this manner constitutes child abuse. If you’re interested in committing sartorial offenses against your own progeny, you can visit the Mule Feed Store for...

These are hyperlinks to internet websites you should read. Rhino is doing a Prince retrospective. Though there’s certainly more than enough retrospectives out there already (a box set with b-sides, a crappy single-disk colection, and the soundtrack...

Even though Jason asked me to write four things, suddenly I’ve got one thing stuck in my head. And I’m amazed this meme jumped from LiveJournal to the public-facing blogosphere — do you realize how rare that is? Anyway, enough meta, on with the...

Hey kids, do you like links? Me too. Chris Anderson revisits the death of the blockbuster, which is of course astute and correct, but is mostly interesting to me because it mentions that Musicland is floundering. I’ve got a gleeful schadenfreude...

Needless to say, after watching the first season of Lost as well as all the episodes of the season thus far, we’ve become fans of the series. I’m not a huge fanboy like some people, but it’s cool enough. And hey — an Indian guy in prime time! So,...

So, I’m in the New York Times today, as part of the story called Loosing Google’s Lock on the Past. I’m not a huge fan of how the story turned out, mostly because my quotes are almost incoherent. What I was trying to say is that the expectation for a...

I talk to a lot of consultants, freelancers, and small businesses who do web work, and I used to be a freelancer myself, so sometimes I get asked for advice on how to price one’s goods and services. I think I came up with my best suggestion today,...

Other than amusing animations, the web was given to us that we might post cat pictures. (I picture Tim Berners Lee getting his liver plucked out by an eagle daily for that one.) Recently, the inestimable Paul Ford told us a bit about his cat. And the...

What’s that? Oh, you like my brown bracelet? Why, thank you! It signifies support for tobacco-free colorectal and colon cancer survivors. Once the sun fades it a little, I’ll also be supporting multiple myeloma awareness! Thanks (or no thanks) to...

Any time a piece of writing begins with “Yesterday I wrote a little program to play Minesweeper…” you can tell there’s some serious productivity going on. Especially given that someone already commented with my first thought, “Where can I download a...

If I were Vanessa Williams, I think I’d be damned bitter about Paris Hilton’s...

“HEALTH WARNING: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.” An oldie but goodie, Scientific Truth in Product Labels. Because people just don’t understand...

Today, as an exercise, we will contrast Peter Merholz’s ruminations on Konfabulator with the lyrics to Ghostface Killah’s feelings about the Sun, as expressed in “The Sun”, from Bulletproof Wallets. Ghostface: “Look at the sun so pretty today, it’s...

When I used to work in music promotion, we talked a lot about pre-loading PCs or other devices with music videos and songs. Sippey did the best job of describing it, and now the Mac rumor sites are saying that Apple’s going to announce a U2 preload...

Behold, it’s Microsoft Decathlon! It was like Epyx’ Summer Games, but crashed...

Dear spoiler queens: It’s your worst nightmare! Bwa ha ha ha...

Howard Stern moves to satellite radio. Jeff Jarvis swoons, buys Sirius stock, petitions Apple to add Sirius downloads to...

Sometimes when I see the creativity that my friends display, it makes me wish I had a...

I don’t use gmail, but if I did, I’d route the Atom feed of new messages to my...

Somewhere, at this moment, I suspect Elvira is gearing up for her busy season. I’m picturing crates of wigs, boxes of eyeliner, and a whole truck full of push-up...

There is only so much room for innovation or creativity within these design constraints, it...

Which Golden Girl Are...

If you’re in town tomorrow night, come by and help us say goodbye to NYC before we move to San Francisco. (The move is next week!) We’ll be at the Westside Tavern starting at 9pm. Westside Tavern is on 23rd at 9th...

A while back, Gillette released the M3Power Razor, a motorized razor based on their fan-favorite Mach 3. Now, as many of you may recall, I care about razors. I’d seen a TV show a while back explaining how to optimize the shaving razor, and it...

The beautiful thing about Cory’s speech being in the public domain isn’t merely that I could make an HTML version called Cory Doctorow: Microsoft Research DRM talk, or that Matt could clean it up, or that Jason could read it aloud, it’s the far...

The following is a brief list of things that you should not do at that point, long in the future, when I have died. Do not display my dried-up, beef jerky-looking carcass anywhere so people can line up for it like it’s Space Mountain. Do not go on a...

In honor of my Indian heritage, but with a nod to my status as a contemporary progressive American, I’m going to create a new service that blends the best of both worlds by offering arranged same-sex marriages. There’s an Indian tradition that having...

Since so many people are still out there hunting for jobs in this tough economy, I would like to offer a bit of advice based on an unfortunate situation that I was lucky enough to not participate in firsthand: Do not send your resume out to someone...

Sometimes egosurfing has its rewards. Some files named anil.jpg: anil.jpg, and a superior...

My friends, let us all come together on the one day of the year that unites us all, regardless of color, creed, or nationality, and join voices in harmony to sing the message that stirs all of our hearts: Stop with the goddamned stupid April Fool’s...

No, no, wait… even better than "Chicken Soup for Dummies" is a self-help book aimed at the terminally unfunky, which could be called "Chicken Soup for That...

Just a quick note to my few friends in Spain… I had my first chance to visit your beautiful country last year, and though I didn’t get to Madrid, I did get to spend enough time to start to appreciate the people and the culture. I wish I didn’t know...

Clearly, there is some bizarre behavior that I’m not privvy to which requires travelers to make use of vast quantities of ice. I don’t have a particularly pronounced need for frozen water in my life. But I’ve been staying in hotels a lot of late, and...

I think we can definitely say the terrorists did not win if the current momentum continues and gay marriage is legalized. It finally feels like it’s going to happen, and it’s just a question of when. And for those who are fighting the movement? Well,...

Whenever I visit someone’s house and go to the bathroom and see that they have Herbal Essences shampoo in the shower, it makes me want to grab the bottle, wave it in their face as I throttle them, and say "YOU! You are the reason for those...

What if Microsoft shipped "Linux for Windows"? On Friday, Microsoft released a free download of Windows Services for Unix version 3.5, a significant upgrade to the Unix integration product they’ve been offering for about 5 years. I’ve used...

So we’ve got the Deskbar and the Google Toolbar and they’re great. I’m assuming one of you geniuses can probably fill me in on a larger question, though: Can Google ever make a desktop search engine, not merely a web client, with indexing of my local...

My cat just crawled completely into a shopping bag that was sitting on the bed. The bag has drawstrings, so it isn’t inconceivable that it will get tangled up, which would require human intervention for her to escape. At which point, of course, it...

[Hint: This isn’t funny unless you read it in an Andy Rooney voice.] Did you ever notice how some people just like to complain on the Internet? I hear a lot of talk about weblogs and how blogs are the new journalism and how blogs are going to change...

The current bane of my existence? Spoiler queens. "Don’t tell meeeeee!" they shriek. You know you’ve got one, too, someone who insists that the world will end if they know the end of a movie or TV show or book or sporting event in advance...

The thing that alternately fascinates and infuriates me is the sheer arrogance, gall and insensitivity of the assumption that we all believe in a god, and that it’s the same one as yours. "Well, god bless you!" as if it’s just the same as...

Today is the New York City Marathon, and of course the biggest question of the day is not wondering which Kenyan will win, but who will win the heated competition between Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Maciej "We Invented the Latent...

A relatively recently development in my life has been the fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time on airplanes. I’d travelled a good bit as a kid, going back and forth to India several times, but as an adult I’d generally only been flying once a...

I’ve been following Russell Simmons’ political ambitions for over a year now, and it seems like his self-promotion campaign has kicked into high gear in the last few weeks. Either he’s trying to take Rush Communications public or he’s planning to...

I recently renewed my driver’s license, and I of course checked off the organ donor box because I’m a big believer in recycling in general and there just seems to be something efficient about reusing organs. (I figure my heart’s in good shape, since,...

We’ve got a pretty good sense of humor at Six Apart, but I knew that Ben and Mena were understandably a bit nervous before their appearance on CNN Headline News’ Hotwired segment tonight. It’s one of their first appearances on a major TV network, and...

A few random thoughts that have occurred to me of late: Whenever I wonder about random things like "Why are commercial toilets shaped differently than residential ones?" I can usually think through an answer on my own ("Probably so...

Google’s AdSense program is fantastic, a category killer. A good way to make money, a tasteful way to do ads, and a dramatic new way to turn hobbyist or personal websites into a more-than-break-even source of revenue. Nick Denton, no stranger to the...

Well, looks like I didn’t choke to death in a pool of my own vomit. That‘s good...

I’m very fortunate to get the chance to go around and talk to people who helped create the tools that have shaped the weblog medium, and so I tend to notice trends in the way we’re all talking about weblogs. One of the recurring ideas that I’ve seen...

Google’s new text-based microad service looks really, really interesting, but why do the Program Policies specifically state "AdWords ads may not appear on personal pages"? Question for Google Legal: What defines whether a site is...

I know I’m not the only one who’s looked at the Google home page and started humming Temple of the Dog. Right? "I’m feeling...

One of the best things about my job is that I get to go to conferences, meet interesting people, and then watch all their wifi-enabled laptops’ screens turn blue-and-gray as they all log into their Movable Type screens so they can blog the...

I have brought sunshine to Gotham with my weblog!...

Dear Mother Nature: On most days, I strive to write about something that I think is thought-provoking or amusing, something of merit which will please the surprising number of people who see fit to visit my site. I like to think of my weblog as a...

One of the great thing about having dorky friends is that they come up with ideas that even I recognize as being too geeky for human consumption. Such as a delicate locket pendant designed to be worn around the neck, complete with a synching cradle...

I have, I must concede, a bit of a sympathy for barley. I’ve probably always known it, but it wasn’t something I was conscious of until last year some time when I finally got around to reading Jared Diamond’s excellent Guns, Germs and Steel Among...

My cousin in California sent me the following email, but I haven’t kept up enough with our local hip hop stations enough to know if we’ve had the same trend on the radio in NYC. I figure some of you are more up to date on this, so leave any relevant...

Those of you attending Friday’s GEL Conference here in New York City who are going to be in town Thursday night might want to join us at the aptly-titled GEL Conference and Blogger/Industry Networking Cocktails which are being held at the Hudson Bar...

Given the fact that the area I was born and raised in is the area that elected Rick Santorum, it suddenly becomes much easier to explain why that part of Pennsylvania isn’t so much a great place as it is a great place to be...

The cereal that I eat most days has a big blurb on the back of the box that says, "Just two bowls a day for two weeks and you can lose six pounds!" and I am struck, first, by the sheer lack of ambition in that statement. Maybe it’s because...

Sometime early this morning, I realized that the dog was on one side of me growling and the cat was on the other side of me purring, and both of their low rumbles were at almost exactly the same frequency. I’m no expert on resonance or the auditory...

One of the things that troubles me about my daily routine is that we seem to have devoted a disproportionate amount of our culture’s scientific resources to the development of new kinds of razors and other shaving implements. This has become more...

Here at the Voice on the Net conference, I just attended a panel by Doc, David and Duncan, which Kevin moderated. The topic was decentralization, and the panel acted (at least to me) like a movie trailer for the full-length release of the next...

You know, if you had a band, and you were really determined to stay an underground band, instead of putting a vulgarity in your band name like in the olden days, you could just name your band "HTTP" so that nobody could search for it on...

Since, as expected, AOL Time Warner is pulling its most popular magazines behind its subscription walls, I figure it’s only a matter of time until someone sets up a site listing each weekly issue’s passwords, so that non-subscribers can read People...

About two weeks ago, I did a panel at SXSW with a coupleoffriends, and the topic was the future of personal publishing. There were a handful of points that I keep coming back to in regard to the future of weblogs, and they’re all based around the...

One of the great things about working at home all day via WiFi is that I get to waste my time in true guy fashion, sitting on the couch surfing the web and watching TV in my boxers. (As opposed to my old job, when I used to sit around the office all...

My, you’re all a sensitive bunch! I wrote a little ha-ha peevish thing yesterday and now everyone thinks I’m mad. This is what I do for fun, kids. Since everyone’s having trouble reading my feelings, I am going to have to resort to emoticons. They’re...

There’s a couple of things I ought to share with you. "Charlotte’s Web 2"? I think I’ve already stated my opinions on unneeded sequels, but what the fuck is the idea behind this? First of all, [Caution: Spoilers ahead, if you’re a complete...

So I got a copy of another extremist "manifesto" today, this one by a bunch of anti-American idiotarians who just don’t seem to understand the basic principles that our great country was founded upon. What this piece of Berkeley leftist...

I was thinking about the fact that browsers have to fix up a page internally in order to render it correctly if elements are incorrectly nested or are left unclosed. Since we know that Mozilla does a pretty good job of this, and its fix-up engine is...

Frankly, I don’t understand why skin care products have to masquerade as food. It’s not a recent development, of course, but it’s been getting worse the past few years. You know what I’m talking about, the substances that are ostensibly for external...

Don’t be suckered in by the non-news of the CBS MarketWatch story on AOL providing weblogs to its users. This is a rehash of the weeks-old Rick Robinson interview that Mark Hurst did. Robinson didn’t commit to any weblogging tools being released by...

Most of the people I know celebrate Christmas, and the majority of them are still sweating out a few last-minute gifts for friends. One time-tested trick for trying to seem thoughtful at the last minute is to give something so awkward and...

This is a partial list of great dogs I have known over the years, in vaguely chronological order. Ooloo Nanda Max Dash Snowball Buyakowski Reba Smith Bubba/Baba Dash that cute one with the underbite, whose name I don’t remember Cosmo Belle...

I redid the way my Daily Links work, so I’ll be able to do a lot more with them. For the 99% of you who don’t know what those are, the sidebar here is what’s been sucking up all my attention from the writing I used to do on this site. One of the...

Here’s today’s ha-ha funny AIM conversation. Woman I Am Very Fond Of: \ | / \ \ // // \ ######## /// \ ### ### // -- ## ## -- -- ## squish ## -- -- ## ## -- // ### ### \ /// ######## \ // // \ \ / | \ You have just been hit with an AIM snow ball!...

"The Holidays" are upon us! (I just love the navel-gazing presumption it takes to refer to two arbitrary holidays with a royal "The". But I digress.) Many of you will be spending today going to join your families for a meal where...

You know, Bill Gates had a public appearance next to a giant inflated condom more than 24 hours ago, presumably with a dot on his forehead as he’s been wearing during most of his trip in India, and yet there are still no pictures of this event on the...

Another in my occasional series of great emails sent to our customer service address at work: From: [Name Redacted] Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 2:18 PM To:customerservice@example.com Subject: why won’t you respond to my help request? i signed...

Sometimes you...

Speaking of mental illness, I am, right now, listening to a dance remix of Whitney Houston’s version of "I Will Always Love You". It’s not merely one of those thump-thump-thump house mixes, it’s got the whole snyths and building drums and...

There’s a good bit of information that I think my readers should know. To those who come here for the silliness, the ramblings about New York, the pontificating on technology, I ask your indulgence. I’m going to talk about stuff that I’m not as adept...

Sometimes following the links into one’s site reveals precious little gems of the web. But then again, sometimes you just get NETQUEER. Apparently, when they ripped off Blogger‘s design, they attributed a quote to "Bob Stephens" without...

This month’s New Architect has a great piece called Devil in the Details describing some IT implementation failures. The article’s focus is on examples like the Oracle boondoggle in California, but the larger trend of technology implementations going...

Congratulations to Ben and Mena on Movable Type‘s one year anniversary and the release of MT 2.5. Amazing that they’ve gone in one year from launching a product to having more features than any of their competitors, all from just two people’s...

Dear Danger HipTop T-Mobile Sidekick brand mobile internet access device: You suck. I know, I know, I’m your target demographic. A super geek who’s looking for a replacement for a cell phone that I hate because of its shitty UI. And everyone I know’s...

We get the best random emails to the webmaster account at work. Today’s: Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 5:49 PM To: Webmaster Subject: comment I plan to visit NYC in the next two-three weeks.(havent been there in 3 years). Are women wearing black...

Nickclaims (archives are broken, follow the first link. Yay, Blogger!) “the earnest left urges its members to blog more to demonstrate political commitment” and I don’t buy it. He’s talking about the far, hand-wringing left. Most of us on the left...

Weblog central: "Alaina Browne can’t get enough of Anil Dash on technology, politics and more." I’m intrigued by this "and more"...

A fairly telling sign of my work ethic: During this weekend when I decided to stay home, and be responsible and finish up all the tasks that I’ve been procrastinating, I just went to close the game of Freecell that I’d been playing. "It’s not...

I just got out of the shower, and these are the things I thought of. I am somehow unable to take a shower in anything less than thirty minutes. I say to people all the time, as we’re about to meet up somewhere or I’m running out of the house,...

Looks like Yahoo! Search has dropped Google results. Not that I’d ever use Yahoo’s search anyway, but it’s a bad sign for the big...

Jane advocates improving the intelligence of the Amazon Gold Box, but I say no! I like that it’s so random. Though it has been getting better, recognizing my tastes more often. Part of the fun is that I usually IM people whom I think would be...

It’s not that we must have bendy straws, it’s that we can have them. There are simpler ways. There is the "good enough" of a utiltitarian assistant, delivering your drink with no fuss. But also delivering it, and this is the important part,...

This is the thing: bendy straws are like little plastic tubes of unfulfilled promise. The articulation, the flexibility, that’s the appeal, right? But is it such a hardship to lean in on a drink when you’re sipping? Is it, you lazy bastard? Do you...

Understand this: I am an unapologetic Michael Jackson apologist. I was that guy, the one still holding on to hope. Michael Jackson has had a third child, apparently, of unknown maternity. The child’s name is apparently Prince Michael Jackson II. Let...

One wouldn’t think it possible, but today, someone we know discovered CSS’s a:hover class, which lets you change the color of a link, or worse, its background, when you point at it. We eagerly anticipate the upcoming discovery and usage of the...

I support letter-writing...

you gotta be the curtain...

A Network World story entitled Blogs finding fans in business world alleges that Phillip Windley, Utah’s state CIO, is testing weblogs in a business environment. I’m a little skeptical of that claim, given the significant differences between state...

I am going to make a bad action movie about the Internet and it’s going to be called "Inbox:...

Hey, are you a straight Asian female with a weblog? Try this bit of innovation: Refer to your boyfriend as "The Boy" when referencing him on your site. It’s...

I went to buy a sandwich tonight and the young muslim boy behind the counter was making a concerted, but not entirely successful, attempt not to laugh as he asked me why I was wearing a "Jews for Jesus" t-shirt. Even more kindly, he nodded...

Interesting. About a year ago, I wrote Pardon Me For Being Forward, which got a pretty decent amount of traffic. I’ve still never gotten it forwarded to me by someone who thought I’d appreciate it, though I know people who have. After seeing it pop...

It doesn’t take a scientist: Ain’t no skinny people at the...

Jeff Jarvis revisits some copy desk stories from his days in the paper business in Chicago: On my first day at Chicago Today, I made the mistake of going to the men’s room. There, I saw a guy brushing his teeth over the toilet. But that was nothing....

Sometimes friends ask me why I make geeky things, or spend my free time programming on little projects that I never show to anybody. And the reason is because I Am Not An Artist. Now, mind you, I have friends that make art. I appreciate what they do....

There is a bee in my...

Stewart posits a generic interface between games, and the implications are mind-bending and potentially quite fun: Use this system as an intermediary for allowing two people to play two different games against one another… while expressing the...

A tip for the straight guys, when meeting your girlfriend’s mother: Do spend all day shopping with your girl and her mom. Do not draw too much attention to the fact that you know how to coordinate your shoes with your purse. Do give your girl’s...

The unfair part in the ongoing battle of Mena vs. Ben is that Mena plays up the "cute little ole’ me" thing so much that poor Ben doesn’t have a chance for the popular vote. That manipulative...

BotSpot reviews and lists a hell of a lot of Bots for your enjoyment. And over here is another long list of bots....

There’s this theory that’s been tumbling around half-formed in my brain for the past few days. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it basically has to do with the fact that two of the most pervasively adopted trends during the 1990s were the...

Anil Dash:whooo! andretorrez: yeah? Anil Dash:whooo! Anil Dash:It takes two to make a thing go right… andretorrez: yeah Anil Dash:It takes two to make it outta sight Anil Dash:Whoo! andretorrez: yeah Anil Dash:hmm. it loses something this way,...

Success! If you’ll kindly look back to 11 September, you’ll see that we had sent a message to Shaun Reilly, proprietor of ReillyBurger.com to congratulate him on his culinary achievements. The message we sent was as follows: Mr. Reilly, Upon...

Everything that rises must converge. If pressed to recite a short list of some of my favorite pop musicians, that list would undoubtedly include Prince, Ani DiFranco, and Chuck D of Public Enemy. Interesting to me, then, that all three are now free...

Prepare to be impressed. There exists among us a man like no other. Sure, we are all exceptional in some way. But truly few are as blessed with a gift as this Boston University senior. I have two words for you: 20,000 Calories. It really does give a...

An interesting experiment in pervasive hyperlinking is taking place at GuruNet. (No relation to guru.com) What they make is a small program, sort of like a browser plug-in, that lets you Alt-click on a word in any Windows application (not just...

Interesting parallels between my area of expertise and the area in which most of my clients work, or Information Architecture vs. Spatial Architecture. I was reading an article on accessibility guidelines for home construction, and it’s interesting...

Whew! After a long Labor Day weekend hiatus from updating this site, I have finally returned. Lots of new ideas, but oh so little time to upload them… First of all, some poetry. A reflection on aging in general, and on my birthday in particular,...

Ask.com ponders the unanswerables. Since being renamed from Ask Jeeves, one of my favorite search sites, ask.com, has taken on what I feel could be an overwhelming responsibility. You see, with a name as broad as "Ask.com", I feel that an...

While traveling back to Pennsylvania today, I had occasion to reflect on a recurrent observation of New Jersey that I have every time I go through the state. While I’ve long referred to Jersey as "The Armpit of Our Nation", it occurs to me...

Thanks to the design excellence and automotive auspices of the Ford Motor Company, I am in scenic Throop, Pennsylvania. Yes, this town is exactly what one would expect of a location named Throop. Of course, this is not just another bellyaching...

A Guide to Gratuities: While I’ve always been a generous tipper, (almost inappropriately so) I have definitely come under the sway of my much more miserly friends, to the point where I now find reasons to take deductions from the tip I was going to...

An unsolicited word of advice for all you triskadecaphobes out there, superstitions are for idiots. This concludes today’s...