'business' Archive

failure to communicate

31 March 2008, 6:17 am
subtitle (or excerpt)

At the Abbey Lounge the other night I kept trying to figure out the name of the band advertised by this sticker:

I’m pretty sure it’s not Thunder Cl-phi-with-a-circumflex (note: φ with a ˆ is not an html character entity) My best guess is “Thunder Clip” but Googling for that as a band name doesn’t turn […]

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why I don’t trust your privacy policy

2 February 2008, 8:12 am
subtitle (or excerpt)

First there was Flickr. I liked Flickr a lot; it was a very convenient way to share photos with my friends and family. I didn’t know anybody on the Flickr team personally or anything, but it was clearly a small, bright outfit. The vibe of the site made me feel comfortable letting them keep track […]

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right before you get crushed

5 October 2007, 2:16 pm
subtitle (or excerpt)

I’ve been really enjoying the logo and branding re-design critiques at Brand New, well, pretty much since it launched.
I’m surprised (and delighted) by just how partisan today’s entry on the RNC’s pachyderm is.
If I weren’t more disenchanted with the Green Party, I’d suggest that maybe it could be the “mouse that roared.”

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how i’m not a marketing genius

27 September 2007, 2:01 pm
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One morning about ten years ago I woke up convinced I had a Big Money Idea. I didn’t think that I would make money from it; but I figured someone would. The idea was that the first mass-market penetration of virtual reality would be in exercise bikes. The idea arrived with a bunch of reasons, […]

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book report: Jennifer Trynin; Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be

25 August 2007, 10:15 am
subtitle (or excerpt)

If I were dictator of the world, everybody who wanted to form a band to play in front of people would be legally required to watch Standing in the Shadows of Motown first, and everyone who wanted to sign a record deal would be required to read Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be. In my […]

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aging; tangents

13 July 2007, 7:31 am
subtitle (or excerpt)

Although it scarcely seems possible, I’m older now than I was before. Actually, I’m older now than when I typed that, but I recently passed one of those points where society asserts that you’ve made a quantum state change from n-old to n+1 old.
I commemorated the occasion, in part, by checking the weather in Montréal, […]

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bummed.

30 June 2007, 2:12 pm
subtitle (or excerpt)

I’ve subscribed for the past few years (my wunnerful girlfriend actually helped me make the leap from newsstand customer to subscriber) and I’ve noticed over the past year or so that it’s a real conversation starter if I get a cup of coffee or something after I get the new issue out of my mailbox. […]

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new year’s resolutions: buy nothing days

14 January 2007, 1:43 pm
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I’m infuriated by the official U.S. Buy Nothing Day (read about it at Wikipedia, Adbusters). The organizers promote the day after Thanksgiving — i.e., one of the biggest shopping days of the year — as a good day to try to get people not to buy anything.
I think this is the same run-before-you-crawl error […]

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