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June 18, 2013

My Google Reader starred posts archive

Google Reader shuts down on July 1, and as a die-hard fan, I am going to miss it.

While I'm busy exporting my feed list and re-establishing my RSS reading elsewhere, I'm reminded that I often used the starring function to call out posts of note. Of course, the truth is that I rarely returned to my starred items, and with minimal social network tie-ins, those favorited posts never got much exposure.

So I'm resurfacing them here for posterity--fully, more or less, despite the fact that I have a lot of links from 2009 and earlier that make no sense to me now, or that just aren't interesting anymore. For one reason or another, they were interesting then, and they deserve to be archived. And, naturally, some of my favorite blogs over the six-plus years I've been living in Reader don't seem to have been starred along the way, like Alice and Kev, which will keep you riveted if you read it chronologically.

Regardless. From items I liked to items I wanted to revisit later (and likely never did), herewith, my Google Reader faves archive, in reverse chronological order, with occasional (present-day, in parentheses) annotations.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:00 PM |

January 2, 2013

The year in cities, 2012

Eighth edition: listed here are the places I visited over the past 12 months. Per the annual rules, only overnights are listed; repeat visits are denoted with an asterisk (even those that I last visited five or 10 years ago; previously, I used a dagger, but it's gotten redundant).

New York *
Punta del Este, Uruguay
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Orlando, FL *
Washington, DC *
New City, NY *
Livingston, NJ *
Hong Kong *
Blue Bell, PA
Bellevue, WA
Montauk, NY
Gloucester, MA *
St. Thomas, USVI *
Short Hills, NJ
Hawley, PA *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Lake Buena Vista, FL *
Lakewood, NJ

Posted by David Wertheimer at 1:57 PM |

October 30, 2012

Sandy

I am, oddly, almost apologetic to note in this space that I have little to report personally on the storm.

My family was out of town for the weekend ahead of Sandy's arrival; we cut our trip short for safety purposes, got home Sunday evening with a responsible amount of food and bottled water, stormproofed the windows a bit, filled the bathtub, checked our flashlights and candles, and put the kids to bed. Then we watched TV and Twitter for a few hours, cast a wary eye at the wind-rattled windows, and went to bed ourselves as the flooding crested. We woke up to normal power and water while most of the region lacked one or both. Today we walked around a bit, hung out, took something of a family day. Could be a lot worse.

Which is not to say things are perfect. I'm way behind on my work. Our child care situation this week is going to be interesting. But relatively speaking, we came out great. I can only hope my friends and colleagues in less fortunate areas emerge as well in the coming days.

Tomorrow I report to a conference room at a sister company for what hopes to be a productive day at work. My team dealt with multiple deadlines this afternoon, many of them working through power outages. Life goes on. Even when it's wet, and dark, and strange.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:39 PM |

September 28, 2012

Formerly known as

A few days ago my last company disappeared.

Well, not exactly disappeared and not exactly a few days ago. But in a press release dated Monday, the ecommerce shop I founded, Canopy Commerce, was rebranded and folded back into its parent company, Alexander Interactive.

Canopy lasted roughly two years and built a successful portfolio of client work. We launched some pretty good stuff, frankly ("incredible success," per the press release) and had a pretty good time doing so. Several Canopy employees rolled into Ai with the name change, ensuring a smooth transition.

Back in 2010, when I was creating Canopy with Ai's owners, I advocated having a business unit and not a standalone company, so I am neither shocked nor disappointed that Canopy is now Ai-branded. My CEO role wasn't filled after I left, so this is a logical step.

I have been thinking a lot about this, though, and about the ephemeral nature of employment in general. I now have worked for three companies whose names no longer exist, not to mention my own currently dormant consulting shop. While one former employer became a client of mine, 13 years later, I'm at the point where I don't even know how to refer to some others.

For better or worse, people identify heavily with the work they do and where they do it. I typically recite with pride the places I've been, which is made harder when they disappear. It's a little soulless, a little confusing, a little disjointed. People's recall lessens. Web searches become less fruitful. LinkedIn profiles get messy. (I rolled up my Canopy title into Ai on my profile, for example.)

This is the nature of the business world, of course. I should be used to it as someone who specializes in Internet projects, where entire companies can disappear in a click; even my own website archives are full of missing files. But employers gone missing resonates in a different way.

Farewell, Canopy. We had an interesting run.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 3:11 PM |

September 22, 2012

Brothers

Nate, holding an Elmo doll: "Eli, look! Who is this?"
Eli: "Elmuh."
Nate: "Who is this?"
Eli: "Elmuh."
Nate: "Say it one more time and you can have him."
Eli: [blinks]
Nate: "Eli, who is this?"
Eli: "Elmuh!"
Nate: "Right, Eli, very good! Here you go."

Seems my work here is done.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 8:25 AM |

July 9, 2012

On LCD screens and parenting

Behold: the Fisher-Price Apptivity Case, a protective baby-friendly cover for your iPhone.

I'm a digital guy, have been since I got an Atari as a second-grader. I now have two kids that can't help but see my TV set, laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPod. They think it's fascinating and fun.

So I did what any responsible parent should do. I downloaded and tested some age-appropriate apps and let my older son explore. The iPad and iPhone are genius devices in their usability, with their clutter-free fascia and immersive interfaces. So now the gadget is teaching the boy animals, colors, shapes, letters, memory retention and matching, spatial relations, you name it. We also set up guidelines: no screens between breakfast and dinner, no YouTube (Thomas the Tank Engine snuff films! who knew?), you have to play out difficult boards and not quit things quickly, etc.

That boy is now 4 and is as digitally savvy as anyone his age. He's also wicked good at memory matching games, he can write his letters in capitals and lowercase, and he plays sophisticated games like Flow, Trainyard and Rush Hour better than many adults. Heck, he figured out how to unlock the home screen at 21 months. And he still loves his real-world toys, crayons and books.

Done right, gadgets are as wondrously useful for young people as they are for adults.

My baby boy is 15 months and dying to play with the iPhone. Right now he only gets glimpses when his big brother is engaged. Soon enough, Eli, soon enough.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:39 PM |

February 28, 2012

Something new

I am excited to announce that I have joined Proof Integrated Communications as Chief Strategy Officer, effective yesterday. I am a managing director at parent company Burson-Marsteller as well.

It's a compelling next step in my career, as I'm charged with defining a variety of roles in an environment much different than the autonomous, scrappy startup I'd built at Canopy. From business development to corporate strategy, internal evangelism to organizational details, I'm going to have my hands in a lot of things, working with 70 colleagues in three offices to build upon their successes to date.

I leave behind a bustling agency in Canopy that has become a trusted destination for ecommerce and user experience projects, and an expanded Alexander Interactive that just moved its award-winning organization (and the Canopy team) to huge new digs on my last day at work.

Departing a nice environment is always strange, especially after four years of collaborative, impactful project work. But having successfully built something new for Ai--twice--I am ready for another set of challenges, starting with the ping-pong table directly outside my office. All in a day's work.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:12 PM |

September 10, 2011

Ten years

A confession: I've spent the past week two weeks willfully avoiding most September 11 commemorations. I certainly know why, although I have had a hard time putting it into words. Am I not ready to recollect? Do I find it too sad, too ugly? Does it feel too obvious to me?

Perhaps all of the above, or something else, subconscious and intangible, that drives me away from the past. Different things evoke different responses. I blithely skipped past The Economist's coverage of the anniversary, but I can't even bring myself to crack open the New York magazine special, and I have been noticeably averting my gaze whenever I spy the billowing smoke on its cover. A decade on, I am not at all inured to the visuals of the event--if anything, I have a more visceral reaction now, in remembrance, than when it actually happened and we all couldn't stop looking.

My wife pointed out, rightly, that we as a society need to remember, to reflect, to refresh our memories, to celebrate the heroes and respect the innocent and the fallen. I had friends who experienced a far more dramatic 9/11 than I did, and friends who lost their lives.

Perhaps that's where I am: I haven't reflected because I haven't forgotten. I can tell, in vivid detail, the story of that day and the entire week around it: where I was, what I did, how I felt, what I smelled. It was my reality and remains my experience. To that end, America's insistent media saturation leading up to Sunday's commemorations are invaluable: no one is being allowed to forget, just as I, and many others, already cannot.

Tomorrow is a somber and important day for all of us, however explicit our reflections may be. My thoughts are with those whose memories are far more painful than mine.

--

On and after September 11, the Internet was both a lifeline and an outlet for me. My blog posts from 9/11 through the 23rd are available in a single-read archive, and I invite my readers to explore them. For historical accuracy, the girlfriend cited in the posts is now my wife; we have long since moved out of Union Square to the Upper West Side, where we will be spending a quiet 9/11/11 at home.

In 2001 I also published my friend Adam Oestreich's first-hand account of the attacks, which remains a compelling read. At this time of year it is always the most popular page on this website. (Adam, it can be noted, now works in midtown.)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:33 PM |

August 8, 2011

I did, however, throw out my collection of spare jewel boxes

I still have roughly 500 CDs in my house. The audio kind, that is; 500 hours of music, most of it somehow not yet ripped into MP3 format, everything from the Beatles to an classical improvisation trio from Lancaster, Pa., much of it slowly being forgotten as I move inexorably away from physical music ownership.

Tonight I rekindled my project to get them digitized once and for all. A stack of CDs has migrated from my wall unit to my desk, slowly but surely making its way onto my hard drive. And I'm boggling my mind with the discs I've somehow never gotten onto my iPod.

How is it that I have Radiohead's "The Bends," and every album from "Kid A" through "In Rainbows," in iTunes, but I never pulled in "OK Computer?" Why do I have Huevos Rancheros' "Dig In!" on there and not Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend," which I must have played hundreds of times in my car's CD player in the 1990s? Actually, I only have one of my six Matthew Sweet albums on my iPod. Do I really look back that little?

Apparently so. And perhaps this is why the end of WRXP, New York's only modern rock station, resonated so heavily with me. With the exception of two pop and a few hip-hop stations, almost every spot on the commercial radio dial in New York is stuck in the past. Sure, the past has moved up from the 1960s to the 1980s; but if I want to hear a contemporary rock song--or jazz, or metal, or country for that matter--I'm going to have to turn off the radio. I want modern, interesting, progressive music on the radio: NPR for songs. Instead, I get "Eye of the Tiger."

So I undertake this CD-to-MP3 migration in a bit of a catch-22. I can't move these discs out of my apartment until they're (mostly) available on my computer, yet the vast majority of the effort is going to wind up worthless, as I go years without listening to the music I'm diligently migrating; but without doing this, I could never let go of my CDs, even as they slowly collect dust until I randomly grab one to bring into the car. (I never did replace my CD player.) Maybe I should get a Spotify Premium subscription and just move on.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 1:01 AM |

July 19, 2011

If you need inspiration

The amazing thing is: We all can do this. Now, normal people like you and me can't write as well as Paul Ford. It's alright, he can't sing as well as you, so we'll call it even. But! What we can do, all of us, is put it out there. Write what we know, and what we live, and what we love, and put it under our own names where nobody owns it but us, unless we say otherwise. I've made a whole list of people who've done just that, at the bottom of this page, if you need inspiration.
Anil summarizes what makes blogs great, and why this page has endured for nearly 13 years, more or less uninterrupted. Some of my archives hold up better than others, but there they are, chronicling my self-published life as it courses through the digital era. (I agree with Anil on this, too: Paul Ford's writing is really something else.)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:46 AM |

July 12, 2011

Rekindling

And whatever you do, they say, don't stop writing.

Shit.

Interesting, in some phantasmal way, that I posted the above text just about ten years ago. Maybe I was due for a lull.

Anyway, between the very busy day job at Canopy and the very busy life job of being a new dad to a second son, something had to give for a spell, and that something turned out to be the online presence. All of them, actually--my tweeting fell off a cliff and the boys' photoblogs haven't been updated since May. (The one thing that did keep pace was @nathan_says, which you should totally be reading if you find little kids amusing.)

I am overdue to rekindle this blog, starting with a migration to WordPress later this summer. I'll be back in the groove soon. Watch this space. (Patiently, though.)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:25 PM |

April 30, 2011

What I've been up to

Meet Eli.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:56 PM |

January 17, 2011

David Wertheimers I don't know

I am not any of these people, but over the years I have been mistaken for the following:

Group manager of display pricing at Microsoft. Twice received job leads from recruiters. I get a lot of personal email meant for him, too.

CEO of the ET Center at USC. This David Wertheimer and I have swapped some emails over the years, and for awhile our companies were in the same New York office building. (He's also the smartest of this list, as he grabbed wertheimer.com.)

Law partner at Hogan Lovell. My favorite: I grew up in the same town as this David, 9 or 10 years his junior, and have been hearing about him my entire life. From 2003-2007 we lived 11 blocks apart. We've gotten each other's mail and once the Harrison restaurant booked his Thanksgiving table under my name. Someday we'll have coffee, but we haven't yet.

Senior program officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This mistake hasn't been made, but I wanted to call out my namesake. Cool career.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 2:04 PM |

October 15, 2010

[shifts awkwardly in seat]

The older I get, the less I relate to my blog archives.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 5:59 PM | | Comments (1)

September 29, 2010

Answering opportunity's knock

In my three years at Alexander Interactive, we've taken a boutique ecommerce firm with a diverse client roster and grown it into a user experience powerhouse with an incredible lineup of engagements. The company that helped grow great sites like Action Envelope became rich with brand names: Schwinn. Citi. Kaplan. Even the good folks at Internet Retailer, the paper of record for the ecommerce industry, chose Ai to redesign their website.

This has led to substantial changes within the agency, starting with my own hire to build a strategy discipline, and progressing through evolutions that include engagement management and a lot of short-term travel. On that list was a bit of a disappointment: smaller inquiries became a lot less tenable. It became clear to us that the mom-and-pop or luxury-brand assignment that was perfect for Ai in 2007 was becoming obsolete in the Ai of 2010, despite our long-held belief that those projects are just as fun and fascinating, just as successful and profitable.

So, rather than forgoing those projects, or shoehorning them into the Ai engagement model, we decided to spin them out. We discussed it internally for months, kicked off informally in the spring, and on July 1 I took the keys to a then-unnamed second business unit at Ai. Over the summer we worked on our positioning and materials, and the news officially hit the digital community this week: Canopy is open for business.

I'm thrilled to be heading up Canopy and establishing a sister company for one of the industry's great ecommerce shops. We know the Ai approach--hands on, user-focused, client-partnership--works just as well for a small retailer as it does for a large one. Our goal is to bring our expertise to multiple market segments.

I am still wearing my Director of Strategy hat for Ai part-time, which makes for interesting days, as I sometimes segue from an on-site visit with a Fortune 50 retailer to a phone call with the owner of a small fashion label. But the opportunity to take that enterprise-level knowledge and experience and apply those concepts directly to small- and midsize businesses is rare. Not many Canopy competitors can claim the same breadth of knowledge. That's what led Ai to start this agency, and what excites me most about building it. The companies I speak with can't wait to learn and grow. And that's why we're here.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:32 AM | | Comments (1)

August 25, 2010

Take off, eh

What I learned today: Geddy Lee of Rush guested on Bob and Doug McKenzie's cult classic comedy routine, "Take Off, Eh," because Lee and Rick Moranis went to elementary school together.

Me, I used to pick on Chelsea Handler on the walk home from school, but I don't think I'm being asked on her show anytime soon.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:18 PM |

July 7, 2010

Tweeting from Sydney

Just because I don't have an active mobile phone Down Under doesn't mean I haven't been thinking in 160-character snippets all week. Herewith, my observations en masse from my strolls around Sydney.

--

I thought I was doing well with my jetlag. Then I fell asleep in bright sun on the Sydney harbor ferry

Any lingering doubts locals had re my port of call were likely abolished by my walking around eating an egg sandwich at 3:30 in the afternoon

Monorail!

Trying to figure out the price index of this town. Some purchases are shockingly expensive

As far as I can tell, 100% of the people in Sydney are nice.

All this David Foster Wallace is making me want to write. Which is a great thing, so long as I don't compare myself to him

Taronga Zoo: all that. Australian animals are a trip

Remember the good old days when nobody locked a wifi signal?

Loved dinner at Fratelli Paradiso. Great food, welcoming service, nice Monday night vibe. The kind of place where you talk to neighboring diners and swap restaurant suggestions (New York for him, Sydney for me) with your waiter. Left with a romantic bounce in my step.

Every time I hear it I become more convinced that the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" is the perfect rock 'n roll song.

Belgian hot chocolate at the Chocolate Room, notable mostly because the nincompoop concierge at the Four Points told me to go to a Starbucks

Got the hang of the time change. Say good morning to my family, go to sleep. Wake up in the morning, tuck them into bed. Easy!

Max, the TV music station in Australia, plays a remarkable amount of Bon Jovi.

Calling the cafe at 485 Crown St "4ate5" is a stroke of genius obviousness

People said "good news, the Aus dollar is down vs. the U.S." What they didn't mention is that Australian CPG prices are often double what I'm used to paying. $3 for a 20 oz. Coke is normal here

Fraser Suites is a grand place to stay. Heart of CBD, big one-bedroom layout, four closets, full kitchen. There's even a washer-dryer (which I'm not using... but my wife would)

Confirmed: everyone in Sydney is nice.

Online Retailer conference has been great. Meeting lots of good folks. Even pulled off a tweetup

Anyone know where I can buy some Tim Tams?

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:36 PM | | Comments (1)

July 5, 2010

Travelblog: Sydney

G'day! No one much says that, of course, but seeing as I'm in Sydney, it's the appropriate way to start my post about Australia's biggest city, where I arrived Sunday morning (local time) in advance of the Online Retailer conference, where I'll be speaking later this week.

Sydney is, from what I've seen, a bit of a hidden city. One has to be willing to venture out of the central and tourist districts, to meander down quiet streets, go to secondary neighborhoods, and put effort into one's visit in order to make something of it. For those who don't try, plenty of shops exist that will charge $4 for a bottle of water. Look deeper, though, and a world of welcoming delights awaits.

I have had my best meals in out-of-the-way locations: at a little cafe off the main street of Mosman, an upper-middle-class enclave in North Sydney, near but not convenient to the Taronga Zoo; at Fratelli Paradiso, a highly regarded Italian restaurant that is nevertheless way at the end of Potts Point, far from transit and hubbub; at a little chocolate joint on the cusp of Chinatown, so hidden in plain sight that my concierge didn't know about it. (More on that in a minute.)

Point being, you don't come to Sydney and ride the stupid Monorail from Darling Harbor into the center of town. You come here to poke around. To be on the water. To insist on a level of curiosity one step beyond the simplicity that gracious Sydney residents will otherwise afford you, thinking you really don't want to putz around in Potts Point, so why even mention it?

This philosophy works almost anywhere, from New York (where you can have pasta at the Olive Garden... or Babbo) to Paris--certainly Paris--but unlike those cities, Sydney doesn't have a lot of touristy crap going for it. The world's classic cities have to-see lists a week long. Sydney, on the other hand, has a fabulous harbor and a show-stopping opera house, and not much else from a casual sightseeing standpoint. Come to Sydney, and people expect you to promptly leave Sydney, to take day trips to the mountains or the beaches or the outback.

To run out of town is to deny Sydney its charms, though. So far, every single person I've met has been friendly, welcoming and gracious. Locals are quite proud of their city, its beautiful clean water, its views, its Thai food. So when you get here, go for it! Ask locals where to eat, where to walk around, what to see. When they tell you to just plop down at one of the cafes in front of Circular Quay, tell them you know you can do better, and see what comes up. Deep in those recommendations will be the 160-year-old pub with a to-die-for rooftop that you should be visiting.

End prologue. Here's what I've been up to.

I have spent the past two nights at the Four Points Sheraton Darling Harbour, which is about as good as my Starwood points and $45 per night gives me the right to expect. (One would think I'd learned my lesson, but I guess not.) The rooms are modern, clean and comfortable enough, if dinged by the expensive and spotty and non-wifi in-room Internet access. Most regrettable are the concierges, who sent me to the aforementioned cafes on Circular Quay and, when I balked, had the gall to present as an alternative a restaurant that proudly advertises "no meal over $10"; and who, the next night, when asked where to get some dessert and coffee, could only think of a Starbucks. In Sydney, where Starbucks gave up in 2008. After two days, I could be a better local guide than these guys.

Also, while I thought Darling Harbour would be a prime location, it's really not much of anything, although it's walking distance from Chinatown, which led me to a great noodle joint my first night here, where the two local women at the table next to me took control of my menu and ordered me a delightful array of dumplings and chow fun that was precisely twice as much food as I could have eaten.

Speaking of food. Fratelli Paradiso for Italian. Avenue Road Cafe for breakfast or lunch or coffee in Mosman. The Chocolate Room for, well, y'know. All delightful, and I have five more days of eating to do.

As for sightseeing, the harbor is truly gorgeous on a sunny day, and all of one's efforts should go into finding places to stare at it from various vantage points. I plan on crossing the main bridge at some point (although I don't see the benefit of the $350 stair climb to the top of the beams). The Taronga Zoo is a treat, particularly the walk-in section that allows poorly thought-out attempts to pet leery kangaroos. My experiences with the central district are mostly my wandering around, but the Rocks and the area surrounding the opera house are great places to do just that.

From what I can tell, my conference schedule will allow me two full days of sightseeing before I head back to New York. I'm very much looking forward to them.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:13 AM |

June 23, 2010

What I learned today, June 23

This is not news to me, but it may be to you: New Jersey has around 600 diners, the most in the country.

News to me is that Wikipedia has an awesome page on diners. Worth reading if you've ever ordered a taylor ham-egg-and-cheese sandwich after midnight (or if you know someone who has).

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:01 PM |

June 17, 2010

On twentieth-century media

The Awl: The Golden Age Of Hipper-Than-Thou CD Fetishization Begins Now.

See, I've still got my old stereo, and I've been hoarding all the CDs I bought or burned between the ages of 13 and 24. Sure, they take up a lot of space. Was a bitch to move them out of the old apartment, too, but it's worth it. This stuff is gold. ... We remember Tower Records, man. We were there.
My son (age two) broke my CD player last month. My gorgeous, wonderful, feature-rich, six-disc Pioneer CD changer, which lasted longer in regular use than any other piece of electronics I've ever owned, which I loved so much that I bought a matching car CD changer so I could swap the cartridges, which was such a near-perfect device that I actually had the laser realigned in 1996 rather than buy a new one. The day it broke was almost exactly the 20th anniversary of its purchase.

Twenty years is a long time for a piece of stereo equipment, so I'm not all that saddened that it broke. Its passing has thrown me into something of an existential crisis, though.

Do I buy another one?

I mean, I'm an iPod guy through and through. Had one since they first came out. I carry a 160GB iPod Classic in addition to my iPhone. I rarely pop in CDs to listen to casually, and despite my lifelong love affair with record stores, I've only physically bought music two or three times in the past couple of years, and they were point-of-sale impulse buys.

On the other hand, I have a lot of discs. More than a thousand. Most of which I've never properly digitized, because of the daunting task of burning a thousand CDs. (I perversely burn the albums I least care about, in order to get them out of my apartment, which means my iTunes collection contains a lot of mediocre music and not enough of my old favorites.) When we moved into our current apartment, I had two wall units custom-built for our living room, one of which just houses CDs.

I have been thinking for awhile about digitizing the whole thing and just moving on. But what to do with all that music? I'm something of a collector and I don't like the idea of throwing away the tangible jewel boxes and liner notes, especially considering how much money, and time, I invested in acquiring them.

But the reality of progress cannot be ignored. I saved 800 cassette tapes and 200 vinyl records in my parents' house when I moved out in the '90s, and to date, I've listened to roughly 30 of those cassettes and none of the records. The hoarder in me shouts, "But those thirty! And how much is irreplaceable? And what about the next time you need music and forget your iPod? And the bootlegs, man! And imagine if you had to reassemble your metal collection from scratch...!"

Thing is, I have reassembled a lot of my music collection. No matter how much I deny it, I don't look back much: all those classic rock albums I have on cassette? I don't even leave those artists on the radio when the local rock radio station plays their songs. We move on.

In an ideal world, I'd find myself at home with two weeks to kill and no one else in the house, and I'd spend a few days pulling all my music--cassettes and all--into a lossless audio format on a two-terabyte hard drive with dual backups. I don't know if or when that will ever happen, but in the meantime, I may as well admit to progress.

So we're not replacing the CD player in the component stereo. We will, instead, pop in an iPod cable, so until we get a music server set up we can play tunes without dealing with the laptop. And my son--who, before breaking it, learned how to turn on the stereo and play CDs in the old Pioneer--will be able to bring his iPod into the living room and play his kids' tunes on his own volition, once he learns to read, that is. And at some point I'll even purge the living room of physical CDs.

It's not that the future has arrived. Heck, the future has been here for years. It just took a toddler's accident for me to formally let go of the past.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:02 PM |

April 19, 2010

Gone fishin'

I'll be in the Caribbean this week doing my best to stay off the grid. No out-of-office email autoresponders and voice mails, just this blog post and a much-anticipated week of nothingness. Back in a week.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:02 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

March 7, 2010

"Me-gregation"

After more than a month of neglect--and really, what's a month or two after three years--I took advantage of Oscar night to work on my home page while the Mrs. watched the Oscars. So my home page is finally new. Whew.

In a fit of abject creativity, my new home page is, well, basically a bunch of links. But that's sort of the point. In an age where one's social profile extends to myriad web sites with poorly interlinked commonalities, I like the idea of having a pivot. So no more netwert.com branding, as I did for more than a decade; instead, a little more me branding, or at least, me-gregation, or whatever the word would be. In due time I'll get the utility of the interior pages of the site to more or less match, and as I play with the site design, I'll give the new home page some much-needed design flair, too.

I also went about perusing my website archives, and I must say, long before it became a paragon of boredom I had some pretty sweet home page ideas. All hail flatbed scanners and randomizer scripts!

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:41 PM |

March 2, 2010

My recent travel, health, work and curiosity history, as told in iChat status messages

status-messages.png

Posted by David Wertheimer at 2:30 PM |

February 4, 2010

Super

I am once again pleased as punch to report that my talented, hard-working wife has produced a commercial running in the Super Bowl, this time for Snickers.

The spot runs early in the game on Sunday, and there's a teaser on Facebook for the curious and impatient.

I will go on the record as saying I think the full spot is great: perfect for the Super Bowl. And I think I'm more proud and impressed than she is.

Update: Snickers topped the Ad Meter as best commercial of Super Bowl XLIV. Kickin'.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:21 AM |

January 27, 2010

On punditry

The longer it sits there, the less I like the post below this one. I'm leaving it there for posterity (and the one on the work blog, too). But I suspect the near future will prove me all wrong—in the priority of my observations, my knee-jerk reactions, my skepticism. I sit here and wonder why I reacted like I did; after all, I was a pleased early adopter of the iPhone and the iPod, limitations and all. If I lived in the suburbs, and I had a room I called an office with an iMac on my desk, I'd probably crave an iPad, a situational divide made all the more striking by the Mac laptops I have at home and work (and, as noted, the iPhone already in my pocket).

So Sippey sounds like he's right. Gruber is probably right. Pogue is almost certainly right, and he's full of "don't listen to me yet" hedges. Which makes me, er, wrong. Or at least noticeably off the mark.

I look forward to playing with an iPad in the real world this spring, where I can make some real, and properly reasoned, conclusions.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:06 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

January 5, 2010

What social media really means

I keep coming back to Brad Graham's passing—three times since I first found out yesterday—and I keep getting a pit in my chest thinking about it.

I know Brad for one lone, random reason: he had a weblog in the 1990s, and so did I. Back then the blogosphere (a term Brad coined, by the way) was small enough that people could track it on a single webpage. Early bloggers were united by spirit: we were exploring a new medium, and we were very comfortably aligned with one another, despite our diverse interests.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how my connections to the old-school crowd are not as strong as they could—should—have been, mostly because I never got around to dining with my crowd at SXSW. I know lots of people from the early days, and they know me, but I see my old friend Anil Dash refer to these same people as his best friends and I realize I missed a moment.

Brad, though? Brad was your friend. Instantly and permanently. Smiles, embraces, forever remembered and fondly recalled. After our first meeting in New York, I became part of his hug-shaped social circle, and would regularly receive invites to meet him for a drink when he found himself in my city. This is how he treated everyone, and why my community is mourning him especially deeply.

Brad embodied the power of social media, long before it had such a name. Consider: brought together by technology and little else (check out the text in that first-meeting link) I became a longtime friend of a man a thousand miles away. His death is giving me recurrent waves of sadness, even though I hadn't seen him in several years. And I'm sharing my emotions with hundreds of people around the country, some of whom knew him well and others who never even met him in person.

Leave it to Brad Graham to remind us how powerful and touching this medium can be. We'll miss you, Brad. I know I already do.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:01 PM |

December 5, 2009

Office neighbors I have known

One of the more random occurrences in adult life is discovering the company one keeps in one's office building. Companies rent space, and the neighbors can be all sorts of interesting.

I haven't had all that many exciting office situations over the years, but a few stand out.

1. Viacom. Specifically, MTV, in the Viacom building when I worked in the Viacom building (also in the music industry). Working for a medium-size company in the headquarters of a huge company was all right, because it meant we could sneak into the huge company's cafeteria and get subsidized cheeseburgers with curly fries and eat on a swanky roof terrace in the middle of Times Square. And I worked at 1515 Broadway during the height of TRL's run, so we could hear screaming crowds daily at 3 p.m. For all the noise, though, the MTV crews were surprisingly unintrusive.

2. XM Radio, which had half a floor in The Economist's headquarters when I worked on Economist.com. Having left Billboard to go to The Economist, I was pleased to find myself down the hall from a radio network, and I even auditioned for a job on their alternative radio station. (The program director called me decent but unpolished.) In 2002, XM was where smart, cool, fringe-of-the-industry types worked, so I got to meet folks like Pat Dinizio from time to time. And, of course, Gene Simmons.

3. Butterfly Salon. My current job is on the same floor as a beauty parlor, which means my colleagues and I are subject to any of the following on a given afternoon: lots of strangers on our floor. Embarrassingly dirty bathrooms, often covered in fresh cut hair. Pretty, standoffish young stylists. Chemical smells from permanent wave treatments. Then again, we have a standing discount at the salon, and they periodically ask us for models who get free haircuts and highlights, so it's not all bad. Our CCO has a standing offer from me that for the right price I'll volunteer and dye my hair black, but he hasn't pulled the trigger yet.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:37 AM |

An Incomplete List of Rock Stars I've Met in Unexpected Places

(And by unexpected, I mean no listing stuff like the time I had drinks with The Pursuit of Happiness at the bar at Mercury Lounge after their gig. That's too easy.)

1. Gene Simmons, in the XM Radio studios in New York. Unexpected not for the location but for how I wound up hanging out with him. I think he had come in to do some promos. I worked down the hall so at the radio tech's suggestion I stopped by for no particular reason. This was late-period dickwad Gene Simmons, not mid-period cool-as-fuck I-wish-I-were-in-Kiss Gene Simmons, so he was grouchy and bewigged and all sorts of imagination deflating, but still, Gene Simmons.

2. Ira Kaplan, selling his own band's T-shirts before one of the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah gigs at Maxwell's in Hoboken. I was all "hey, whoa, you're Ira! from the band!" and he was all "well, yeah, I am." We hung out for a minute or two, mostly because he was selling me a T-shirt.

3. My Sister's Machine, at the Cheesequake rest stop on the Garden State Parkway at 3 in the morning after their gig opening for King's X at Tradewinds down the Jersey shore, which I had just seen. They never made it, but I still recall the juxtaposition of a band in full metal mode, off stage, buying lukewarm fast food. And milk, if memory serves. We were all "hey, we just saw you! nice gig!" and they were all "yeah, um, we're not here ok?"

4. Taj Mahal, at a summer camp, hanging out with a bunch of us CITs after he performed for the camp as a favor to the owner, who was a friend of his. This meeting forever changed how I listened to music and was reprised 18 years later, but those are stories for another day.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:21 AM |

December 4, 2009

An Incomplete List Of Famous People I've Stood Next To In Public Restrooms

1. Hugh Grant. Who, by the way, did not wash his hands.

2. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Technically, outside the restroom, waiting our turn. As awkward as one would imagine.

(thanks, Zan)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 3:33 PM |

December 1, 2009

Latest column, and a history

My latest column was published last night: Five Steps to Start Your M-commerce Strategy on Multichannel Merchant.

Anna points out that there's no one place on my site that logs all my published moments. So I made one. The list is both nice and long, and way too short. Always keep writing!

I'll have to find a home for this information, but for now, a quick rundown of my solicited external work, in reverse chronological order:

COLUMNS AND FEATURES

Multichannel Merchant, 2009
Five Steps to Start Your M-commerce Strategy

iMedia Connection, 2008
Tips for making the best impression with your emails
5 ways to avoid common email blunders

Digital Web, 2002-2004
Better Than a Human
Don't Forget to Architect the Home Page
The redesign of Economist.com
Making a Timeless User Experience
99.9% of Proper Grammar Is Obsolete
Beyond the IA Guy
Look Before You Ask
First Time Caller

Billboard, 1996-1999
I published a series of year-end Top 10 lists that appeared on both billboard.com and in Billboard magazine. Sadly, the online ones are gone and the print ones are behind a pay wall (if they're there at all). For some reason my byline is on this article about Sugar Ray, which I may have written, although I don't remember talking to Mark McGrath, but we'll run with it.

BOOKS

I co-authored Usability: the Site Speaks for Itself and was a technical editor of Practical Web Traffic Analysis.

BLOGS

I write regularly here and on aiaio, the Ai blog.

I penned Timely Demise semi-professionally for 15 months until, well, yesterday.

Boing Boing, 2009
Review: Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 in-ear monitors
Review: A week with the Etymotic hf2
Review: three weeks with Audio-Technica's ATH-ANC3 noise-canceling headphones
Review: two tough weeks with the Shure SE310s
Review: JVC's HA-NC250 noise-canceling headphones
Review: Klipsch's Image X5s headphones
Review: Audio Technica ATH-CK7 headphones
Review: a week with the Etymotic ER-4 microPro
Review: Shure's SE530 headphones and faith restored
Review: Sennheiser's IE8 noise-isolating headphones

Dack.com, 2001
In Sweet Harmony
Pop Goes the Fuzz Rock

Musicrag, 2001
I did a couple of posts that are floating around the archives somewhere.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:38 PM |

November 30, 2009

Its own timely demise

I shuttered Timely Demise today, 18 months after conceiving it, 16 months after launching it and three months after I generally lost my taste for publishing melancholy.

By most measures, the site was a success. I gained a ridiculous amount of knowledge about retail trends and the mechanics of restructuring. I received some fun press coverage. I developed a regular readership that, as of this writing, is still tuning in for news.

Google News added me as a source. I got the inestimable Choire Sicha to be my guestblogger. I began receiving anonymous tips, including one from an angry creditor pointing me to his debtor's bankruptcy. And I had one actual news scoop hand-delivered by a company's public relations firm.

I knew all along that this would be a tough subject to cover neatly. After all, I work for and with retailers; how can I be associated with bad news? So I tried to keep the blog objective and matter-of-fact, and that was usually enough. Yes, I know it had a rough name and a difficult topic. But at launch I felt a bit of provocation was appropriate for its moment in time. (See also: It Died, among others.)

Mostly, I found it all fascinating, as did my readers. I am much wiser about retail now than I was a year and a half ago. I suspect we all are.

A few months back, I registered timelyrevive.com with plans on shifting my focus toward expansion and profit statements. But I found that much harder to track from Timely Demise's dedicated angle, which focused on consumer-level impact and not corporate maneuvers. Stories of 90-year-old corner stores closing make for better (and more trackable) journalism than Applebee's #1997 opening in the local mall. I began running short on news.

So, three hundred and fourteen posts, five hundred fifty thousand page views, and eighty-nine dollars in ad revenue later, I'm hanging up my tough-news journalist's hat. We'll see if I can brew up something new--and more upbeat--for 2010.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:53 AM | | Comments (1)

October 20, 2009

Signs of old age

I flipped back to a page of my website from 2000 just now, and after a little struggling, I zoomed the text size.

Twice.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:28 PM |

September 11, 2009

Eight years on

I thought of my go bag yesterday as the city prepared for its annual 9/11 rememberance. Did you have a go bag?

We still do, packed with old shoes and gym shorts and now-sketchy bottles of water and a dog bone or two. In a sign of evolution, there are not yet baby supplies in the bag. Let's hope we never feel compelled to update it.

I commemorate this day, as always, with links back to the related posts on Ideapad:

My blog posts about the event, September 11-23, 2001

Adam Oestreich's first-person account, September 12, 2001

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:33 AM |

September 2, 2009

Conversations with my 15-month-old

Nathan is standing by a coffee table in a Martha's Vineyard rental house playing with a stack of red and black coasters. Dad thinks this is a good time to work on his son's language skills, and picks up a coaster of each color.

"Nathan, this is a red coaster. Can you say red?"

"Raaah."

"Very good! And this is a black coaster. Can you say black?"

[blank stare]

"Okay, so maybe we won't say black."

"Baby!"

"Want to try again? This is the red one. Can you say red?"

"Raaah."

"Right! And this is the black one. Can you say black?"

"Elmo!"

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:56 PM |

August 25, 2009

Line dieting

I've been watching with amusement the recent recent fuss about line diets hitting the blog world, for I've been doing this for a number of years, and I had no idea it was actually called something.

dietchart.png

Back in 2005 I started tracking my daily weight in an Excel spreadsheet. The system was simple: weigh myself, go into work, jot it down. I did it at work because I kept a second tab in the spreadsheet and tracked my caloric and fat intake each day. I set consumption goals, and after lunch I'd know how much room I had left for dinner and dessert.

I've never blogged about it because, frankly, I found it to be a rather poor diet tool. It was a terrific learning exercise--I'm far more cognizant now about just how fattening food is.

But the spreadsheet, while a fun game, was not much of a motivator. Yes, I wanted to make a pretty declining trendline, and to punch the lower limits of the chart. But I didn't find that any more satisfying than simply stepping on the scale in the morning and seeing how I did. Data points, to me, were decidedly unsexy.

I kept returning to the spreadsheet on and off into 2008, mostly for the daily food lists, which were better at keeping me honest (and just a label-reading version of Weight Watchers' point system). Then I gave up, got really fat, and have lost weight in the past year simply by convincing myself to snack less. Spreadsheets are great, but they don't provide willpower. And on a successful diet, a spreadsheet is redundant--the evidence is in the mirror.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:59 AM |

July 13, 2009

On reviewing headphones

Review: A week with the Etymotic hf2, by yours truly, on Boing Boing Gadgets.

Last week I was on line at Duane Reade and watched the man in front of me ask for a pair of headphones. He selected a Maxell model from behind the register; it was $14.99, I think, maybe a bit more. He contemplated them for a moment.

"Those are very good," said the cashier, blithely.

"Okay," said the customer, who paid and walked out.

Suffice to say I am not that guy.

I have always had, and appreciated, top-flight portable audio, from my fancy Sony Walkmans in the 1980s to several pairs of expensive noise-canceling headphones in recent years. And with my tinnitus forcing me to listen to in-ear music at low volumes, having good noise isolation has been a must.

At the tail end of bicycle commuting last summer, I ran over my headphones--my $150, pristine-sounding, noise-isolating, wondrous Shure E3c headphones--with my front tire. Oops. I used them anyway, broken and sad, for several months.

It took me that long to figure out which headphones to buy, and the ones I finally got were good but not great. Useful reviews of noise-canceling and noise-isolating headphones are hard to come by. I don't need wonky audio spectrum surveys, or dissections of the nuances of Django Renhardt's solos: what I need is, do they sound good? and how well do they shut out the outside world?

So I decided to do what any good blogger should: do it myself. I pitched Joel Johnson, formerly of Boing Boing Gadgets, and he gave me the go-ahead. Two months of emails later, I have $2880 worth of headphones in my dining room, a ridiculous categorical spreadsheet, and a fun, interesting commute to work. Goofy expressions like "in hog heaven" come to mind.

The first review went live today, with 10 more to run through the summer. My thanks go out to Joel and to Rob Beschizza, my new editor, who inherited this project and has been most gracious and helpful. Look for more posts on BBG and some additional commentary in this space as the project continues.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:44 PM | | Comments (1)

July 2, 2009

Recently elsewhere

Gee, I haven't done this in a while.

I'm onto something interesting following Alice, the new ecommerce website that enables CPG companies to sell quasi-direct to consumer. On aiaio, I dissect whether the alice.com business model is really new, and next week I'll be critiquing the site's shopping experience.

On Timely Demise: Crabtree & Evelyn's bankruptcy and a handful of old and local stores this week. And, with a sigh, Joe Jr.'s Restaurant in the Village.

Select recent oh-so-important tweets:

  • + They may *seem* just like other bread products, but pretzel rods are decidedly not breakfast food.
  • + Cyclists: can I dangle a bag of Chinese food delivery off my rear-tire rack and bike home without losing my dinner?
  • +I have an undying and boundless love for mom-and-pop hardware stores.
  • +I STILL LOVE MY PAPER TACO TRUCK it's on top of my cubicle ready to serve paper tacos to paper college students
  • + Reviewing headphones. Having a blast.
  • + "Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years, although he hinted that he could turn it into 350 for you with almost no risk." http://cli.gs/j20tm
And, of course, Nathan got a Cozy Coupe.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:54 PM |

July 1, 2009

Exploring my career options


Exploring my career options, originally uploaded by netwert.

Tonight I biked home with Chinese delivery. (It ultimately fit in my bike bag, not on the handlebars like the pros do it.) Photo by the inimitable Anna Perez.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:44 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

June 14, 2009

Pronounced "Baw-st'n"

As mentioned on the business end of things, I'm in Boston at the Internet Retailer Conference & Expo, culminating in my presenting at the conference Wednesday afternoon. It's great to be back in town--with the exception of a six-hour business meeting in January, I haven't spent any time in Beantown in nearly a decade. We took advantage tonight, eating at a local restaurant in the North End, and I have plans to see at least one old friend before I leave town.

Massachusetts always strikes a great note with me. The history, the architecture, the weather: everything is the way I like it. A lifetime of summer visits to Cape Ann (and, more recently, Martha's Vineyard) has certainly influenced me. And even though I'm a Yankee fan in the Red Sox's backyard, it just feels good to be here.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:25 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

June 13, 2009

In case you're looking for me on Facebook and you think to yourself, "Hey, maybe he's using one of those newfangled handles," or maybe you didn't think to just type in my name

I am at http://www.facebook.com/davidwertheimer now. Wow.

(George got to Werty ahead of me. We seem to share the space--I have it on Twitter and del.icio.us and Metafilter, he has it on Flickr and Digg. Neither of us know who the YouTube Werty is, though.)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 3:12 AM |

February 17, 2009

On reconnecting

I've been on a reconnecting kick lately, and I've been diligently finding and reaching out to old colleagues on Facebook and LinkedIn (situationally dictated, of course).

It's an interesting time to do so: I'm not looking for a job, although several of the people in my network are. Yet I wonder what my interest in connecting--now--says to my former coworkers and contacts.

Typically, building out one's social network happens in two phases: in a big blur when first joining a network, and again a few months later as momentum builds. I've been on Facebook a long while now, though, and my LinkedIn profile dates all the way to 2003.

Why, then, am I reaching out now? Curiosity and comprehensiveness, mostly. That's how I see it. But how do, say, my old Economist cubicle-mates read it? Am I hoping to hit them up for job leads? Ecommerce outsourcing opportunities? What might I want?

The truth is liberating enough, so I'm tick-ticking through my old names, building out my contacts as best I can. I've even updated my LinkedIn status line to indicate that I'm actually sourcing talent, not joining its pool. That plus a few lunches should go a long way. Besides, I'm an easy sell on lunch. Busy next week?

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:28 PM |

February 3, 2009

My week

Her: "How are you feeling? My nausea is all gone now."

Me: "Yeah, mine too. My left hand hurts, is that related?"

"My right arm hurts. And my elbow."

"My elbow hurts too. Maybe it's part of the virus!"

"Maybe it's the arm I used at the toilet."

"Ooh, which way do you lean to vomit? I lean to the left. That's my sore arm."

[Her: sits up in bed, assumes position] "No, I just lean forward."

"But which side is your stabilizer?"

"My right."

"There we go!"

My left hand and forearm really do hurt. Call it a UVI.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:13 PM |

January 28, 2009

But Cape May is kind of pretty! Honest!

I'm leading a project at work that has in it, among other things, teenagers talking about proms. (It launches next week--stay tuned is now live, take a look.) One of them wrote up a little ditty on Seaside Heights, where, nearly two decades ago, I too spent my after-prom.

Apparently Seaside is still the dirty, low-budget youth destination it always was, fully worthy of the "Sleaze-side" nickname it had in the 1980s, as are its neighboring towns. Some things never change.

Which led to this exchange with my colleague Jim:

wertheimerdavid: the Seaside post completely mirrors my prom weekend experience
jim: hehe
jim: times don't change
wertheimerdavid: nor does Seaside
jim: i was down there once
jim: point pleasant?
wertheimerdavid: yes that's the nicer town next door
jim: that was nicer?

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:28 PM |

January 19, 2009

The fuckup

And so it came to pass that I found myself in Miami Beach, with the rest of my company's senior staff, a full day ahead of schedule.

You see, we're at Internet Retailer's Web Design '09 conference. IR had asked us to give web design consultations--we are among two dozen organizations selected and vetted by the conference as worthwhile partners.

The way the conference agenda is laid out is as follows:

Monday--Design and Usability Consultations
Tuesday--Main Conference - General Sessions
Wednesday--Main Conference - General Sessions
Thursday--Post-Conference Workshop: Case Studies and Critiques

And as part of the line items on Tuesday and Wednesday, the agenda says the following:

9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Web Consultations (concurrently)

What I assumed, and what I failed to clarify, and what the conference never elucidated, and what was in the consultation appointment spreadsheet but glossed over by me repeatedly, was the fact that Alexander Interactive is part of the (concurrently) and not the Monday. Which turned out to be quite a discovery at 9:00 this morning, when we were rendered temporarily useless.

So here I am at the swanky new Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, thoroughly annoyed and self-critical, while my colleagues are off visiting grandparents, fighting colds and otherwise missing in (in)action, all of us frustrated--pretty much at me--while I spin and hope the perfect Miami weather can make up for a lost day.

I have this incredible urge to say, "It could be worse. It could be raining," but something tells me I'd better not.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:52 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

January 9, 2009

The year in cities 2008

Fourth annual! Here's where I've stayed the past 12 months. As expected, it's a very short list, thanks to the little guy, although we did manage to get out of the country (sort of). This list would be a lot longer if it included day trips. Cities with multiple visits are denoted with an asterisk as usual.

New York, NY * (home base)
Miami, FL
Livingston, NJ *
New City, NY *
St. John, USVI
St. Thomas, USVI
San Francisco, CA
Beach Haven, NJ
Palm Beach Gardens, FL

The coming year is shaping up to be more robust for travel, what with two business conferences already committed and a probable return to the annual Massachusetts trip. Nathan proved himself an excellent airline traveler this week, so he'll be learning to pack his bags sooner than later.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:06 AM |

January 7, 2009

Déjà vu

Reuters: Blockbuster CEO open to partnerships with telecoms. "As we move toward video-on-demand and pay-per-view, Blockbuster is well positioned not only to compete on our own, but also to partner with others," said CEO Jim Keyes.

Not mentioned in this news bulletin is that Blockbuster was a smart but failed early innovator in this space. Your host pilot tested a Blockbuster-Enron VOD partnership back in 2001, when high-speed connections and video compression were not ready for mass consumption. Perhaps this time around Blockbuster will fare better.

I will also note here that due to Time Warner Cable's less-than-robust bandwidth in my area, and its less-than-robust widescreen VOD offerings, I still go to Blockbuster and rent DVDs when I want to see a movie at home.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:29 AM |

November 25, 2008

Timely Demise: now open for business

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new blog, Timely Demise. It's a side project of mine that I've been exploring for some time now, and I'm excited to share it with a broader audience.

Timely Demise is focused solely on how the economic crisis is changing the retail environment. What retailers are managing to expand? Who's consolidating or closing outlets? Eliminating brands? Liquidating assets? Anything with Main Street consumer-level impact will be covered by the blog.

This comes completely out of my own worldview. As a consumer, I take a broader, market-level perspective to my own shopping. I see Banana Republic pants as a product of the upscale marque of the Gap Inc. company; I look at the new Dunkin' Donuts on 94th and Amsterdam and consider the implications it has for the independent coffee shop on the corner. Linens 'n Things goes bankrupt and I wonder what they'll do to clear out inventory. It's how my mind works, and it's having a field day processing the current economy. So I thought I'd create a place for me to track such things.

I should expound here on my disclaimer, which is that I am an employee of an agency that works with retailers not unlike some of the companies covered in Timely Demise, and that my opinions are not at all of the expectation or hope of negative news. Quite the contrary--as an Internet strategist, I hope to be part of the short- and long-term solution for clients as they navigate a unique and difficult market. And I certainly hope that anything I cover regarding my employer's clients will be objective--and only good news.

Please visit, bookmark, add to your feeds, etc.:
Timely Demise
Timely Demise RSS Feed
Timely Demise Atom Feed

Posted by David Wertheimer at 1:05 PM |

November 4, 2008

Ten years

The Ideapad quietly celebrated its tenth anniversary Saturday. It debuted on November 1, 1998, a journal of pithy notes and observances buried within an early version of the personal website, shortly after I purchased my own vanity domain.

Over the years, this page has been chronicle and witness to an eventful stage of my life. I've used this space to write about looking for love, falling in love, getting a dog, getting married, having a child. I've journaled my travels across three continents--indeed, this page is older than my passport. I've gotten incredible new jobs, lost jobs, tried my hand at jobs, written about others finding jobs. The common thread for all of it has been the blog.

Thanks in part to the Ideapad, I've been published elsewhere, on websites and in books and, not least, in Metropolitan Diary in the New York Times. I've taught classes, sat on panels, and spoken at industry events from Manhattan to London. I've landed jobs with the help of this blog and been reprimanded by employers (twice) for it.

The page has seen its share of failures. I once posted about a waning interest in writing and promptly lost half my audience. I tried and failed in 2003 to heed some smart advice to do blog consulting; a year later, David Jacobs's Apperceptive hit a home run with it. I never monetized my site or springboarded into full-time blogging, which bothers me more than a little, since I suspect I could have done quite nicely at it, and perhaps still could, if I were able to post four times a day instead of four times a week. All misses.

And yet. With this site I've done more than I ever expected. I've met new people, made friends, entertained a multitude of readers (hi, Mom) and satisfied my creativity a thousand times over. I've had people call me famous, call me crazy, call me Netwert. I participated in history when I used the Ideapad to communicate with the world on 9/11, and the lone post by someone other than me, a hard-hitting recollection of that day, became a historical must-read that still gets thousands of page views monthly.

Somehow, mostly by circumstance, this page has become one of the longest continually published personal sites on the Internet. I share this accomplishment with a fair number of other weblogs that debuted in 1998, the authors of whom became my peers, simply out of kinship; to this day I read their blogs, and now their RSS and Twitter feeds, sharing the past and present with the people who helped create the blog phenomenon.

I have come to realize this site helps define me. The observances and wisecracks and personal notes that live here represent my interests, life and career. I am pleased and proud that, ten years on, the Ideapad is still here, with the same name and URL as when it began. A scan through the archives presents a unique viewpoint on my life, as written for--seen by--a blog. I look forward to whatever it watches me do next.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 1:16 PM |

October 27, 2008

On biking in autumn

First, an update: I have continued my bicycle commuting healthily since I took it up in May. Schedule and weather willing, I've been riding to work twice a week straight into the fall. I'm running out of time, though: once Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend, my route home will be quite dark by 5:15 p.m., which will probalby shelve the bicycle until spring.

Biking in autumn is quite different than jaunts in the heat of summer. For a while, it becomes easier: no heat and harsh sun means less fatigue and sunburn. Jeans are a comfortable (if floppy in the legs) riding outfit. Water bottles go untouched.

Very rapidly, though, the weather turns, and all bets are off. Beautiful days begin at 40-degree temperatures with icy winds, making the riverside route a touch more masochistic than expected. Layering nylon outerwear blocks the breeze but creates sweat. And the shorter days create dark areas and reduced visiblity, making the ride far more treacherous.

Which is not to say I'm enjoying it any less. The views have changed; morning light is more angular, evenings scenic and comforting. The once-crowded greenway has been steadily emptying, providing less to look at but more room to ride. I've watched a new park by Chelsea Piers take shape and witnessed the return of the Intrepid. Fellow bikers are either intense riders in full gear or civilians in warmer clothing--I spied a woman in skirt, hose and overcoat the other day, talking on her phone, astride her hybrid Raleigh.

And, of course, I'm burning roughly 500 calories each day during my commute. Part of the genius of the bicycle commute is that I'm getting a workout during time that would otherwise be spent doing nothing. For someone who hates going to the gym, this is a great efficiency.

But it's the pleasantness, above all, that makes the bike ride worthwhile. Instead of spending time underground, I'm cycling through a beautiful park alongside the Hudson River, watching the sun rise and set, listening to music, moving at my own pace. I'm already looking forward to the springtime.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:05 AM |

September 21, 2008

Last and first

Fan familyMy infatuation with the New York Yankees, and by extension Yankee Stadium, dates to my first game in 1978. I was five. My parents brought me--I believe with friends who had a son near my age--and someone (I like to pretend it was Reggie Jackson) hit a foul ball within a row or two of our seats. This being 1978, the stadium wasn't all that full, and my parents encouraged me to chase the ball. I was too shy to do it. But I was amazed that I could be that close to the action, and I came home with a WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS 1977 pennant that hung on my wall for the next 15 years.

I've been a Yankee fan ever since. And I've been to scores of Yankee games, many during the Yankee dynasty of the late 1990s. I've chanted Roll Call from the bleachers, sung "New York, New York" more times than I can count, and even gotten thrown out of a game once.

In recent years, I hadn't been to Yankee Stadium all that much, maybe one or two games a season, as priorities shifted and life intervened. Still, I remained a Yankee fan in full, soaking up multiple articles daily in the New York Times and following every trade, promotion and signing.

I'm a sentimental guy, so the closing of the stadium saddens me. The intentional destruction of such a historic location is a shame. I've had a heavy heart in recent weeks as my beloved Yankees stumbled toward a third-place finish and a quiet end to Yankee Stadium.

But I was surprised by just how much I wanted to be there. To soak up the atmosphere. To look at the scenery. To see the 4 train in the gap in right field. To feel the weight and pride of the Stadium as I did when I was five, and 25, again as a 35-year-old. So I got tickets to a game, once with my family, then again with a friend. But still I needed more.

And so it was that Saturday found me on the 4 train, my son, Nathan, in a carrier on my shoulders, him in a batting-practice onesie, me in my away jersey. My wife, Amy, packed the diaper bag and wore my cap as we headed to Yankee Stadium for one last game. A day game, the last one, on the final weekend of games, for Nathan to see for himself.

Nate was all of 115 days old as of yesterday, and his memories of the day will be slight, at best. But I can tell him we were there, enjoying a Yankee victory on a glorious September afternoon. How we had great seats in the lower level, just to the third-base side of home plate--"I think the best I've ever sat in," said Amy--for a fast-paced 1-0 game, won on a Robinson Cano single in the bottom of the ninth. How we took lots of photos, and strolled close to home plate, and rode the 4 train like true New York fans. And how my little boy enjoyed it all: happily taking in the sights and sounds the first four innings, making new friends everywhere we walked, gamely braving crowds, sleeping on the subway. He even ate lunch at the game, just like Mom and Dad. It was terrific.

And Amy, bless her heart, indulging me and Nathan both, gamely changing his diaper in a stadium ladies' room, feeding him in the mayhem of the ninth inning, lingering long past the final pitch to take pictures and soak up the moment: a more accommodating, loving wife and mother would be hard to find. I've lost track of the number of times I have thanked her this weekend. Yet the joy in my eyes tells her more than I could say.

The outing has made for an extremely emotional weekend. I hadn't fully grasped just how important my Yankee allegiance is to me, or how much I revered the ballpark. Sharing that with my son, however silly it may be at his age, was truly special.

"Someday," I've been telling people, "Nathan is going to thank me for bringing him to the old Yankee Stadium." But that's only part of the story. I owe him my thanks, for being such a good, fun little kid, for making our trip a success, and for being here for me to share with him.

I became a father on May 28, but on Saturday, I became a dad.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:55 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

September 17, 2008

On mattering

I went a while there where I really didn't matter. Weird to say, but true. I was stuck in a job that demanded my silence, and as a result my personal profile faded. Sure, my work mattered to the company's bottom line, but my craft ceased to be viewable outside my office. A decade of personal brand-building, participating in a vibrant community of my peers, went into partial stasis.

On top of that, I spent the last two years focused on personal things--buying an apartment, having a baby, dealing with a baby--and as a result everything else became secondary. I was too busy to be on the radar, and I slowly fell off it.

The evidence is in the public domain. My website design hasn't changed in four years. I haven't done any public speaking since 2006. My poor dog's photo gallery is atrophied and sad. My wife's online portfolio is 18 months overdue for an update.

The good news is that era has passed. When I came to Alexander Interactive, I was pleasantly tasked with raising the company profile. I've been blogging for Ai on business topics and begun publishing opinion articles for iMedia Connection, and I'll be a panelist alongside our principals at the Internet Retailer Design '09 conference in January. We've got whitepapers and other projects planned to continue the activity.

So I'm amending the raised-profile plan to include my own. Blogging at Ai, which has been a once-or-twice-a-week endeavor, is going to become a daily habit. The Ideapad will continue its run and a half-finished redesign will go live before year's end. I'm going to look for additional publications in which to participate, organizations to join, public speaking engagements to forge, teaching opportunities to claim.

I'm refreshed, invigorated and excited. Let's light this candle.

(Note to self and others: This is the kind of blog post that I often choose not to publish, which means I don't write it at all, which helps no one, most [least] of all me. So I'm throwing it out there. I'm back in the proverbial game and stepping onto the field.)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 5:53 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

August 4, 2008

An open letter to Biscuits and Bath

Dear Biscuits and Bath:

"I didn't make her cry. She chose to cry."

This is what I was told by the manager of the 13th Street Biscuits and Bath when I asked him why my wife had just left your store in tears. She had asked him why Biscuits and Bath called our vet for vaccine information without informing or asking us, then contacted us anxiously three times in a week leading up to our grooming last Saturday. The manager, John, was aggressively unapologetic, and suggested "this isn't the place for you" anymore.

This would be an uneventful customer service story if it weren't endemic to our experience with you. Having found a great dog groomer, we dealt with error after insult for more than three years, figuring a happy, handsome dog outweighed the nuisances. Among them:

  • On at least three occasions, our appointment time was moved without our knowledge. More than once we found out we had a new time less than 24 hours before the appointment.
  • Twice the staff failed to inform us in advance when our groomer's schedule changed, leaving us to arrive at the store for a nonexistent appointment.
  • The groomer regularly got double- and triple-booked by the main office, leading to our dog being trapped for hours on end. Customer service once told me, "You're the only 9 a.m. tomorrow," only for me to be the second 9 a.m. appointment to arrive, moments ahead of a 9:15. Our poor groomer was often harried first thing in the morning.
  • Despite repeated calls to the company, customer service representatives refused to escalate any complaints. Management is completely opaque--when I asked John the store manager for his boss's name, John flatly refused to tell me.
This culminated in Saturday's incident, where Amy, looking for answers, was instead told to take her business elsewhere, and my attempt at resolution was met with the quote at the top of this letter and a threat to call the police. I left your store wondering if other Biscuits and Bath customers have had similar problems, and sure enough, the posters at Yelp and Citysearch tell more of these tales. One saga on Yelp sounds almost exactly like ours.

I'm also wondering if other Biscuits and Bath patrons would frequent the store if they really saw what went on there. How the 13th Street location packs 30 or more large dogs into an 800-square-foot space in the name of exercise. How the smallest dogs sit alone and unstimulated in the front of the store, often lying in their own urine. How a dog died last year while supposedly under active monitoring. In a way, I'm glad we were asked not to return--I will miss our groomer, but I have momentum to take my business to a more reputable establishment.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. No doubt if you were to reply, you'd cite how we became upset at your staff's insistent phone calls, and how we often bristled at waiting three hours while our triple-booked groomer took care of our dog. And how I used foul language after John the manager sneered at the suggestion he did something wrong. All we wanted was a pleasant, hassle-free trip to the groomer every month. We rarely got it.

The unprofessionalism at Biscuits and Bath suggests a business that should be running into the ground. Somehow smart marketing positions it as a premier, high-quality dog care establishment. In the process, you seem to have forgotten about the service and operations that go into a well-run store.

I hope someone at Biscuits and Bath reads this letter and acts upon the many flaws in this business. But I'm not expecting much. Your true reputation precedes you.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:43 PM | | Comments (4)

July 8, 2008

The new commute

So what, pray tell, gets an out-of-shape 35-year-old man to suddenly start riding a bicycle on a 5.5-mile commute to work?

Riverside Park, for one thing. Moving to the Upper West Side last summer put us one short, traffic-free block from the greenway that stretches the length of Manhattan on the Hudson River. Amy and I planned on cycling for fun, but pregnancy and a lack of a bicycle prevented us from doing so. (Also a mild lack of ambition, the same one that led us to play tennis at the park's great clay courts a total of zero times last summer. Anyway.)

Then I started working at Ai, where I discovered coworkers who commuted to work on bicycle, some every day. The casual dress code and relaxed environment made cycling a realistic option. As I tired of yoga and began looking for another form of exercise, the choice became clear.

nishiki.jpgAfter a long saga involving a construction van, a Zipcar, and a 1:30 a.m. visit to a dark vestibule in Hoboken, my ride arrived: a 20-year-old Nishiki Century, a heavy, ergonomically unappealing, sea-foam-green 10-speed complete with squeaky brakes and slipping gears. Amazingly, a visit to the local bike shop gave the bicycle a clean bill of health, and with some air in the tires I was ready to roll.

Since early June I've been riding to work twice a week on average. My commute relies on a funny equation that takes into account client meetings, weather, and baby feedings, but I've had little trouble finding opportunity to jump on the bike.

The new commute is an absolute delight. My usual route takes me directly into the park, down the greenway from 91st to 22nd Street, and briefly across town on a bike-laned street from 10th to 5th Avenues. In the morning, the ride is quiet, and the morning air off the river is a great way to wake up. The ride home is more visually stimulating--more people, ball games, general activity--and the exercise is both invigorating and calming. With my noise-isolating Shure headphones, I can listen to music with little distraction, even while passing the heliport on 34th Street.

I can make the trip in just under half an hour--almost the same as my morning ride on the subway. The trip home is slower by bike, due to uphill climbs and less train congestion, but the difference is neglible. Unlike the train, I burn around 500 calories round-trip, and I'm getting a little color on my face for a change, too.

Now that I'm riding regularly, I hope to spend some time taking longer trips that increase my stamina and encourage weight loss. If I stick with it for the summer, I'm going to quit my gym and invest the next few months' fees in a new bike. I may love the subways, but a nice ride to work is a terrific way to live.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:00 AM | | Comments (1)

June 29, 2008

31 days of fatherhood

One month on on the baby blog. Advance apologies to anyone in front of whom I unexpectedly fall asleep in July.

In related news, Charley has been a model dog with a baby in the house. He is patient, relaxed, curious, respectful, caring. One night last week, Nathan began crying in the bedroom while I was across the apartment, and Charley, noticing the situation, stood on the bed and barked at the bassinet until I investigated. What's that, Lassie? Timmie's in the well and he's broken his leg? Good boy!

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:41 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

June 4, 2008

Stubble

I'm not one for shaving. Never have been. In college I would go anywhere from four to six days between shaves, cleaning up only when my face teetered on the brink of "beard" instead of "scruff."

Problem is, I have kind of a crappy beard. It's thin across my cheeks and missing in some essential areas around the mouth. So when I entered the work force, I started shaving regularly, since what was "scruff" teetered on the brink of "grubby" in an office setting.

Along the way, I learned how to shave with a blade (Gillette, a Sensor at first) instead of an electric (Braun), complete with the night I spent 45 minutes nursing my first razor gash above my lip right before a date. Years later, my now wife would introduce me to the pleasures of premium shaving cream (Fresh, in a varietal long since discontinued, for which I still seek a suitable replacement).

The wife, though, kind of digs the stubble. And I now work at an office where not shaving is almost a requirement on non-client-facing days. So, miraculously, I'm shaving less again, although I'm in enough meetings that I wind up using the razor four days out of five.

Yet curiosity and hope still get to me. This past week, as I have sat mostly in my apartment and a hospital room with wife and child, I've let my face go, to see once more if I could actually grow a proper beard. The answer, from days three to six, from the missus was, "It looks hot." Which, on day seven, teetered and fell into, "You're shaving for the bris, aren't you?" And indeed, I am: again, the growth is, well, pretty awful. Although I could probably grow a righteous antiestablishment moustache or an Ethan Hawke goatee, anything more typically handsome is just not in my follicles.

Thus for the second time in under a year—having also tried this stunt between jobs last fall—I have tried and failed at bearddom. Wednesday morning marks nine days of growth, a new record for me, and a sad return to the tub of Kiehl's White Eagle in the bathroom cabinet. I'll look sharp for our guests, but I won't be completely happy about it.

Nathan, if it's 2020 or so, and you're reading this, I hope you don't remember your bris, and I hope you never got your hopes up about your facial hair. You will be many things in your life, but fully bearded is probably not one of them.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:13 AM | | Comments (2)

May 29, 2008

Awe

Tuesday night we went about our evening with determined normalcy: futz around the house, play with the dog, order in dinner, clean up a bit, stay up too late watching the ball game. (For the record, the Yankees lost to the Orioles in 11 rain-delayed innings.)

The difference, of course, was in the thoughtfully packed suitcase at the foot of the bed. Oh, and the car seat in the front hall, and the huge belly full of baby situated firmly between my wife and me. Between my wife and everything, really.

Wednesday was quite an Einsteinean relativity test for me: slow-motion until 10:56 a.m., hyperspeed after. Beforehand, we were weighted down by process, delay, impatience, and anticipation. Then, the better part of an hour in scrubs, plied with anesthetics (her) and splattered with placental fluid (me). And after, a brief moment of quiet excitement, then:

Fatherhood.

Followed very rapidly by recovery and transfer and shivering and ice chips and IV drips; several dozen phone calls, spanning the next 11 hours and including friends, relatives, mohels, and the like; many hours of abundant warmth with parents, siblings, niece and nephew; hugs, kisses, tears of joy, the shared revelry among three generations of two harmonious families; and lots and lots of holding, staring, and marveling. And eye contact. With him. Nathan, that is.

We are proud, elated, excited, overwhelmed, exhausted.

Parents.

Amazing.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 1:35 AM | | Comments (2)

May 12, 2008

Arrival

I've got a lot to look forward to at the end of the month, but in the meantime, a little piece of me can die happy. (Fourth item.)

Note to regular readers: if the above item looks familiar, well, that's because it is.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 3:22 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

April 8, 2008

Prewar detail

We moved into our apartment one year ago Sunday. To commemorate the occasion, I made a narrative collage of some of the many lovely details of our century-old home, which we strived to reveal wherever possible.

Our apartment is full of little surprises that make it fun to occupy: patterned glass transom windows, thick solid-wood doors and inlaid wood floors, the huge Magic Eye peephole, restored leaded-glass bathroom windows, and call buttons for the maid/butler in the dining room floor and master bedroom door frame, which make us marvel at how space has changed: once upon a time, our relatively humble 1000 square feet or so housed an owner and his help.

The collage can be viewed here. Enjoy it. We do.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:43 AM | | Comments (1)

April 3, 2008

Cruel, cruel Facebook

cruel, cruel FacebookI turned 35 Saturday.

Tough birthday, really, leaving the coveted 18-34 demographic, barely a year after becoming a homeowner, gray hair fully on display, fatherhood looming large.

But whatever. I've got my Wii, I frolic with my dog, I maintain a youthful exuberance whenever I can. Heck, I play with Facebook for a living. I can stay young.

Facebook, on the other hand, has my birthday in its database. It knows the truth. And first thing Monday morning the site starts serving me ads like this:

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:47 PM |

March 28, 2008

Distributedness

Ripple effects, the story of my newly replaced iPhone, on the Ai blog.

My del.icio.us feed hasn't posted here the last few days, a glitch I need to investigate. It's a good excuse for me to remind my less geeked-out readers (hi, Mom!) of the numerous places you can find me online. In 2008 it's not enough to blog... you also have to

...twitter: sporadic, text-message-length observations and wisecracks

...be del.icio.us: this is where I store links I find interesting, often with comments (the "links for" posts on this blog come from here)

...have a second blog: AIAIO, the Ai company blog, where I tag-team with Loren Davie, our director of technology

...flickr: an assortment of photos, usually one-offs taken by my phone

At some point I'll harness the proper use of FriendFeed and Tumblr and get everything in one place. In the meantime, feel free to explore and follow along.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:35 AM | | Comments (1)

March 10, 2008

The babymoon

Ah, the babymoon! Had a great time.

First, an explanation. A babymoon is the last-hurrah vacation taken by a husband and wife expecting their first child. We've been using it for weeks to describe this most recent vacation, but no one's ever heard of it. (Kind of like furnident, which at one time was on the Internet solely on netwert.com.)

So: the babymoon. St. John. Pretty terrific. Water bluer than blue, weather pitch-perfect most of the week. Went from a good resort to a great one and ate like kings. Snorkeled, then snorkeled with a prescription mask, which was quite the upgrade. Sailed, windsurfed, stargazed, relaxed. I think I even got something resembling a tan.

Thus, the babymoon, with small suitcases and days on our own agenda. Now we're home, entering the stretch run of life as DINKs (we all know that term, yes? double income no kids?) with birthdays bookending the next three weeks, one last self-indulgent gasp before our slice of life evolves. Which, if the kicking is any indication, it already is.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 2:11 PM |

January 28, 2008

Witness

Shiloh Baptist Church is a 69,000-square-foot facility housing a 100-year-old congregation of African-American Baptists in Plainfield, New Jersey.

In short, exactly not the place you'd expect to find two pale Manhattan Jews on a Sunday morning.

Yet that's where we were, as my wife and I attended the dedication ceremony of an old friend's son yesterday. Impeccably dressed and smiling, we attracted curious, friendly gazes from ushers the instant we walked in, then sat down in the balcony to watch the service.

This was my first Baptist experience of any color, and frankly, it was pretty great. Shiloh's pastor is expressive and upbeat, and the congregation participates vocally and cheerfully.

The whole service was a visual and aural treat. The pastor was loud and soft, happy and sad, unfailingly optimistic. The sterotypical "get a witness" and "amen" utterances were in full effect. People clapped, waved, assented, took notes during the power-of-positive-thinking sermon. A farewell ceremony to a retiring volunteer nearly moved the pastor to tears ("Can I get a tissue before I cry up here? ... thank you God amen"). The choir, 40-strong and accompanied by a three piece band--organ, drums, sax--sang with smiles and moved in unison.

At the end of the regular service, the baby's dedication was called, and our entire party marched down from the balcony to stand in front of the pulpit, in solidarity and ceremony with the family. I felt, well, white. But I also felt proud and warm to have been invited and participated in the ceremony. The pastor knows my friends and has an obvious love for children. He wore a huge, genuine smile throughout the dedication as he held the baby. The rest of us did, too.

After the service, we all went to lunch, where I met up with my gang, the first time in a long while that we've all been somewhere together. We toasted the baby, saw each other's kids, congratulated one another on new jobs and promotions and pregnancies, and made plans to do it again, for the Super Bowl this coming weekend.

Congratulations, then, to Jerome Lonnie Jones III, and to his parents and grandparents, who have brought their first child into a wonderfully loving existence. I could hardly imagine a more uplifting day.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:09 AM |

January 14, 2008

Poseur

I go whitewater rafting most every summer with my friends from high school. Some years back, a bunch of us bought baseball caps to commemorate the trip. Mine is red with two oars and, in big letters, "HUDSON RIVER." I wear it often, particularly on weekend-morning dog walks.

Walking in Riverside Park yesterday, with a calm Hudson River a few feet away, it occurred to me that my hat now lacks a certain panache.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:53 AM |

January 2, 2008

The year in cities 2007

For the third straight year (and prompted by Jason for the third time as well) here is my list of travels for 2007. Per tradition multiple-visit locations are denoted with an asterisk:

New York, NY * (home base)
Livingston, NJ *
New City, NY *
Palisades, NY
Miami, FL
La Fortuna, Costa Rica
Playa Conchal, Costa Rica
Half Moon Bay, CA
Dallas, TX * (N.B. I flew to Dallas four times in 2007, and never stayed longer than 18 hours)
New Paltz, NY
Marco Island, FL
Lake George, NY
Rockport, MA
San Francisco, CA
Yountville, CA
Healdsburg, CA
Mystic, CT
Edgartown, MA
Chatham, MA
Palm Beach Gardens, FL

Last year I was able to extend my streak of international travel to five years (and seven of the last nine) thanks to the Costa Rica vacation. I'm probably not straying too far in '08, though.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:57 AM | | TrackBacks (1)

December 31, 2007

Big deal

Tonight is New Year's Eve, and for the seventh consecutive year, Amy and I are doing very little.

This year, in fact, we'll be up to even less than usual: for five years we were relaxing in Florida with family; last year we toasted with my brother and sister-in-law in their apartment. This year, we think we may see a movie, then get some tastily greasy Chinese food, break out the Monopoly board, give the dog a bone and chill. I'd put 50/50 odds on Amy even being awake at midnight.

For years I've had mixed emotions about this. I have been quite happy not to bother with pricey restaurants and myriad "what-are-YOU-doing" conversations. Yet while being in Florida over the holiday week was nice, I will admit to also feeling like a bit of a dweeb watching Julie Andrews movies with my half-asleep nephew on New Year's Eve. I'd been culturally intimidated: during the western world's communal party, I had elected to stay home.

At last I am past the hang-up. Tonight, a cold, boring Monday after a week's vacation, is not a big deal, even if I am part of "the only species on this planet that celebrates not the passing of time, but the way it has chosen to mark the passing of time."

This year I learned about big deals. Finding, buying and moving into a new apartment, assuming jumbo-mortgage-level debt for the first time: now that's a big deal, not to mention stripping paint and caulking and installing closets and learning all new restaurants and shopping routes. And that was done way back in April.

Transitioning into a terrific new job opportunity and a chance to redefine one's career--and no longer waking up with work headaches in the morning and putting on suits for an hour-long intra-Manhattan commute? That's a big deal.

And it goes on. Wife gets a promotion, a commercial on the Super Bowl and work nominated for an Emmy. Brother gets married. Father-in-law has successful heart surgery. A close friend passes away at 33. These, dear reader, are big deals. (And the biggest deal of all doesn't even hit until next summer, although you can take a guess.)

So: no more internal apologies. This evening it's roast pork mai fun and Guitar Hero 3, and tomorrow we'll enjoy a nice, uneventful day off. Not a big deal. But a nice one, a peaceful, happy end to what has been an amazingly eventful 2007.

Update: The two of us wound up at the movies and eating dinner at "low key and local" Cafe Lalo in an unexpected and fun night out (and home before midnight, woo!). For the curious, yes, the theater was jam-packed at 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:31 PM |

November 29, 2007

Merge

I have been married for four years and cohabitating for five. My wife and I have bought and raised a puppy together, traveled around the world and integrated with each other's families. We share a home, a computer, chores, jokes and our deepest, most emotional thoughts.

Through it all, we have had separate CD collections.

This afternoon we had two 9' tall bookcases installed in our living room. The one on the left has the express purpose of holding music, for despite my embrace of technology--including a first-generation iPod and an extensive MP3 collection--I still maintain a library of 1200 CDs, the majority of which are in our apartment. Amy, to her credit, has a few hundred discs of her own (and also to her credit, she tolerates the sheer bulk of mine).

So it was sensible enough when, as I began carrying music from my old racks to the new bookcase, my wife said, "Let's keep all our CDs together."

You'd think we'd have tackled this years ago. After all, we share a common iTunes library, Amy having given up on a her-only subset on her side of the Mac.

But even today, I paused. My collection is going to cheerfully swallow hers. The crazy category system I created, to avoid alphabetizing a thousand CDs, will turn my wife's Cheryl Crow discs into "female vocal" and her Melissa Etheridge into "rock/alternative." I suspect Amy will never even attempt to find her music in the sea of CD spines, much less succeed in locating her albums.

And her tastes create confusion in areas I had reconciled on my own. Peter Gabriel? For me: classic rock. To her: "Classic rock? Really?" Where does her Maroon 5 disc go? Seal? Barry Manilow? (Seriously, Amy--Barry Manilow?)

So far I've managed to integrate her classic rock with mine (though not, it should be noted, her Peter Gabriel discs), which has already thrown my organization out of whack, as the category has doubled in size. It's kind of fun. And terrifically nerve-wracking.

My wife and I are deeply connected in our values and desires. We do not share much in the way of musical taste. But somehow, in some way, her Deep Forest and my Kiss CDs are going to find a way to coexist.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:50 PM | | Comments (2)

November 19, 2007

Culture Shock, Day One

Going from a conservative consumer-products company to an Internet agency is about as startling a contrast in work environments as one could imagine.

Number of people not wearing jeans today: 1 (me)

Number wearing leather-soled shoes: 1 (me)

My office welcome: an interoffice email announcing my hire, which included a photo of my dog that the office manager grabbed from this website, followed by several enthusiastic replies from coworkers with photos of their own dogs

Suggestions from the team: install any apps I want on my computer; ask for anything at all from the Staples catalog; install AIM right away so the office can IM you

Number of challenges to play foosball and Guitar Hero: 4

Common space: the table and chairs behind my desk are called "belly dancer corner," so titled because of the belly dancer hired for the co-owner's birthday who performed on the table

Prominent page on the Ai office wiki: "Rubik's Cube Solution Times"

I have office whiplash. In such a good way.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:40 PM | | Comments (3)

November 18, 2007

The new gig

I am pleased to announce that I report for work tomorrow as Director of Strategy for Alexander Interactive.

Ai is a boutique agency based in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. Founders Alex Schmelkin and Josh Levine have built a fast-growing, fun-loving company around their individual talents, Alex as a developer, entrepreneur and client contact nonpareil, and Josh as the talented and dedicated creative director. I have been their client, colleague and friend since 2005 and am delighted to join their company.

My focus will be multifaceted, including but not limited to client business analysis, project vision, and information architecture, and a little corporate strategy as well. I'm also going to dive headfirst into the Ai blog, giving tech lead and coauthor Loren Davie a run for his money, and bringing the company into the greater industry conversation about online trends and opportunities. All of this is remarkably close to my dream job description at this phase of my career. Plus they have a foosball table.

The adjustment to a new business culture is going to be pleasantly overwhelming: jeans instead of suits, cubicles instead of an oversize office, 70% male instead of 80% female, and a shift from the geekiest person in the company to one of the least geeky. I missed the dress-your-coworker Halloween party but I did crash bowling night a few weeks back. It's gonna be a blast.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 7:49 PM |

November 9, 2007

Off the grid

Today is my last day as Director, Internet Marketing for Clarins. I start an exciting new job on the 19th which will be getting lots of coverage here shortly. Between now and then, I'm getting away from the Internet: no random surfing, no obsessive checking of email, no social networking pings. It's not often one can "get away from it all" without deliberately going on vacation and leaving the BlackBerry at home, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity. See you in a few weeks.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 6:15 AM | | Comments (1)

September 30, 2007

My class: the online-offline partnership

My Smart Experience class has an official date, time, and location. (Some content will be posted to the site soon, too.) I hope to see you on November 15. Interested in attending? Contact me for a discount rate.

(Previously: Back to school)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 8:59 PM |

August 21, 2007

Back to school

I am pleased to announce that I'll be teaching a class in Victor Lombardi's new Smart Experience professional school.

The class, Managaing the Online-Offline Partnership, derives from my career in "traditional" offline organizations and the great challenge many of us face: bringing the value and importance of Internet activity to an organization whose focus isn't in the online arena.

The challenge is one I've tackled with brio over the years; indeed, "evangelism" has even been a part of my job description on multiple occasions. The task is as fascinating as it is complicated. When you have colleagues running an eight-figure business, and the Internet represents barely 10% of your readership or your revenue base, it's easy for said colleagues to dismiss your initiatives as a side project, even when those initiatives' impact has a much lengthier reach. The challenge is bringing that reach to light, and creating excitement and momentum in what to others may be both marginal and frightening.

I plan on hosting a fully participatory session, with light case studies, some role playing, and lots of input from the assembled. SmartEx is new, so class is entirely what my students and I will make of it. My readers are invited to join me in my session, as I make my humbly triumphant return to a classroom setting. (I last taught in the 1990s at open-i media, back in the days when HTML had to be coded by hand.) I'm looking forward to it.

Ideapad readers are eligible for a discount for enrolling in my class--contact me and I'll pass along the code.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:09 PM |

July 19, 2007

Bragging rights

I am more than a little proud to report that my talented wife Amy has had a recent commercial, "Pinball" for Pepsi, nominated for an Emmy.

This is the second time in three years that her work has been Emmy-nominated; two years ago her "Drink" for Aquafina also received a nomination. Amy is doubly honored this year, because she worked on the GE "Jar" spot that was also nominated for outstanding commercial. Not bad to have two nominations at once, and right on the heels of her first Super Bowl work, too.

The author of this page is one proud husband.

• Pepsi: "Pinball" on amywertheimer.com

Posted by David Wertheimer at 8:58 PM |

December 26, 2006

The year in cities 2006

Having done this last year, I'm presenting another summary of my travels for the year. As per Kottke, destinations with multiple visits are denoted with an asterisk.

New York, NY * (home base)
Livingston, NJ *
New City, NY *
Palisades, NY *
Santa Barbara, CA
Paris, France *
Rio Grande, Puerto Rico
Lake George, NY
Chicago, IL
Hyannis, MA
Nantucket, MA
Edgartown, MA
Rockport, MA
Ann Arbor, MI
Atlanta, GA
London, England
Longboat Key, FL
West Palm Beach, FL

If only my wife were a blogger: her list would include most of mine, plus stays in Baja California, Alesund, Norway, and multiple cities in China.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:08 PM |

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ABOUT THE 'PAD

The concoction
3 parts observation
2 parts introspection
1 part links
1 part creativity
1 part stinging wit
dash of sarcasm

The history
The Ideapad debuted on November 1, 1998 and has been through numerous incarnations through the years. It is now a weblog and personal journal.
Once upon a time I wrote Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself (Publisher's page / Amazon.com)
Once in a whenever I consult as User Savvy (dormant)
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