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Congrats to Tristan, who is moving for all the right reasons (which, I am happy to report, is the right way to do it)
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This is a heck of a record review (via an excellent Metafilter thread: http://www.metafilter.com/66894/Heavy-Metal-Skeletons-in-the-Closet )
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Ubiquity, thy name is
Page 65 of 129
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like the phantom vibrate, only worse
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Nifty reminder app.. it’d be even more useful if it had iCal/Outlook integration, so I could have a single tool instead of this third one
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Ladies and gentlemen, my sister-in-law (see also)
Scene: Thanksgiving dinner, in between courses. Seven-year-old Noah is roughhousing with his cousins on the floor. At one point he takes a hard hit on his thumb and cries out in pain.
“Fuck!”
Noah’s mother, sitting nearby, scowls. “Noah! Don’t say that.”
“Shit, then!”
USA Today: Retailers gear up for Cyber Monday. “Almost three-quarters [72%] of Internet retailers will offer special deals on Cyber Monday to kick off the holiday online shopping season, a National Retail Federation survey out today shows.”
BusinessWire: ”Black Friday” & ”Cyber Monday” Play Crucial Roles in Holiday Shopping Season According to BDO Seidman, LLP Survey of CMOs. “According to CMOs … a majority (59%) of retailers say they are not conducting any special promotions to encourage customers to buy online.”
This is corporate conflict in a nutshell: the Internet is a still-growing retail force warranting holiday promos like the rest of the retail world. Yet retailers are loath to intentionally drive consumers online, potentially decreasing foot traffic and same-store sales, and angering field sales staff.
Savvy retailers already know the best bet is to encourage purchasing via any channel, be it in-store, online, or over the phone. In time the rest of the industry will catch on.
(This kind of observation will soon find a home on the Ai blog, which will be relaunching in December with me as a contributor. See you there.)
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.
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.
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This is nifty: Good Magazine, which bills itself as “media for people who give a damn,” is donating 100% of its subscription revenue to not-for-profit humanitarian and environmental causes (I subscribed)
One of the pleasures of my week of offline leisure is that I’m watching “The Price Is Right” every day. (Honest! It’s like I’m a sixth grader with the flu. Awesome.) And now that I’m old enough to pay attention to the products, I got a real wake-up call with the items “up for bids” this week.
Twice in the past three days the show has asked the four folks on Contestant Row to bid on “a pair of iPhones.” Out come two models, each carrying an iPhone, pressing the home button and not the touch-screen to demonstrate the functionality.
None of the contestants was particularly wowed by the iPhone. And none of them knew the price.
In the circles I, and probably you, inhabit, Apple is a topic of conversation, and the iPhone’s pricing structure has been a particularly hot topic. Go ahead, try it: what’s an iPhone cost right now? Right, $399, down from $499-599 at the time of introduction.
Easy, right? Then how come no one on TPIR knew it offhand? Two iPhones, $798, bingo bango, and a $100 bonus for getting the exact retail price. Obvious to me, to you, but not to middle-class, game-show-contestant America.
Which, of course, is why Apple is so excited: the market opportunity for mobile telecom devices is vast, and they’ve only just started.
Speaking of “The Price Is Right,” some other things have caught my eye. New host Drew Carey is still finding his comfort zone and comments on the crowd too much, although he does a great job poking fun at the awkward product-placement juxtapositions. (“Get this right and you’re off to Greece! …with a bunch of pens in your pocket.”) Also, the show reuses prizes frequently–I’ve seen the iPhones, a Corvette, and a candy-apple-red washer/dryer twice each–but the games have yet to repeat. The populist bent and combination of things you know and things you don’t makes it fun to watch at any age. Although the yodeling mountain climber game might not amuse me as much as it did in ’85.
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I love this post for its funhouse mirror effect: what Greg describes as dreary and uninspiring is what I, in contrast, find invigorating (also: EOD is back! yay!)
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Be me!
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Why does the MTA need an RFP and a special service? All they have to do is create a Twitter account for a responsible head-office assistant. New Yorkers can sign up for it and get alerts as they happen.
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I remember reading this article when it came out. Good stuff. (Linking to this blog post for the great Michael Sippey comment)
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.