mp3 cassette
this is a great piece of consumer electronics design. it's cassette-shaped, but it plays mp3 files. the form factor means you can plug it into your rental car's tape deck and listen to what you want.

when they make these with even 128mb of ram they'll fly off the shelves. 256mb would make it a real good start to the idea of having your files easily accessed from anywhere.
( Monday, February 28, 2000)

consulting, by carl (standard)
"As a consultant, you're often called upon to provide expertise on topics you know little to nothing about. Relax – it's your job! Sometimes being an expert is just knowing the right buzzwords!"

(see also this past sunday's dilbert, heh)
( Monday, February 28, 2000)

amazon patents affiliates (standard)
i guess i'm going to have to switch my givequick links to use powells, as soon as we can find some charities that are members of its affiliates program.
( Monday, February 28, 2000)

options and early retirement (nyt)
this is one of those articles that's really confusing. on the one hand, it has some good information about the byzantine tax structure surrounding different sorts of stock options. on the other, it profiles a 24-year old who has maybe ten million in stock. what the fuck?
( Saturday, February 26, 2000)

yummy.
every now and then i want a car.
( Saturday, February 26, 2000)

useit! amp
thank you, jason kottke, for following through on this funniest of design jokes. my copy of winamp is using it now.

one of these days i'll get around to designing my own skin, with nothing but play and pause and shuffle buttons.
( Saturday, February 26, 2000)

in other magazines (mcsweeney's)
so you can find out what's being written in magazines that you'll likely never see, let alone read. fascinating, as always.
( Thursday, February 24, 2000)

another good designer (nyt)
"The structure and mentality of design is changing very, very fast," he said, "because design is now very linked with music, with fashion and with everyday culture, globally." Mr. Pillet said a new generation was creating a new audience for it, and consuming it differently. "In the past, design was really an independent cultural territory, with a social value, of having money, of having taste, to show who you were," he said. "Now, it's very mainstream. You have design everywhere. It's normal. It's Nikes."
( Wednesday, February 23, 2000)

the end for straw? (nyt)
"He was one of those guys," Cone said, "players stopped to watch."

But Strawberry was on top of a treacherous hill, always poised to tumble. He has tumbled and tumbled and tumbled again. As a father of four, it might be time to forget baseball and focus on staying alive.
( Wednesday, February 23, 2000)

drama queen (suck)
this may be the version of me with different chromosones.
( Wednesday, February 23, 2000)

another genius friend
christi designed and fabricated my stereo cabinet and twelve foot long bookshelf. i'm going to have her make another cabinet for me soon, so i can get my art and design books off the floor.

when i have an office of my own i'm going to put her to work in a big way.
( Tuesday, February 22, 2000)

making hot dogs!
another one courtesy of john. this is a nice interactive infographic.
( Sunday, February 20, 2000)

that internet survey (nyt)
"And the study found evidence that the Internet was allowing the workplace to invade the home. A quarter of regular Internet users employed at least part time said the Internet had increased the time they spent working at home without reducing the time spent at work."
( Sunday, February 20, 2000)

stanford class of '93 (nyt)
"The university says it does not track the wealth of its alumni, but school officials acknowledge that many in the class of '93 have become wealthy unusually early."

The funny part is that I, too, was a part of the class of '93, at Stanford's rival school. Since one doesn't read the same articles about Cal's graduates, this may say something about the differences between public and private schools, or the value of attending a college with an influential alumni network. It may just say something about being in the right place at the right time.

"This generation has made its money so young that it is almost unnatural," said Alan Wolfe, a sociologist who heads the Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. "Whether you are repelled by these young millionaires or attracted by them, they cannot be ignored. In that sense they are icons for their peers."
( Sunday, February 20, 2000)

homeless on $50k/year (nyt)
"It is hard not to notice the Ferraris and Mercedeses all over the valley these days, and the columned mansions with swimming pools that take up virtually whole backyards. The homeless passengers waiting at 2 a.m. the other day for the No. 22 bus spent a good deal of time chatting all about the haves shoving their wealth in the faces of the have-nots."

I grew up in Silicon Valley, and saw the transformation from orchards and greenhouses to tilt-ups and condos. It's always been more expensive to live in the Bay Area, but now it's gotten to a point where it's completely ludicrous. It's Manhattan, almost.

After college, I interned for a long while at an industry lobbying group, working on housing and transportation policies, because, even then, business leaders knew that the traffic and high cost of living would make it harder to attract talented people to work here.

Now, the median income in the South Bay is more than $80,000. The median.

Remember in the early '90s, when the feeling was that the decade would be about sustainability and environmentalism? Do you remember?
( Saturday, February 19, 2000)

copyediting the web, part 431,207
from nytimes.com:
"The Knicks have the third-best record in the Easter Conference."

which partially explains why the knicks keep breaking things.
( Tuesday, February 15, 2000)

specialness
john, formerly of claris and now of organic, sent this to me. it's nice.
( Tuesday, February 8, 2000)

the company i currently work for, covered (denver post)
It will be a tough strategy to pull off, said Ken Cassar, an online analyst with Jupiter Communications in New York.

Cassar said most online retailers put off building that back-end infrastructure until after they've invested in creating Web sites that are easy to navigate and actually work. And after they've built a strong recognizable brand. "It's hard to build a Web site and build a brand at the same time," he said. "It's even harder to build a brand, a Web site and a fulfillment center simultaneously."
( Monday, February 7, 2000)

backlash.com (nyt)
"What do you call a dot-com lout? Readers happily responded to last week's call for an updated version of Eurotrash that would apply to today's rich invaders. Unfortunately, the most popular one is not printable, but there are alternatives."
( Sunday, February 6, 2000)

gentry on oprah!
so now one of my photographs is on the oprah section of oxygen. cool!

(the "original" photo is on my site)
( Friday, February 4, 2000)

congratulations! (standard)
"Startups make different demands on their employees than traditional companies; gone are the plodding bureaucracy and hierarchy of corporate culture, replaced by a Byzantine world of backstabbing, intrigue and personal vendetta – this is 'moving at the speed of thought.'"
( Thursday, February 3, 2000)

tony stone images - (tony + images) = stone
"This change reflects the need to constantly move forward."
( Thursday, February 3, 2000)

what if a monkey ran amazon?
this is one of the funniest pages ever on suck.com
( Thursday, February 3, 2000)

alt.best.faq.wonderful.funny.entertaining
alt.favorite.faq.always.forever.now
( Tuesday, February 1, 2000)

decoding clothing care
a handy guide to what the international symbols on your fancy clothes' care tags mean. when i bought a katherine hamnett shirt (organic cotton sage green button down) the symbols didn't have words next to them, so i had to guess. luckily i guessed right: it doesn't go in the dryer. now the trick for the european clothes is converting temperatures from celsius to farenheit when i'm sorting them out.
( Tuesday, February 1, 2000)