Innovate, Incubate, Accelerate: The Story of WholePeople.com
"Our talented creative team worked closely with WholePeople.com to extend the company's brand, and together we developed the information architecture, navigation, user interface and visuals to support it. With rigorous attention to detail, all aspects of the process were quickly defined and implemented across the site, from initial brand analysis to final design. It was often just a matter of days - or hours - before half a concept turned into a variety of extensible design solutions. Working this fast requires energy, efficiency, and an extraordinary amount of teamwork."
( Friday, March 31, 2000)

abbie deggs
go visit my e-pal. she's nice.
( Thursday, March 30, 2000)

bad head
"Is your head cursed with an excess of cynicism, neuroticism, and false hopes, despite your better efforts to stomp them out? Does your head torture you and make love well-nigh impossible? Does it ruin what little happiness you have and make the bad times all the worse? Does it process everything exactly the least realistic, most twisted way, despite your best intentions?"

Well, that's why there's BuSpar.
( Wednesday, March 29, 2000)

a cautionary tale for boom times (fortune)
(I forgot to link this after reading it in the print version. But now I remembered.)

"Well, when the sun is shining, who carries an umbrella? A sense of urgency is often required to force real change. Britain accepted decades of underperformance and only undertook serious (and unpopular) reform after the "winter of discontent" in which a grave-diggers' strike literally left the dead unburied. The case for change can be difficult to make when times are good.

But it is worth remembering that times are not necessarily rosy for everyone. Rising housing prices have meant that struggling households are ever less likely to find a home within their means. (The response from Congress: refusing to authorize new housing subsidy vouchers for four straight years.) Exactly as many children lived in extreme poverty in 1998 as in 1991. Real median incomes have only recently passed their 1989 peak. And we are all working more hours than we did a generation ago."
( Tuesday, March 28, 2000)

pre- or post-ipo? (standard)
"You're not asking yourself the right question. The heart of the issue is not the company's funding status; you should ask yourself which team you want to join."

i think this is an easy choice. but then, i walked away from the only (pre-ipo) options i've ever had.
( Tuesday, March 28, 2000)

yo la tengo
Ira: "It's always interesting to change the context by which you make music because the music comes out differently as a result."

this is true in every medium, which is why it's good to change the context every now and then.
( Monday, March 27, 2000)

universal sleep station
this is one of those pieces of web conceptual art. or at least it looks like it, with multiple cam shots of people sleeping. like a multiscreen version of the warhol film. (which is stunning, actually)
( Monday, March 27, 2000)

midadventures in the me-first economy (fortune)
"We're not saying that the average tech company is as incorrigible as the tale told by the over-the-top comic strip that accompanies these stories. But much of what passes as standard operating procedure at an e-startup wouldn't pass muster in traditional businesses."

stories like these will help accelerate the backlash, and (hopefully) make the dotcom world more accountable.

the latter is probably going to be something of a theme for me going forward, after what happened at wholepeople.
( Friday, March 24, 2000)

blowthedotoutyourass.com
these stickers and posters have started appearing in the internet industry areas of san francisco. i first saw them on the parking meter where i usually lock up my bike. i looked up, read them, and started laughing.

let the backlash begin!
( Friday, March 24, 2000)

sock monkeys

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

1. click on link above
2. read copy
3. laugh hysterically

why fashion goes in cycles (nyt)
"Fabric makers, as it happens, don't exactly initiate the trends either. They, too, seek inspiration from a common source: trend consultants hired by Première Vision. Months before each fair, Mr. Alombert explained, representatives from the weaving industry meet with the consultants, who report on what sort of mood citizens of the world will find themselves in months later. Weeks after the first meeting, Mr. Alombert convenes a group of weavers representing all the different countries participating in the exhibition to make sure that, as he put it, "everyone's on the same page." "
( Tuesday, March 21, 2000)

accelerated options (standard)
"In place of a signing bonus, he was given stock with no required vesting period. He vests 50 percent of his option grant once the company goes public or 100 percent if it's sold off."

Another bellwether indicator of how few qualified people there are. It's this shortage, more than a shortage of capital or office space, that will result in the dot com consolidation that's bound to happen in the next year or two.
( Tuesday, March 21, 2000)

foreshadowing (fortune)
'WholeFoods.com a nice site, but the constraints it is operating under limit what it can do. Outside of promotions within the physical stores, the company is doing very little marketing of its site. It even boasts in a press release that: "Spurning the expensive banner advertisement/portal marketing strategy, WholeFoods.com will instead grow its business organically."'
( Tuesday, March 21, 2000)

what happens when your corporate parent decides you're just too much trouble. (fortune)
"SF SCOOP.... This from ace reporter Owen Thomas at eCompany. Now, that hot new, soon-to-be happenin' magazine down Frisco way. Take it away, Owen: "Wholepeople.com (which is a whole foods market Website) bought a company in SF last year to be its Web development arm. Yesterday the site launched and they had a big party at the Spectrum. John Mackey, the CEO, got up, and thanked everyone, including by name, the head of the Website team. Today, I hear, they are SHUTTING DOWN the SF operation!!! And to stay employed, and to get all their options, everybody has to move to ... Colorado!!! Can you believe this?!" No I can't O!!! Thanks!!!"
( Friday, March 17, 2000)

'02.
i want i want i want.
( Friday, March 17, 2000)

AIBO!
this is the ideal pet for me: hypoallergenic, quiet, easily taken care of. now i just need to out aside some extra money for the next time they accept adoption requests.
( Friday, March 17, 2000)

chris nolan (salon)
Both local papers, in their own ways, exercise judgments that undermine their credibility. The Chron's technology coverage harps on the same tired theme of amazement. My God, says the local paper, look at the wizards and their wonders. The Chron should just run the same daily headline: "More Cool Stuff From Those Young People in Palo Alto." The Merc regards the area's newly wealthy as curiosities from another planet. The Merc's recurring headline would say, "They're Rich. They're Young. What Does It Mean for People Who Are Poor Like Us?"
( Thursday, March 16, 2000)

action item!
"but always remember.. don't be -- the bottleneck!"

now in color.
( Thursday, March 16, 2000)

what browsers support (webmonkey)
a handy chart in case you find yourself designing a site that has to have stylesheets and display correctly in a browser running on unix. ideally, you'd check this chart before finding yourself in such a losing situation.
( Thursday, March 16, 2000)

things web developers need to know (standard)
"For starters, most home surfers are still using slow modems to connect to the Net, according to recent data from Nielsen NetRatings. Fully 47 percent of Web users have modems with speeds of 33.6Kbps or slower, and 93 percent connect at 56Kbps or less."
( Wednesday, March 15, 2000)

sissyfight!
i love this game. too bad the server's down; i want to play.
( Sunday, March 12, 2000)

polly esther is a committee (suck)
uproariously funny.
( Wednesday, March 8, 2000)

greed online (observer)
speaking of marisa bowe.
( Sunday, March 5, 2000)

cyberinsults (word)
marisa bowe is one of the people in this industry whom i really admire. i played sissyfight with her last weekend and chatted a bit. she's funny crazy cool.
( Sunday, March 5, 2000)

fast company (nyt)
They talk of "reinventing the workplace," bringing "passion" and "values" to their companies. They share the vision that the New Economy has "soul," i.e., that it is about more than pecuniary gain, because "this generation would not sell out for money." They share an equally utopian vision that top-down managerialism will not work in an economy where real power resides with the "brand called you."

"this generation would not sell out for money"? give me a break. that's all this moment in time is about.
( Saturday, March 4, 2000)

ego.com (nyt)
'His first order of business was clear: Cuban needed a palace. He is proud to say that he found a deal on a nice 24,000-square-foot Dallas chateau. The stock of another capitalist had gone down as Cuban's went up, and Cuban was there with $13 million to help the man out of his house. "I guess he thought the gravy train would never end," Cuban says with a wolfish grin.'

mark cuban will, inevitably, be the same person he bought his mansion from. comeuppance will come swift and decisive. or at least one can hope.
( Saturday, March 4, 2000)

workers = artists (nyt)
"It is no accident that the world's capital of stock options, Silicon Valley, is also the world's capital of job-hopping. Silicon Valley employees perpetually scrutinize their companies for dark signs. When things go slightly wrong employees race out to find jobs that offer stock options that might be worth more. With so much at stake they cannot afford to be loyal. They cannot afford to succumb to old-fashioned tricks used by companies to promote worker loyalty. Which brings us to a second change in worker attitudes:

A new skepticism toward the company's argument that it serves some purpose higher than itself. Fantastic booms like ours create new forces of selfishness. The higher the price of working for something greater than yourself, the less easily people will be persuaded that they must do so."
( Saturday, March 4, 2000)

whatever (wired)
okay, so the genius at robotwisdom figured out how amazon links are constructed and gets press coverage. calling it a "hack" no less. whatever.

GiveQuick! may be small, but at least we make it easy for people to do this sort of thing. i set the record straight with an email to leander. you may want to email him, too, just to say "what the fuck?" but in nicer terms than that.

thanks.
( Thursday, March 2, 2000)