a bigger hand
flips a bigger (or better) bird.
( Thursday, June 29, 2000)

another big heavy sigh.
*sigh*
( Thursday, June 29, 2000)

frictionary
a vocabulary lesson by polly esther.
( Wednesday, June 28, 2000)

skimpiness is in (nyt)
"Fashion has lost its meaning as a signifier," said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys New York. "Someone can be showing lots of leg -- it doesn't mean they are a lap dancer, the same way having a pierced body part no longer means you are an interesting person. Everyone is doing it."
( Tuesday, June 27, 2000)

women and nudity (nyt)
"MAZAR: Yeah. And when I walk into an audition, I do use my sexuality to get a part, to put it out there, to convince them.

"BERNHARD: If you're going in and using your sexuality to get a part, how can you ever get offended if they want you to be nude?

"MAZAR: I don't. But I decide when I get exploited now."
( Saturday, June 24, 2000)

ON24/TheStreet.com: Digging Deeper Into Gaiam's Deal with Whole Foods
I'll just say this, right now: the arrogance of both WholeFoods CEO John Mackey and Gaiam CEO Jirka Rysavy is the easy way to tell that the new Gaiam.com will fail miserably. I give it no more six months before it closes completely.

iAuthentic.com, the startup whose demo I designed, had two suitors: both Whole Foods and Jirka. Looks like they were fucked either way. A shame, because the original idea was pretty good.
( Friday, June 23, 2000)

shift shifting?
"With its future increasingly in doubt, Toronto-based Shift magazine is expected to make a major announcement today as to its continued publication."

Apparently the magazine that sent me a free issue with on of my friends on the cover may be up for sale.
( Friday, June 23, 2000)

hippies still live in palo alto? (fortune)
"Levitsky just shrugs his shoulders. "A college town has college students," he says and adds that he enjoys being around the "youthful energy and optimism." He sometimes even encourages students to drop out of Stanford and join a start-up, if the right opportunity comes along."
( Wednesday, June 21, 2000)

About That Whole Foods Deal (thestreet.com)
"Six months ago Whole Foods was touting that its WholePeople.com subsidiary would become a powerful brand by leveraging it through the company's Whole Foods stores. Now it scraps that plan and does a not-easy-to-figure-out deal with a company nobody has ever heard of that has a name nobody can pronounce. A convenient way to sweep the dirt under the rug?"
( Wednesday, June 21, 2000)

"Oy!" ?
suddenly time.com looks a lot more like the onion. what the hell are they thinking?
( Wednesday, June 21, 2000)

site gone.
WholePeople is already closed, a mere three months after launch. It's been merged with Gaiam, which has even lower brand recognition, as if that were possible.
( Tuesday, June 20, 2000)

short stories by carl
i think this is a really wonderful set of writing.

i told carl that i'd dreamt that i was in a bookstore, buying one of his two books on the display table. i didn't tell him that the one i was buying was remaindered. it had a badly designed cover; the other one looked like the new printing of alberto moravia's "contempt" but was nonfiction.
( Monday, June 19, 2000)

more mike goodness
sometimes i wish more of my friends were like mike.
( Monday, June 19, 2000)

how to make (and cook) a grilled cheese sandwich
"Turn that stove off. Take a peek inside the pan. Nice, eh? Who's the sandwich man? You are! You rock! She probably wouldn't have left you if you'd displayed skills like this a week ago."
( Monday, June 19, 2000)

how dot coms spend so much money (ecompany)
one word: advertising.

"No matter how clever the promo, if people have no reason to visit your site on a regular basis, you cannot make money. There’s simply no substitute for a product or service that makes people’s lives easier or serves a much-needed purpose. It’s not the plan, silly, but the execution."

this is the lesson that too many dot coms haven't learned yet. to follow up on the badminton net: it took a third phone call to bluelight.com (k-mart's e-commerce venture) to discover that the item i'd ordered was, in fact, back ordered. too bad they couldn't get their back-end systems talking to each other so i could have found this out before i gave them my credit card number.
( Monday, June 19, 2000)

dotcom flop tracker (standard)

( Monday, June 19, 2000)

dotcom layoff tracker (standard)

( Monday, June 19, 2000)

the times discovers iron chef
this show is one reason to own a tv and have cable. now, if i could only figure out where to project the image...
( Monday, June 19, 2000)

cuba! (nyt)
let's go!
( Monday, June 19, 2000)

living (mostly) without money
"getcrafty: Why not just get paid for the work you do, and use the money to buy the things you need?"

"Sara: You think I could afford this apartment with a tutor's salary? People are much more inclined to be generous and reasonable when you deal in terms other than money. Besides, it's better to focus directly on what you are passionate about, and not have to worry about the rest."

The barter economy seems to be making a comeback. This is most definitely a good thing. I currently can meet my financial obligations through one of my freelance contracts, so I've started looking for barter situations: trading my design skills for clothes, paintings, and other things.
( Friday, June 16, 2000)

school for seduction (salon)
"I can just imagine the Bill Gates look-alikes at Jullien's future Silicon Valley campus exchanging their pen protectors for La "Dolce Vita" suits, worn boldly to help cyber Don Giovannis shark in on single gals slurping smoothies at the local strip mall."
( Thursday, June 15, 2000)

frugality hits the dotcom world (la times)
Fiscal responsibility is going to do the surviving dotcom companies a lot of good. But a prospective employer is going to have to make sure that there's a table tennis table in the office for me. Heh.
( Thursday, June 15, 2000)

emusic cuts back (standard)
"Even though each quarter brought a new sales record for EMusic, consumers never really bought into the idea of paying for MP3s. Last quarter, EMusic earned $3.2 million, up 20 percent from the previous quarter. In April, EMusic announced that it had sold its millionth download. But to reach that mark, the company offered expensive incentives like free stereo headphones with a 99-cent download, free PC speakers with $25 in downloads and even an MP3 player with $50 in downloads."

Personally, I would start buying MP3 albums from EMusic and AtomicPop if they were priced lower. Nine bucks is about what a good used CD would cost, and then I get the packaging. Six dollars for a downloadable album sounds about right, and even if it cuts the gross margin on an individual sale, it would be made up for in volume.
( Thursday, June 15, 2000)

rothko chapel reopens, restored (nyt)
I had no idea that this space, which is one of the most moving that I've been in, had had so many problems. I want to go back to Houston and revisit it, and the other Menil buildings. It's definitely one of the best places in this country to see art.
( Thursday, June 15, 2000)

atlanta drought (nyt)
"Dr. David E. Stooksbury, the state climatologist, says the regional climate is changing in a profound way, moving from many years of stability with predictable rainfall to a far more variable climate that will veer between years of plenty and years of scarcity."

Yesterday it was 103F in San Francisco, and it's expected to be that hot again today. Tell me again how global warming isn't real.
( Thursday, June 15, 2000)

punk fui
the cofounder of flat reads one feng shui book and hipsterizes it. this is almost brilliant. it's definitely funny.
( Wednesday, June 14, 2000)

undressing + clothes + food = fun!
well, i knew that. but this is a great idea.
( Wednesday, June 14, 2000)

options != wealth (fortune)
"This is the ugly fine print of the options culture. It's horribly arcane and depends on what kind of options you have. Worst of all, it has come as a surprise to a handful of people who assumed options were the easiest of easy money. "I imagine that most people don't even know what kind of stock options they have," says David Readerman, an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners, who recently wrote a report about the receding glamour of options."

As always, timing is everything. If you exercise your options and the stock continues to rise until you can sell, you've done the right thing. But if it falls you're completely, utterly fucked. Like the guy from theStreet.com mentioned in the story.
( Wednesday, June 14, 2000)

3 weeks to report the los alamos theft? (nyt)
"I have to tell you, in my hometown of Menominee, Mich., if I want to check out a library book at the Menominee public library, you have to have a library card and they make a record of it if you remove the book," said Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, during today's House hearing.

"And if you keep the book too long, they send you a notice asking you to return it," he continued. "Well, most Americans would find it hard to believe that Menominee public library has a more sophisticated tracking system for 'Winnie the Pooh' than Los Alamos has for highly classified nuclear weapons data."

There are number of questions raised by this whole episode.

• Why is the Secretary of Energy willing to undercut security in nuclear labs in order to consolidate his own political fiefdom? Why is Congress letting him get away with it?
• A work environment in which people are unwilling to take responsibility is not a very functional one.
• The coverage indicates that there may not be backups of this sensitive data available.
• What the hell is the government doing putting vital materials on unstable media? Burn the data onto optical media, for chrissakes.

plywood boxes
this show was really beautiful. i need to go to marfa again this year. maybe in the fall. heather anne mentioned that, too.
( Tuesday, June 13, 2000)

options (nyt)
"With the stock markets soaring and many employees cashing in, the taxes the employees pay on their gains have meant deductions that greatly reduce and in some cases even wipe out some companies' current tax bills. This does not mean the federal government is reaping less in taxes. It simply means that the tax burden has shifted from corporations to individuals, most of whom willingly pay because the taxes are so much less than the gains."

Unless, of course, you exercise your options and end up paying the AMT before you can sell some of them off. Which can lead to a loss of money instead of a gain.
( Tuesday, June 13, 2000)

carl on the speaking circuit
i never have decided if i want to be on the circuit or not. mainly i lean towards not.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

yet another layoff (standard)
it looks as though the wave of consolidation and shakeout is very much upon us. in this case, one of the people i care about a lot is there in the middle of it. i think she's fine, though.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

ease of use = sales.com (nyt)
"According to a report planned for release today by Creative Good, a consulting firm in New York, e-tailers could generate substantially more revenue by focusing on basic customer needs, like speed and simplicity. The report estimates that e-commerce companies could realize an additional $20 billion in sales this year -- bringing overall Web sales to some $57 million -- by improving site design, navigation and overall ease of use."

On a related note, last Wednesday I ordered a badminton set from BlueLight.com (Kmart's e-commerce site). It won't be delivered until next week sometime. I had to call to find out what the scoop was. Somebody didn't think of back-end and custoimer service issues when they built their site. That $25 is all BlueLight will get from me.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

racing lawn mowers (nyt)
"Perhaps it's just something about men and their motors. No one seems to know why it is happening now. But all across America, men have discovered new thrills at the throttle of the snail of gasoline-powered locomotion, the riding lawn mower."

it's possibly cooler than the go-kart races up on bernal.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

sf cinematheque
our current season just ended, but the fall season (which starts in spetember) looks to be excellent. if you're in the bay area and interested in film, you should consider becoming a member.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

philanthropy.org (fortune)
"To denizens of traditional philanthropy, all this smacks of hubris. Sievers points out that not all problems can be solved with a commercial approach; that social change is incremental at best; and that sometimes what nonprofits need is money, not misguided advice from somebody with no experience in the area. "Some of these folks have spent most of their time staring at computer screens," says Sievers. "Even in terms of their peers, they are seen as people with narrow frames of reference.""

You'll be seeing more nonprofit information here, now that I'm on a nonprofit's board of directors. Funding sources for the arts are drying up, which is going to necessitate a different approach, but I'm not foolish enough to think I know how the Cinematheque should be run.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

reel.com closes (cnet)
When Reel started, I htought it was awesome: you could rent videos from them, and they carried a lot of things that other online merchants didn't, mainly foreign films. I guess being in a niche that Amazon is in is the short route to closing. Which is too bad.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

another layoff.com (standard)
They wanted to hire me on; I got the impression that a lot of ex-Netscapers were there just to pull in bigger money than they had already made. Mainly it was the cubicles. I hate cubicles.
( Monday, June 12, 2000)

sir have-a-lot (fortune)
"Everybody thought that the spigot might be running dry; but no one had ever expected the water in the first place."

Exactly. This is the frosting economy.
( Saturday, June 10, 2000)

airstream as extra room (nyt)
We saw an Airstream at the Farnsworth House. It made for a nice dichotomy of forms: open v. closed, rounded v. orthagonal. Both float.

Apparently vintage Airstreams can be had rather cheaply. Maybe I can get one, put it on the back of a 2002, and take a real roadtrip. Yum.
( Thursday, June 8, 2000)

ikea in sf (sfgate)
a case study in not doing enough market research, and having this lead to dissatisfied customers.
( Wednesday, June 7, 2000)

blue line +11%
i love the onion.
( Wednesday, June 7, 2000)

light moves faster than light? (sunday times)
"Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right through it and travelled a further 60ft across the laboratory. In effect it existed in two places at once, a phenomenon that Wang explains by saying it travelled 300 times faster than light."

Two things. First, and most important, remember those cold fusion experiments about ten years ago? Second, "The research is already causing controversy among physicists. What bothers them is that if light could travel forward in time it could carry information. This would breach one of the basic principles in physics - causality, which says that a cause must come before an effect."
( Wednesday, June 7, 2000)

wearable computers = human billboards (wired)
"But instead of putting the display on the jacket's sleeve or a head-mounted eyepiece, Fitch put the machine's 6-inch LCD screen on the back of the jacket, which allows everyone but its wearer to see what's going on."

So if people rent out their screens to advertisres (which is what the article poses as the only possible use for this, we'll have yet more advertisements assaulting us at every turn.

On the flip side, what if I had a jacket that had Stan Brakhage films showing 24/7? That would be pretty amazing.
( Wednesday, June 7, 2000)

sf and rent control (nyt op-ed)
"After all, the sort of landlord behavior described in the article -- demanding that prospective tenants supply résumés and credit reports, that they dress nicely and act enthusiastic -- doesn't happen in uncontrolled housing markets. Landlords don't want groveling -- they would rather have money. In uncontrolled markets the question of who gets an apartment is settled quickly by the question of who is able and willing to pay the most. And so I had no doubts about what I would find after a bit of checking -- namely, that San Francisco is a city where a technology-fueled housing boom has collided with a draconian rent-control law."

Paul Krugman makes some good points in this op-ed piece. I don't know if ending rent control would make this city more affordable, or if the ever-increasing rents would soon go up all over the city.

I was living in Berkeley when that city's rent control laws were loosened. Every person paying rent was soon paying more, in some cases 100% more. I have no doubt that ending rent control in San Francisco would lead to a short-term landlord greed fest, and those people who have been living in apartments for twenty years, or who are on fixed incomes, would have to leave the city.

Thank heavens for the internet economy, right?
( Wednesday, June 7, 2000)

new machine, maybe
I called to order one of these, mainly because it's way cheaper than a new laptop would be, partly because Richard Sapper has turned out another beautiful computer. But they aren't taking orders for the one I want -- even the backorder allotment has been sold out.

Okay, a TT roadster I can see selling out quickly. But a $2500 commodity? Hello, supply chain management?
( Tuesday, June 6, 2000)

no sleep til launch date (standard)
"To workers intent on ignoring their exhaustion, Maas says, "make sure you finish all your projects now because you're not going to be alive very long." Maas cites a recent study from the University of Chicago in which researchers found that healthy young adult males getting four hours of sleep for six consecutive nights showed medical disorders similar to those of senior citizens. "We know that sleep deprivation does two things: It shortens your life and it slows you down mentally," says Maas. "Neither of those effects will be particularly helpful for business leaders.""

When I was in college I routinely pulled all nighters, once going some 74 hours straight without sleep. It was one of the stupidest weeks ever. Life is much better when you stop working at, say, six.
( Tuesday, June 6, 2000)

the rental situation here (nyt)
"These are manna-from-heaven days for San Francisco landlords. Driven by Silicon Valley millionaires and their buying frenzy, the median price of a home here is now close to $500,000, a price that only 11 percent of the city's 750,000 residents can afford. Consequently, 80 percent of San Francisco's residents are tenants, perhaps the highest percentage in the country.

"In San Francisco, which has a vacancy rate of less than 1 percent, compared with 2.57 percent in Manhattan, there are never enough apartments."

Sadly, you will not find much of this sort of reporting in either the Chron or the Ex, which is another story altogether. (One that Salon has been covering in great depth.)
( Tuesday, June 6, 2000)

stereolab @ battery park (nyt)
I didn't see this band on their latest SF swing, mainly because I'd gone to both nights at the Fillmore and was very disappointed to hear the same set list played both times, with the same banter between songs. But I still think they're one of the best bands on the planet.
( Tuesday, June 6, 2000)

london calling (standard)
"Americans are in demand, if for no other reason than the simple fact that the bulk of the U.K. labor pool has little or no operational experience running an Internet business. "Six or seven months ago, the VCs over here would say that they just couldn't find good management talent," says Hannah, who arrived in October. "So anybody experienced on the Internet was a pretty valuable commodity. What we hear [now] is there's a ton more quality floating around.""

Apparently I had the right idea a year ago, when I was thinking of moving to Europe to do my thing there. No regrets, though.
( Sunday, June 4, 2000)

high school wasn't like this even in silicon valley (nyt)
"We ask the kids to do the impossible," Touger said. "We ask them to do the equivalent of a master's thesis or a graduate thesis on a topic they know nothing about at first, and to do it in one year. And they do it. Year after year, they do it."
( Sunday, June 4, 2000)

typographic how-to
lesson one: the apostrophe. brought to you by mike.
( Friday, June 2, 2000)

salon unredesigns (nypost)
"Salon.com got off the hook for less than an estimated $50,000 for its ill-fated product redesign - its fifth in five years - which took about a week to create before its big flop."

Also, Salon apparently has less than a year's worth of cash left. As a public company, that means the only way for them to raise money while unprofitable is a secondary public offering. That probably won't happen, so it could get very interesting very soon. This is, of course, the flipside to going public before being profitable.
( Friday, June 2, 2000)