2003 April

What's better than sliced bread? This.

I'm putting together an invitation-only seminar on the death of e-mail marketing and am currently seeking partnerships and a local place to present it to people (in the Bay Area). Let me know if you can or want to be involved – or if you can deliver a specific location within a month. Thanks!

Read more on RIP: E-mail Marketing…

A new tool is making the rounds. SharpMT looks semi-wonderful on the surface, but I've yet to get it to work with this blog. We've been fighting mail server issues for the past couple of days, so I haven't had much time to fiddle with it. And tomorrow, I'm off to Vegas to meet up with countless Internet entrepreneurs. I better start to pack, eh? Now that my issue has gone out, I can start paying attention to other fires around here. Unfortunately, I don't wanna shower until Jake returns from his walk; I'm afraid I'll miss the FedEx guy when he comes to deliver my Tungsten C. I smell like potato chips.

Read more on Stinky Bits…

In between my deviled egg binges, Tantek demanded that I put together another semi-comprehensive list of the people who went to the blogger birthday bash last night. Since he was kind enough to bring one of SF's hottest DJ's (Amber) with him, I figured I owed him one. Cheyenne, who has taken a liking to something called “oddblogging,” and MJ thought it would be uber-cool to invite everybody on the planet to this shin dig. These people included myself, Gretchen the wife, Jake the business partner, Derek from Fray.org, the Hobbit Name Generator creator (Chris, who is also MJ's beau), Willo the Flash cartoon goddess, the recently-transplanted Jhames, the genius behind Little Yellow Different (Ernie), Jessica, Vera, and a whole buncha other people who ate too many brownies and couldn't remember their URLs. They'll have to sign in here. Until then, you'll have to consider this list completely incomplete.

Read more on Partyrolling…

Some have said that moblogging (moble blogging) is the “next big thing.” Imagine being able to send a message directly from your mobile device and having it posted to the Web instantaneously. Cool? Yeah, and Text America is handing out free accounts; they just want a lot of people to submit feedback to make it a great service. It'll evolve into a moblogging community with your help. You can thank Shawn Honnick for the scoop. See ya there!

Read more on Free Moblogs…

If you pronounce GIF with a hard “G,” you don't deserve to download these MP3s.

Okay, I finally caved. If you don't like my handwriting font automatically loading in Internet Explorer, you can use an alternative entry point for my blog. It's top secret. My RSS feed(s) will remain the same for now, as will the templates for archives, comments, and trackbacks. I may continue to tweak the new page if I'm so inclined. Thanks to Rafael Morales for the photo! Yes, that's the Lockergnome logo on the model's laptop. UPDATE: Her name is Janey, and someone's already made a Pocket PC Theme of the image.

Read more on Hate My Font?…

I've been complaining about Outlook's shortcomings for a while now, but it's the only usable PIM (as far as I'm concerned) for the Windows platform. Jake switched to Entourage many moons ago, but I'm far from ready to migrate my entire digital lifestyle to OS X. Enter Chandler, a promising personal information manager from the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF). I downloaded the Win32 binary, ran the batch file, and in seconds, was staring at a very rudimentary client. Even at 0.1, it's impressive. Whoever's listening to me: you're on the right track. Please, don't stop until you're finished – and ask for feedback every step of the way. UPDATE: Check out Spaces, another would-be Outlook clone in need of our support.

Read more on Outlook Killer…

Home is where you hang your barf bag. For some strange reason, I think Veronica's dogs pushed my allergy buttons yesterday. A small headache evolved into all-out nausea by the time I landed in Oaklame. I had a great time in the burbs of LA, and I believe I'll return at some point in the not-so-distant future. For now, I'm focused on moving forward with Lockergnome projects. Jake's back on the davenport, and I'm gonna bring home a white board for tasks / schedules this afternoon. Wanna know what I'm listening to? No Way Out – Lapdog – (03:20). This data comes to you courtesy of the freshly-released w.bloggar 3.01 which has built-in support for the Blogging Plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 Series. Microsoft released some other crap today, too – but that's pretty much what the rest of it is: crap. Perhaps I'll be more enchanted with them after sashimi and a shower (in no particular order)?

Read more on Afternoon Delight…

Peet's in my hand. Flannel on my back. Flamingo on the lawn. Dog at my feet. Clouds in the sky. Friend at my side. Water in my glass. Slim Jim in my pocket mouth. Adventure straight ahead.

Read more on Burbank!…

I'm headed off to LA on Monday (possibly staying through Tuesday) to shoot a pilot for “The Stingy and Battery Show.” It's sure to be a hit. Seriously, please hold my calls.

Read more on Flying South…

(1) Misspell words that render your post ironic. For instance, enter “retared” instead of “retarded.” (2) Remember: the number of idle threats made is inversely proportional to the size of your genitals. (3a) Use numbers in place of letters whenever possible. (3b) Make liberal use of the letter “z.” (4) Employ the word “gay” in a pun or two (but no more than three times). (5) Forget to post through a proxy, leaving your IP address [e.g., 24.156.11.10] exposed to the wolves. (6) Complete your entry with an impossible sexual conquest. For example, “I want 2 bang your m0m.” (7) Suggest that you “0wn” something, like control over your own bladder. (8) Request that your post NOT be deleted, further adding a sense of urgency to being flamed out of existence. (9) Fall back on name calling if your argument begins to weaken, twatcheese. (10) Misuse; punctuation.

Read more on Lamerz for Dummies…

An old friend just sent me this note: “I live on the country-side of the northern part of the Netherlands. In this area, within 3 years, there will be places with an Internet connection of 26 terabytes per second. That is, I believe, 300.000 times [the speed of] ASDL. I have a lot of contacts with the project leader of Lofar, and am curious to find good, and very good ideas about what to do with an Internet connection of that speed. I believe it will be the fastest in the world.” What would you do with that kind of bandwidth?

Read more on Fat Pipe Dream…

New MP3s for you to groove to on our third “No Pants Friday” – Cadence, Sean Altman, and Da Vinci's Notebook.

I love my Dell Inspiron 8100 so much! Just before Gnomedex II, its screen crapped out (which sent me into a nightmarish tech support spiral). The power adapter went belly up a few months ago – and last night, the hard drive decided to take a nose dive without permission. I tried feeding it some Linux, but it still refused to play nicely. I'm off to the online Support form to see if I can get the issue resolved without any kind of vocal interaction. Well, at least the Family Guy DVD boxed set is here to keep me company until Gretchen gets home.

Read more on I'm Gettin' a What?…