OK, I’m not sure if I could pull off this look, but these canvas messenger bags are freakin’ awesome.
They were available at superherostore.com, but they’ve since sold out.
In the event that they do become available again, I’ll probably buy all three. They were listed at $29.99 at the time.
Sorry, but I felt the need to write these down. Oh sure, I don’t know the capitals of all 50 states, but I’ve got my jingles memorized. You have to admit that as far as marketing goes, these jingles were money well spent.
They say a man should always dress for the job he wants,
So why am I dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant.
It’s all because some hacker stole my identity.
Now I’m in here every evening serving chowder and iced tea.
Should have gone to freecreditreport.com (yee-hah!)
I could have seen this coming at me like an atom bomb.
They monitor your credit and send you e-mail alerts.
So you don,t end up selling fish to tourists in t-shirts.
Well I married my dream girl, I married my dream girl,
but she didn’t tell me her credit was bad,
so now instead of living in a pleasant suburb,
we’re living in the basement at her mom and dad’s
No we can’t get a loan, for a respectable home,
just because my girl defaulted on some old credit card,
if we’d gone to FreeCreditReport.com,
I’d be a happy bachelor with a dog and a yard
Well I was shopping for a new car, which one’s me
A cool convertible or an SUV
Too bad I didn’t know my credit was whack
cause now I’m driving off the lot in a used subcompact
f-r-e-e that spells free
credit report dot com baby
Saw their ads on my TV
Thought about going but was too lazy
Now instead of looking fly and rolling phat
my legs are sticking to the vinyl
and my posse’s getting laughed at
f-r-e-e that spells free
credit report dot com baby
So check out my new lunch box, which will be replacing the old Godzilla-themed pack that I’ve been using since FOREVER.
Question: Who spends an entire afternoon working on a coverletter, only to notice AFTER sending, that he’s mislabeled the opening as proJECT manager, rather than proDUCT manager?
Answer: Yours truly.
However, that brings to mind an important point; we ALL need an editor. Whether it’s writing code, designing interfaces, or scripting a storyline, collaborating with others will result in a stronger product.
I think that we have a tendency to try and do everything on our own, in order to prove just how talented we are. The problem with that line of thinking is that you could miss an obvious problem.
Let’s use IndyMoms.com as an example. When I first designed the look for that site, the color scheme was based around the color orange, which I liked a lot. However, when I showed it to my wife, she had a very different reaction and I was a bit miffed at that. She suggested an alternative, violet/tan scheme.
As much as I wanted to be right, it was more important that the site be perfect, so we asked several people in the targeted demographic which they preferred. The purple design won 8-0.
The point is that we must encourage a culture of interdependency, where we can bounce ideas off of others.
Our Innovation and Development group uses Basecamp for just that purpose. We set up projects in it and then use writeboards to shape the requirements. For the visuals, we post jpegs and then use the commenting feature as a way for team members to suggest improvements. We also utilize Basecamp to track todos, milestones and documentation for all projects. Y
Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.
You can also give people outside your organization access to as much - or as little - of the project as you need. For example, Basecamp features a simple permissions system that allows you to specify who can see which projects. For example, if you want Employee-X to see only 5 of your 13 projects, just uncheck a single checkbox on the projects you don’t want them to see.
My favorite feature is that it saves me time in the note-keeping and meeting-holding departments. People can access the files at the leisure and they document their comments themselves - saving me time.
Now if only I’d posted that cover letter on Basecamp, first.
I’ve had my first meeting with the new Publisher at The Star and my first impression is quite favorable. He obviously wants us to be more nimble/quick to market, but that makes sense when you consider the pressures that the journalism industry is facing today. He’s tough - but fair - and my spidey sense telling me that he’s going to be a great long-term leader for this organization.
As for whether I’m a director, a VP, etc … it doesn’t really matter because the mission is still the same - to help The Star expand and solidify it’s digital presence to insure that the great people of the city of Indianapolis will be served.
In the end, titles are really about money, and The Star has always been fair to me.
I was doing some surfing today, and I realized that Flash - which is a great tool - is often more annoying than it is useful. The reason for that is simple - the developers that utilize it tend to be one trick ponies. Many of them are masters of the tween and the art of action scripting, but couldn’t do a simple ajax affect if their lives depended on it.
To best utilize Flash, you need to understand that it is just another tool in what should be a comprehensive toolbox. If you really want to serve your clients and users interests, you should build everything simply and economically. Use Flash where you need to use it, but don’t force it to accomplish every little task.
The end result of over-Flashifying a site is that you end up with something that is incredibly difficult to maintain over time - thus driving up production time and costs. It becomes even more complicated once the original designer has handed off the Flash piece to someone else. There’s nothing as frustrating as trying to fix a Flash file that was build incorrectly in the first place.
One thing that I find frustrating is the overused Flash intro. It’s great to see a cool intro on my first visit to a site, but when I come back I should never have to sit through it again. It’s just a waste of my time. Since an intro - which I’m not a fan of anyway - is used to introduce your brand/product/message to the users, do you really want that brand/product/message to be irritating? The answer is a resounding no.
Flash works best as a user-initiated method within an established web 2.0, css framework, so let’s use it that way. To all the Flash designers out there that can’t cascade a stylesheet, it’s time to join learn.
Marvel.com is looking for a Senior Producer / Product Manager, and it might be a good fit for me. It’s a management position (ten people) with a lot of responsibility/accountability - and it sounds like a blast. I’d definitely like to talk to someone there to get a better idea of the day-to-day responsibilities involved to see if I would enjoy it.
The toughest part is just getting an actual interview with Marvel, who I’m sure will receive a veritable boatload of applicants. The question I would ask though is how many have my ambition, drive, sense of humor and incredible people skills. Gosh, I’m so humble right now, aren’t I. Look, if I can make friends with a mugger, surely that demonstrated I have people skills, right? For those of you who don’t know me, I once took a mugger to dinner. Seemed like a better idea than getting killed.
Plus, I need to shake things up in my life and I need a new challenge other than journalism. Don’t get me wrong, things here in I&D are exciting, but if I had my druthers, I’d move to NYC in a heartbeat. I’m sure it would take some work to see the wizzife on the idea, but I think she could be talked into it.
Plus, I could probably save money on comics.
OK, off the soapbox.
Digital designer Matthew Rogers sent me a link for a site that you can use to create background patterns. I kicked the tires and it’s fairly intuitive. Try it the next time you need to create a pattern for one of your clients.
Since Gannett corporate is requiring The Star to join the Metromix network, we’re reimaging indy.com as a content aggrevator and social networking platform. Users will be able to control exactly what content is on the page and where it is placed. Heck, they’ll even be able to pick the color scheme the want - how very iGoogle-ish.
v2 is being build by my ace designer Erik Goens, so my design role is primarily art direction. We’re going for more of a minimalist approach than we did with v1, concentrating on making the site as nimble/scalable as possible.
We’re very early in the build stage so this won’t be launching till the end of the year.
Launched in the fall of 2007, Indy has been home to The Star’s entertainment-related content. It’s built on Ruby on Rails and hosted locally in Indianapolis. Traffic-wise, the strength of the site has been its photo galleries, which were built by our awesome developer (and now development manager) Chris Vannoy.
