Back in the latter part of the 20th century, a lot of subcultures held onto a concept called "selling out", a nebulously-defined idea based on a nega...

Security reports from other sites are welcome. Why aren’t safety reports? One of the most fundamental triumphs of the last few decades of open source culture...

Here’s how you do it. Build a platform which relies on cultural creation as its core value, but which only sees itself as a technology platform. Stick to t...

The key to protecting people's privacy on the internet isn't in trying to stop users' data from being sent to different services, it's in poisoning the well by...

It is almost impossibly difficult to explain Robin Byrd to anyone who was not an adult living in NYC toward the end of the last century, though everyone who...

“You can’t say anything anymore! You can’t even make jokes!” There’s a constant complaint from people in positions of power, mostly men, who keep making the...

Tech is more important than ever, deeply affecting culture, politics and society. Given all the time we spend with our gadgets and apps, it’s essential to unde...

Printers: They don’t work. Here’s my wishlist for one that might. If you’ve followed my work for any time, you know I’m fond of pointing out that printers do...

In one generation, the Internet went from opening up new free markets to creating a series of Fake Markets that exploit society, without most media or politici...

Graham Crackers were created to stifle the libido. Marshmallows are a sickly-sweet, cloying blob that, when properly heated, becomes a sort of confectionery na...

Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-sta...

When I used to fly a lot, people would ask me why I was such a big fan of Virgin America. Some of it is the usual stuff — they have wifi and power outlets, and...

Update: I just got off the phone with Popchips founder Keith Belling, who was sincere and contrite as he offered a thoughtful, apologetic response that indic...

The idea of “public space” used to be pretty simple; There were places that we all agreed would be maintained by, and for, the public good. But the past few de...

Considering how much conservatives and right-wing political personalities in the United States claim to hate the liberal media, it’s remarkable how much money...

For the past several days, Apple’s stock has been rising high enough that the company has flitted between being the first and second most valuable company in t...

This morning, I was extraordinarily excited to get to witness Mayor Bloomberg and our city’s new Chief Digital Office Rachel Sterne unveil New York City’s “Roa...

A few months ago, I wrote about fat pages , the unbearable burden of clutter that often makes reading on the web so much less pleasant than it ought to be. It...

Last week, Twitter announced its new advertising system , called promoted tweets. I was at Twitter’s Chirp conference as a speaker, so I got an up-close loo...

Most of my career has been dedicated to communications, either in making tools for enabling it, or in trying to practice the art myself. My friends tend to be...

About seven years ago, Matt Haughey, Paul Bausch and Meg Hourihan ran a very cool early blogging community called Blogroots, which acted as watercooler for con...

I’ve had friends ask why I have advertising on my site; After all, it’s not like I’m gonna pay the rent with the kind of traffic that a Snoop Dogg fansite driv...

This week I figured I’d try something a little bit different. I’m not usually one for product reviews, except for talking about different websites from time to...

From eWeek’s “Upcoming” section, which I’d praised a few weeks ago , comes this interview with Java creator James Gosling . The key quote, for me: Of Goo...

If you’ve been on the Internet at all in the past, oh, ten years, you’ll have seen the ad for Classmates.com that features an improbable matrimonial matchu...

In 1992, Brian Springer spent over 500 hours capturing direct satellite feeds of the video clips that powered both news broadcasts and that year’s presidenti...

The gist: A lighthearted unscientific poll that was created as a PR ploy for a tech company is quickly evolving into a “real” news story, being treated as fa...

So, we talked about Gershwin’s work in inspiring the Rhythm Changes , but his signature work is, of course, Rhapsody in Blue. One of my favorite recent finds...

Okay, these are the links you should be reading on the Internet today. A smart diagram is the new clever writing : LeisureArts charts out my favorite snow...

Because this came up at work today, I’ll repost a link to Pop Culture Addict’s look at Grimace , the terrifying/cuddly McDonald’s mascot-blob. The key point...

My iTunes library, of about 12,000 songs consisting of 60GB of data, got corrupted today. The MP3 files themselves are okay, but all of the metadata is blown a...

About a month ago, Fortune ‘s Jeffrey O’Brien interviewed Seagate CEO Bill Watkins , and pulled the conversation’s most memorable quote for the headline: “Le...

From the New York Times story about Stallone’s new Rocky Balboa , Peter Sealey, who is a former film exec-turned-marketing prof a UC Berkeley, offers: I...

When we were unpacking the delightful Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago, I was marvelling at how well-thought-out the process was. Beautiful, pleasant, and of cou...

Four years ago, I didn’t know anything about diamonds. Then I posted one ill-tempered rant about how annoying and even offensive I found the advertising for th...

Hey, how many companies let you make macaca jokes and say whatever stupid thing you want on their official website? Well, my employer does ! Check out the po...

The upcoming release of Steven Johnson ‘s The Ghost Map served as a useful prompt for Steven’s list of the best books about plagues in the Wall St...

Okay, you probably don’t need to be told that spam is bad. But you might find it interesting to learn about the economy that’s sprung up around blog spam. Good...

Microsoft’s AdCenter advertising service has a demographic predictor as part of their labs; It’s supposed to indicate what audience can be expected to respon...

I was startled by this phenomenally wrong-headed editorial in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond exposes his insecurities by arguing that Craig Newm...

When the site first appeared and all the cool kids were using it, I could forgive the logo. I thought, hmm, ugly and dumb but they’re just starting out and t...

Paul Scrivens has been doing a great job of leveraging his brash personality and formidable talent to make a name for himself, especially in the design world....

A list of things that have brightened my day today: Really good support from NewsGator . I’m always glad people rave about our support team at Six Apart,...

Helllllo, PR Peoples. Like a lot of bloggers, I get pitched from time to time by people who want me to talk about their products. It’s been a few years since...

Dave Morgan of Tacoda provides a detailed overview in MediaPost of how newspapers are getting trounced by online classifieds. The most dramatic change is not...

I am thinking of creating an award for each week’s best display of intellectual dishonesty. That’s not people who are lying, but rather people who are delibera...

controversy ad Originally uploaded by anildash ....

I guess ad space on blogs is worth something. Remember back when Google wouldn’t let bloggers run AdSense on their sites? Now they’re spamming people to convi...

Instead of Rocking the Vote, disappointed Kerry voters can just sit around and wait for the baby boomers to die . As a side bonus, we’ll also get to stop hear...

“ Half the country is not stupid. We’re all stupid. ” Were I a true political blogger, I might add “Indeed.” as my comment here. Instead, I’ll add that I still...

There’s lots of business books that say we should learn from the wisdom of children, and I completely agree. During meetings, you may find the following two ph...

Things are, as always, just fine in the Jackson family. For example, Jermaine has a young son, Jermajesty. As in Jermaine + Majesty. Because that’s a name that...

I hate to contradict Ken Mehlman’s desires, but I think, instead of flooding the web with assertions that a candidate won after the vice presidential debate,...

About 250 years ago, Josiah Wedwood invented the concept of the celebrity endorsement . A scant two and a half centuries later, his clever marketing strategy...

Sure, personal ads are one of the biggest money-makers on the web, with everyone from InterActiveCorp to Friendster being involved in the space, and of course...

Last week, my former employer decided to include an AOL promotional CD in each copy of the newspaper that was distributed in Manhattan. Now, the thing you ha...

Now that we’re in the last few months of the Era of Pop-Ups on the web, I’m kind of curious what the annoying ad format means. I think pop-ups are distinct fro...

I grieve for Mandy Moore. The poor girl has been unfairly lumped in with lesser lights of girl pop stardom, barely staying above Willa Ford levels of obscurity...

The current bane of my existence? Spoiler queens. "Don’t tell meeeeee!" they shriek. You know you’ve got one, too, someone who insists that the wor...

I have an older, kind of broken-down laptop that I wanted to do some research and testing on, so I installed a fresh install of a new operating system on it. H...

Google’s new text-based microad service looks really, really interesting, but why do the Program Policies specifically state "AdWords ads may not appear...

At the weblog business conference that I’m at, Liz just said that she and Nick are frequently pitched by media companies that want permanent links on the sideb...

The cereal that I eat most days has a big blurb on the back of the box that says, "Just two bowls a day for two weeks and you can lose six pounds!" a...

There’s a couple of things I ought to share with you. "Charlotte’s Web 2"? I think I’ve already stated my opinions on unneeded sequels, but what...

Given that Oprah is reviving her book club and featuring a host of classics that are mostly, one presumes, in the public domain, it seems like a tremendous o...

Go take a look at Project Blogger . It’s a service being run by Richards Interactive , designed for marketing products by weblogs and to webloggers. They wer...

Frankly, I don’t understand why skin care products have to masquerade as food. It’s not a recent development, of course, but it’s been getting worse the past...

It’s an odd little peeve of mine, but I am constantly mystified by the captions on Associated Press photos that feature young black celebrity males. First, let...

I redid the way my Daily Links work, so I’ll be able to do a lot more with them. For the 99% of you who don’t know what those are, the sidebar here is what’s...

There’s a good bit of information that I think my readers should know. To those who come here for the silliness, the ramblings about New York, the pontificatin...

This could happen to me , and it probably wouldn’t happen to you. They didn’t mention the appearance of the guy who was actually the source of the problem. Ye...

Matt’s got a great example of how the public domain can be a valuable resource , and while he uses an example where it’s promoting a band, I think the bigger...

Headlines we’d see, if the world were fair: Post-Mortem: The Dirt on Neal Travis...

Nick ‘s finally announced Gizmodo , a geek-toy weblog written by Peter Rojas. And, yeah, Pete’s getting paid to do it. I’ve been watching the content evolve...

I am going to make a bad action movie about the Internet and it’s going to be called "Inbox: Klezstorm!"....

I went to buy a sandwich tonight and the young muslim boy behind the counter was making a concerted, but not entirely successful, attempt not to laugh as he as...

Jeff Jarvis revisits some copy desk stories from his days in the paper business in Chicago: On my first day at Chicago Today, I made the mistake of going...

One of the interesting things that’s emerged from the last year is the propensity for people to use the word, and the concept of "evil" again. I ha...

Ugh, if I had known that it was going to get stupid and boring so quickly, I’d never have mentioned my thoughts on movie-going and culture . But then, every d...

From time to time I like to look at the news, the current events, and try to understand what all the different factions are arguing about. Now, as I understand...

I find corporate marketing mumbo-jumbo to be much more entertaining if you replace key phrases (like the company’s name) with the phrase “My Butt”. This can le...

I overheard a man shouting into his cell phone on the corner of 4th and Broadway: “You’re a giant! Stop complaining! Make it happen!”...

One of the most formidable advertisers we deal with at work are the good people behind Liberator Shapes . They sell products designed to improve your sex life...

I don’t want to crowd in on Aaron’s space , but while Google Weblog sleeps, Google lets slip some info about labs.google.com and, in a scary (but hopefully...

“ It confuses me, because my mom and my grandparents and my parents have been teaching me to be a virgin and to stay away from marriage and boys. “ Eh, don’t...

The tiny school district where I went for my entire education has been the scene of six unusual student deaths in the past few months. The disparate causes o...

Love the Apple, and it’ll love you back. Like New York Solitaire . Like the Daily Tip Sheet . Most places will give something back if you give to them. This...

The interesting thing about the fact that everybody objected to Smart Tags back when Microsoft wanted to include them as an option in Internet Explorer 6 is th...

We get the best complaint emails ever about our, ahem, personal ads in the back of the paper . Those of you who live in towns with local alternative weeklies...

And, from the “I couldn’t make this up if I tried” category comes this bus station ad that I started seeing a few weeks ago: It just begs for a horribl...

I am always surprised at what things get huge responses… People have been emailing me like crazy about the “links in new windows” thing. Let me clarify: I’m no...

I’ve had the corporate U.S. Flag postcards for years, but it was still dramatic to see the giant ad in Times Square tonight, especially on the way to a Jam...

Today, the residents of Casa Dash don’t like water and we don’t like geography....

Those of you still mourning the passing of Ad Critic might want to peruse the (lackluster, but promising) offerings at AdReview and AdForum . There are al...

Boring....

The more hype I hear about this “WHAT” thing, the more I think it’s just another overblown PR campaign. I’m sure it’ll make a big difference to some group of...

Anybody wanna tear the roof off with me? Next Wednesday ....

And now for a bit of time travel: There was a high school in Mississippi that used to have two separate homecoming elections, with two kings and two queens. Th...

null...

Oh, by the way, Manties ....

All we are saying is: Free TV’s Wil Wheaton !...

Linked as a Cruel Site of the Day , August 24, 2001. Just a note to let you know: I already saw it. That forward? I got it. I've gotten it. I do not w...

In one of those quietly reassuring discoveries, Sam , I can now confirm, is good people. And his friends are nice, too....

Although I’m naturally in favor of stronger parent-child relationships, I am a bit skeptical about the newest organization that has formed to promote them. Lad...

I’m tired of reading articles that say things like “Microsoft will start inserting links into pages where there were never intended to be links in the first...

The Wall Street Journal Lies when it says, “ New Windows XP Feature Can Re-Edit Others’ Sites “. I know Mossberg’s usual slant is a of a layman approaching...

Yeah, well, when I get press coverage , I like to take the opportunity to label myself a spammer. Thanks, Hans!...

I know the last thing that the world needs is to have people pushing ads at each other, but I’m going to break my own rule and link to the Lucky magazine thea...

For future reference, the AT&T att.com Style Guide . I wish I could find the style guide for CNet, but my link to that seems to have disappeared....

Over at Disturbing Search Requests , Dan blogged requests for “Anil sex photos” which I actually get a lot of. In fact, I could have my own subsite on DSR f...

Quick take on Action Engine , whose product got blurbed on the news wires today: They make software to translate web-based interaction, especially transacti...

There’s a skywriting airplane going around up in the sky outside my apartment. Only instead of writing "Will you marry me, Ishamel?" or "Eat at...

It’s not reflected on their website yet, but the print version of the AARP’s magazine "Modern Maturity" got a slick redesign… the cover blurbs are...

This is a weird thing: On the side of a phone booth outside my office building, there’s an ad from a company called Streetbeam . (Warning: Wacky Flash anima...

Why have the folks at Underwriters Laboratories begun running TV ads? I’ve always liked UL, but an awareness campaign …? I don’t get it....

ACTV claims that Disney stole the idea for enhanced TV from them . The problem is, these guys are nuts . I met them when they came to our office, and they se...

Dan says "The New York Times ponders the future of web advertising, suggesting that traditional web banners will soon be replaced with pop-up windows, i...

Hmmm … From the makers of Flash?...

I’ve been getting hype from the record label about Nelly Furtado for months, so I had mostly ignored it. But it turns out she seems pretty cool. I can see th...

How Kozmo Works . Read it while they’re still around....

So I’ve been playing around this week with extracting the bitmaps out of all the programs on my computer and seeing what little graphical surprises lie in st...

Gotta love marketing speak. An excerpt of an actual email I received today for testing a new service reads: In exchange for participating in the trial, you...

Hysterical bit of Olympics-themed promo over at Kozmo ‘s drinks section: Celebrate the folks who make the Olympics possible — the corporate sponsors! Drin...

I want to learn a lot more about Paul Rand ....

Seems I was right below, as blog*spot is registered to Pyra . And (GASP!) it has banner ads !...

Interesting article on people who have influence on the web , the traffic-drivers. Seems like bloggers fall into this category pretty well. Which bodes well f...

Hmmmmm ....

It’s actually accumulating now, so today’s theme song is Sometimes it Snows in April …...

I’ve been saying of all the recent too-good-to-be-true offers of services and products on the web, "Get ’em while they last!" and now someone has act...

Now this is a truly bizarre and convoluted story . And don’t get me wrong, I’m as anti-Scieno as the next guy, but shouldn’t the Germans be working a litt...

From the "I couldn’t make this up if I tried" department, Guess who’s visiting my office this week? Luther "Luke Skyywalker" Campbell . No...

The SuperBowl should have shown these ....

Ugh . The phrase "Viral Marketing" has already come and gone, but someone must have forgotten to tell the folks at the (revoltingly named) Epidemic...

I’ll be your best friend if you buy me this ....

It’s incredibly cold, and I wanted to experience some of the futuristic convenience that the web promises to deliver (literally), so I went to Kozmo.com and...

I like the plastic spoons Columbo yogurt puts in its lids. Snap, click, eat!...

On a much lighter note, anyone who’s lived in, or spent appreciable time in, New York City, is familiar with the vagaries of alternate side of the street par...

Coincidence? Right after Columbine, the WB cancelled their episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because of parallels in the high school violence theme. Now, s...

Been following this for a while, but I just can’t get over how funny Alice’s Swoosh Page where she lists dozens of companies using generic swooshes in their...

Dirty Little Secret: The Internet Sucks . My partner in crime Helen wanted to replace a little black dress she accidentally shrunk. Nothing special, a rayon,...

So I was at Internet World today, which isn’t really my cup of tea. Except that I love free kitsch , and what better way to collect than at a trade show?...

So for every "rule" of web design, there are of course necessary exceptions . I hate animated GIFs for the most part. I hate pointless uses of brigh...

Went to the grocery store the other day. (Did I mention I love grocery stores ?) The fellow in front of me in the express aisle had three items: A 6-pack of...

Of course The Weather Channel is useful . But I’m discovering increasing numbers of people for whom the channel has some sort of hypnotic, addictive effect...

While traveling back to Pennsylvania today, I had occasion to reflect on a recurrent observation of New Jersey that I have every time I go through the state....

Phew! That was a long entry yesterday… but enough with the term paper on bioengineering. Let’s see if we can find a fun, interesting site, shall we? Or how a...