Geek Soap Box

Every so often, we the people are reminded of our civic responsibilities in this great society of ours and are called to serve a greater duty, a symbol of our individual, inalienable liberty. I speak, of course, of being called to jury duty. Nothing says democracy like spending a day or two sitting in a [...]

Update: The title for this post should be “Let’s Play Two!!” but only the first word is appearing in my browser.  Eh, stupid WordPress.  So, my apologies if it looks like a moron titled this post or left you hanging. Today marks the renewal and rebirth of Spring as no other day can: it’s the [...]

Clearing out my work Outlook mailbox after the conference.  Realized I had a particularly interesting exact number of unread messages. No, my “l337″ score is not all composed of 13 thousand real, actual e-mail that I’ve blown off.  I also get deluged with messages from system error logs, new Web site accounts, bookstore purchases, and [...]

Going through my Google Reader articles, I came across a recent article on AriWriter that raises the same issue that has been percolating in my mind recently: just when is it best practice for a Web site to force a link to open in an external (new) window? The “Web standard” these days — based [...]

I am pleased to report that my first-ever “foray” — pardon the pun — into the world of podcasting is now live!  Go download “This Week in Media” Episode #173 today and listen to us banter for an hour on advertising addressability and why content is king, live from Transformation 2010 in San Francisco, CA! [...]

Cross-posted at 4A’s Events Blog. Whether you work in the advertising/marketing community, the association world, or anywhere in between, chances are you have been to quite a number of conferences over the years. These conferences are all the same on the surface, to a certain extent. They provide an opportunity to meet and share information/stories [...]

Let’s face it, our lives are pretty decent, and for that we should consider ourselves blessed.  We in the United States and other nations of the “West” are not torn apart by political strife, genocide, or cataclysmic natural disasters.  For the most part, we all are able to wake up each morning, safe and sound, [...]

Undoubtedly, when I return to the office tomorrow, I’ll hear cries and wailing anguish from the Powers That Be about how they know so much more than I do about Web design, communications, and marketing — despite the fact that I’m the only one with a masters degree (sort of) and a decade of experience [...]

In the interest of full disclosure, “House, MD” could be my favorite television show of all time.  The combination of pithy, sarcastic humor, witty banter, and grave seriousness match my own twisted personality nearly perfectly, and I can easily watch each episode time and again, one after another, without even remotely suffering from boredom or [...]

A few weeks ago, I received an offer from Scott Oser at the College of Association Marketing to participate in a series of Webinars tailored to the novices of the association social media set.  After a great first offering — Intro to Social Media with Deirdre Reid (with me as sidekick/color commentator) — today was [...]

(Inspired in large part thanks to a similar post on The Cranky Conservative…) – It’s hard for someone as humble as me to admit it, but turns out I was way ahead of the curve in declaring President Barack Hussein Obama the Anti-Christ: a solid nine percent of the residents of the fine state of [...]

SocialFishing linked this weekend to a pretty cool slide show on “personal vs. professional social media identities” in the world of nonprofit associations.  It’s a rather fascinating issue that likely extends beyond our little insular world of associations into the entire corporate landscape.  Just what is the correct way to engage with your membership or [...]

Back in April, the Current Television Network made waves in the new biz community by boldly soliciting agencies to respond to an RFP for an account review via Twitter, the popular upstart social-networking site usually filled with 140-character comments on what users had for breakfast or other pithy commentary. What made the move so innovative, though, [...]

Sometimes I love my adopted career path. Stolen shamelessly from Jonathan MacDonald.

I was working on a blast HTML e-mail for work, and good old Dreamweaver decided to be extra helpful and tell me the following: It’s an error box that says “No error occurred,” in case your resolution is too small to read the text. Good to know!  Thanks Dreamweaver!

So, a few weeks back, I had to attend a conference in Miami with one of my beloved coworkers.  Since we were flying there together out of Newark Liberty International Airport, we decided it would be best for me to head over to her place in Lodi, near the airport, and leave my car there [...]

Remember last year’s 4A’s Leadership Conference?  The facilities were awesome, and everyone worked hard to create a great program as always, but there was a definite undercurrent of uncertainty plaguing attendees and casting a shadow over the show.  What was happening to the business?  Were agencies going to be shut out of  “digital” (intentional use [...]

Now that April 15th has come and gone, let us turn our attention not to the unjust and coerced tithing of the American citizenry but rather towards our favorite and most humble civil servant and tax collector, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Finance. When last we left Martha Stark, she had [...]

March really must come in like a lion and leave like a lamb, because when I left for Dixie on Tuesday the temperature stood in the frigid teens and 12 inches of snow blanketed bucolic Douglaston.  Today, it’s approaching 70 and I just drove around town with the sunroof open.  Perhaps I brought the weather [...]

If yesterday at the 2009 4A’s Media Conference & Tradeshow was all about transparency, today has seemingly revolved around the generational evolution of the consumer mindset. We have been hearing for over a year now that “digital changes everything,” and today’s emerging themes – as voiced by 4A’s CEO Nancy Hill, GroupM North American CEO [...]

Today’s unofficial opening of the 2009 4A’s Media Conference & Tradeshow featured an interesting array of afternoon panel discussions dedicated to notions of media best practices, digital metrics, government advocacy, and monetization of agency intellectual property.  Throughout it all, the consumer played an integral role, but even more so, I was struck by the constant repetition [...]

This meme is spreading like wildfire across Facebook. So, I’m copying and posting it over here as well. 1. I am utterly devoid of creativity – even as a kid, my stuffed animals had names like Pandy, Monkey, and Baby Bear. 2. The first time I didn’t get a 100% grade on an exam I [...]

Wouldn’t you love to walk into a meeting with an unruly client or bloviating manager and just start handing these out instead of your standard business card? Somewhere, Patrick Bateman weeps.

A lot of very technologically savvy individuals — my boss immediately comes to mind — like to talk/obfuscate the Big Picture with Utopian tales of “The Cloud” and how it will revolutionize business and infrastructure. If you are at all like me, your initial reaction to all of this talk may be to glaze over [...]

No doubt most of us — especially those off from work for 16 days and counting — are lamenting and fearing the impending return to the office that January 5th marks. I know, personally, I managed to accomplish diddly squat of my goals for the time off, and am still as stressed and as frazzled [...]