business
On subscription options
I picked up the latest issue of The Atlantic, mostly to read James Fallows’ feature on Google and the future of the news but as soon I opened the issue, as with any print magazine, a pile of those subscription cards fell to the floor.
Glancing at the cards, I soon found myself slightly confused [...]
Humble Indie Bundle breaks $1 million
Last week I wrote about the “Humble Indie Bundle,” where several independent video games were bundled together and offered up to customers for whatever price they felt like paying.
Well, for the week the sale lasted, the publishers raised $1,082,082.
Buyers were asked to allocate an amount of their purchase price to charity, which came out [...]
My ironic purchase of the latest issue of Wired
I picked up the March issue of Wired today to read editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s feature on the so-called “freeconomy” that’s been moving a long steadily as the Internet has become more popular: free music downloads, reading newspapers for free online, free e-mail from various web mail providers, et cetera.
The purchase was ironic since I had [...]
Been trying to ignore this MicroHoo business…
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
Flickr Resistance Against Microsoft Takeover, originally uploaded by sonicwalker.
But I’ve decided to stop that as I’ve pondered some of the implications.
Oh yeah, and users of the Yahoo-owned photo sharing site Flickr are [...]
Patent laws makes me want to smash my head into a table until I bleed all over the place…
Okay, this being reported as fact on several web sites, but I’m seriously hoping it’s someone’s clever joke and TechDirt and Engadget fell for it.
This is what I hope, anyway.
Apparently, someone has just obtained a patent for a smart phone, that’s a “mobile entertainment and communication device” and is now suing RIM, Nokia, HTC, Sony [...]
Canadian Mobile Data War 2007
For years, Canadians using mobile data devices (Blackberrys and other PDAs) have been getting royally screwed on mobile data fees. Just one year ago, I think most providers base plans included a “generous” 500 kilobytes per month.
That means users could download…five small pictures, per month.
A few months back, it looked like things might be getting [...]
TrueSwitch: Service or creative spam?
I got an e-mail today from some company called TrueSwitch informing that someone has a “brand-spanking-new Yahoo! Mail address”
The problem is, I have no clue who this “someone” is. It would have nice if, for example, this e-mail had mentioned at the very least, what this person’s old address was.
Of course, not being able [...]
Car Insurance Companies: Too Much Information
Going to company web sites makes it easier to shop around…sometimes.
I found a notable exception the other day while trying to find car insurance prices. See, all the major insurance companies DO have a system that will generate a quote based on information you enter. The problem is, they also demand that you punch in [...]
What’s the deal with job interviews?
I’ve realized that yet another great thing about working freelance is that I don’t have to go through the job interview process. Because the way it’s performed today is ridiculous.
First of all, the answer to 75 per cent of the questions they ask are in the cover letter and resume I’d assume they’ve read. After [...]

