Everybody’s a Critic

For years now, the blog has been viewed as a necessary evil from a PR perspective and a direct channel for bad news traveling at light speed. That’s a fair assessment, but the Internet should be viewed as a boon to another aspect of business: quality control. It used to be there were official critics and official criticisms were published in print, read by subset…

1 min read Archive

Addressing the State of the White House Technology

Since President Obama was sworn in and Whitehouse.gov has switched to a new interface, there has been an endless amount of chatter about the state of the White House's technology. Some discuss the shortcomings, while others defend it as just fine. Tradition and Transition

6 min read Archive

Hate Mail Drives Controversial Website Offline

It’s either a brilliant publicity stunt or one of the gutsiest t-shirt sellers on the Web really lost his nerve. The proprietor (undertaker?) of TshirtHell.com is closing up shop because he’s tired of dealing with hate mail. As a Web writer whose been on the receiving end of more than a few nasty comments, I can say, if you give in to hate mail the…

2 min read Archive

Google Needs A Couple Months to Heal the World

Back in September, Google made an announcement that seemed to reflect it's policy of not doing evil quite well. As a celebration of Google's ten-year anniversary, the company announced "Project 10100" or "10 to the 100th," which is a contest where the prize is you get to help people all over the world.

1 min read Archive

Microsoft Delays Construction Of Iowa Data Center

If you want to compare servers to Hallmark products, Microsoft is no longer the little old lady who buys a shopping cart full of Christmas cards on December 26th.  Instead, the company has decided to send cards to fewer people and save its money for 11 months.  Or, to drop the metaphor, you might just say that Microsoft's delayed the construction of a data center.

1 min read Archive