Search with Design

It is becoming more clear every day that big corporations simply aren’t equipped to keep up with the pace of the internet at large. Yes, they may have access to all the latest hardware and software, and the ability to hire some of the best talent, but their implementation strategies leave much to be desired.

Not that it’s anything new. Since the early days of the web, corporations have struggled to find their place among the throngs of people browsing the web. But like the Amway salesmen at your backyard BBQ: they’re all push, no pull.

This irreverent look at the internet in 1996 helps to set the scene for how far behind major companies are and will be (go ahead and read that page through, ‘karjalae’ does a great job of lampooning the cavemen of the internet age).
The inexorable march of progress hasn’t made things any better for the heavy hitters in the commercial world. As any tech-savvy person knows, giving tools like Flash, Actionscript and SQL to the technologically un-evolved CEO of a major organization is like handing a monkey a flamethrower: it’s funny until he turns it on you.

Once the craze of just having a webpage was over, the tech-leaders began blogging. And although it took a few years for the bigwigs to catch on, catch on they did. This time, WalMart got caught up in a scandal, hiring a marketing agency to ’spin’ the idea of a couple who RV across America, staying overnight in WalMart parking lots. The outrage of internet users was surpassed only by the absurdity of the PR firm “that truly gets social media” (Edleman) being called out by BusinessWeek (whose web team doesn’t even have a proper www to non-www redirect working).

So WalMart gets another point in the ‘evil’ column and the internet continues to find new ways to entertain millions, and confound commercial entities.

The latest attempt to substitute corporate dollars for internet know-how comes to us from the Spice Girls, the quintet of British harpies, based on ‘diversity’ and backed by a marketing engine that would make Ferrari whimper. If anyone could leverage social networking into a crowd of screaming fans, they can, right?

Yes and no. Corporations are just now finding out that fan sites make money (a trick internet marketers discovered right around the time the iMac was released), and that you can ask people to vote for where they want bands to appear (how much exposure has Eventful had already?). Meanwhile, internet users are congregating at places like Fark, Digg and Reddit, and web designers and internet marketers are running ahead of the pack, trying to create the next social empire.

So when Big Spice asks folks to vote for what city they should play in, of course the internet’s equivalent of punk-music is going to suggest no other city than Baghdad, Iraq (Fark.com always runs the risk of being NSFW, but the first screen seems sterile).

But when the other shoe drops, we all need to remember that money talks, and in that conversation we’re playing in the corporate sandbox.

The bottom line is that the Spice Girls are going to play any venue they please, whether or not social networking votes them on to Mars.

But it doesn’t mean that they “get it”.

(On a side note, I came across this little gem during my research. Thanks, Dan!)

June, 2007 marks the date I officially switched tribes and joined the Ubuntu crowd.

As far as I can tell, Ubuntu is an African word with no direct translation, but which embodies the concept of “being completely inscrutable, yet self-congratulating and better than Windows”.  The truth is that it is a distribution of Linux, favored by many due to its easy install, and similarities to the Windows environment.
But why go all the way to Linux from my previously favored WinXP?  Glad you asked…

To be honest, I saw the release of Windows Vista approaching and realized that I was getting sick of playing a (small) part in the empire-building of Microsoft.  As much as I had hated the switch from my trust Win98 to WinXP, I had learned to live with it after a lot of slipstreaming CDs, backups and tweaks.  But Vista’s DRM-pushing, close-to-spyware using, sanitized like a mental hospital hanging from a cliff feeling just wasn’t going to cut it for me.  So what if it’s pretty?  Nothing runs on it and it will mark every file I create as illegal.

So why not go with a Mac?  After all, they’re powerful, chic, nerdy and they look like a hip young rock star.  Here’s where things get complicated.

I have a serious dislike for laptops.  I’ve never been able to find a laptop which fit the bill for a computer I could actually work on.  I need lightweight, power, small screen, excellent keyboard, durability, battery-life…the list goes on and on.  I’m a laptop snob.  There is only one line of laptops on earth that I will buy and use, and that is the IBM Thinkpad.

I love my little Thinkpad.  The keyboard is great, the battery and weight are good.  Also high on the list is the thumbstick, which is tough to master at first, but once mastered, makes a touchpad feel like drawing in the sand with a stick.

I need my desktop and laptop to sync fairly effortlessly, and because IBM doesn’t make a LeopardPad, I had to shoot the middle.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have my trusty copy of XP dual-booted (although I haven’t seen the familiar green ‘Start’ button in weeks).  I keep it around for one reason, and one reason only: Battlefield 2.

The switch to Ubuntu wasn’t bad, the three biggest sticking points being syncing my iPod (done with Amarok and patience), enabling the ‘Back’ button on my MS Intellimouse (done with some extra drivers), and disabling my on-board sound in favor of the SoundBlaster 5.1 card (accomplished through some text file editing and a reboot).

All in all, the switch has gone great, and it’s only getting better as I play with Compiz/XGL effects and customizing my computer through clever use of Launchers and Terminal.
I think Windows Vista could be greatest thing that ever happened to the Linux community.  More users = more options.

Why not come over for a stay with the tribe?