Exactly one week ago, we reported that WordPress.com was leading Tumblr in blogs hosted by about 1.6 million, but that the gap was closing quickly. Tumblr wasted no time, officially passing WordPress.com yesterday to claim the blog hosting crown. READ MORE
CNN Money reports that Twitter has quietly acquired TweetDeck, the nifty application that organizes basically your whole Twitter life. The price? Reportedly around $40 million. For months, there’s been speculation that the acquisition would happen, but Twitter reps refuse to comment on the deal. READ MORE
And this is one of them. Some Facebook users woke up to an overwhelming amount of Facebook notifications in their inboxes. A few of those users made their complaints known on Facebook’s “Known Issues” page: “really angry to see all that s— in my inbox today and then to have to go carpal tunnel clicking EVERY SINGLE BOX opting out. FB- I am marking you as a spammer and every thing you ever send me from now on gets dumped into my email doo-doo heap,” wrote one user. READ MORE
Touch-screen technology can be found in all the latest smartphones — with products such as the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Storm, HTC Touch Diamond, and Samsung Instinct, to name a few. But whether or not this trend will extend to business computers is subject to opinion, and application. Certain types of small businesses, for example, might thrive with the help of touch-screen computers. In the food or retail industry, access to a touch-screen to quickly place food orders or view merchandise information provides an intuitive interface for customers and employees alike. HP has just launched its Touch Smart tx2, a convertible tablet/laptop hybrid with a multi-touch screen technology not unlike the iPhone. Users can pinch, swipe, or draw with a finger or two to write on the display, browse the Web, and control media. A feel-good interface On how to decide if touch-screen PCs are right for you and your business, here’s what the experts advise. “Touchscreen PCs are like dirty martinis: they’re right for some, not right for others,” begins Steve Hilton, vice president of enterprise and small and mid-sized business research at the Boston-based Yankee Group. For a small or mid-sized business accounting manager, for example, “a touch-screen PC is probably not so helpful because you spend most of your time on Microsoft Excel or some kind of accounting application,” says Hilton. “But if you’re a graphic designer, Web developer, or other creative type, a touch-screen PC can be a cool idea.” Hilton says Yankee Group has a test panel, a group of executives from small and mid-sized businesses, which tests new technologies for the market research firm. “One group is an online game developer and the designers at that studio simply love the idea of touch-screen computers,” explains Hilton. “So this technology fits a relevant niche in the market.” “Businesses have shown interest in having touch technology — this is untapped to date,” says Anneliese Olson, director of worldwide product marketing for business desktops at HP. “There is a need for easy-to-use, customized touch applications in vertical markets… especially designed for use in kiosks, customer-facing compute spaces, education and training, conference rooms, front desk and lobby areas, and even general office use.” A touchy subject But not everyone is sold on touch-screen PCs. “Even though we’re seeing touch devices coming to market and Microsoft supporting touch in the future versions of Windows, at the end of the day a lot of this functionality is more gratuitous than anything else,” believes Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for the Jupitermedia research group in New York City. PC operating systems weren’t designed with touch in mind. “Unless you’re CNN that needs touch-screen devices to show information during an election, you’re better off saving the money you’d spend on a touch-screen and buy better smartphones or a better class of machine with more memory or better components,” adds Gartenberg. “There just isn’t a lot of functionality in touch for most users,” he says. “The value of these screens is more in mobile devices than personal computers.”
Touch-screen technology can be found in all the latest smartphones — with products such as the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Storm, HTC Touch Diamond, and Samsung Instinct, to name a few. But whether or not this trend will extend to business computers is subject to opinion, and application. Certain types of small businesses, for example, might thrive with the help of touch-screen computers. In the food or retail industry, access to a touch-screen to quickly place food orders or view merchandise information provides an intuitive interface for customers and employees alike. HP has just launched its Touch Smart tx2, a convertible tablet/laptop hybrid with a multi-touch screen technology not unlike the iPhone. Users can pinch, swipe, or draw with a finger or two to write on the display, browse the Web, and control media. A feel-good interface On how to decide if touch-screen PCs are right for you and your business, here’s what the experts advise. “Touchscreen PCs are like dirty martinis: they’re right for some, not right for others,” begins Steve Hilton, vice president of enterprise and small and mid-sized business research at the Boston-based Yankee Group. For a small or mid-sized business accounting manager, for example, “a touch-screen PC is probably not so helpful because you spend most of your time on Microsoft Excel or some kind of accounting application,” says Hilton. “But if you’re a graphic designer, Web developer, or other creative type, a touch-screen PC can be a cool idea.” Hilton says Yankee Group has a test panel, a group of executives from small and mid-sized businesses, which tests new technologies for the market research firm. “One group is an online game developer and the designers at that studio simply love the idea of touch-screen computers,” explains Hilton. “So this technology fits a relevant niche in the market.” “Businesses have shown interest in having touch technology — this is untapped to date,” says Anneliese Olson, director of worldwide product marketing for business desktops at HP. “There is a need for easy-to-use, customized touch applications in vertical markets… especially designed for use in kiosks, customer-facing compute spaces, education and training, conference rooms, front desk and lobby areas, and even general office use.” A touchy subject But not everyone is sold on touch-screen PCs. “Even though we’re seeing touch devices coming to market and Microsoft supporting touch in the future versions of Windows, at the end of the day a lot of this functionality is more gratuitous than anything else,” believes Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for the Jupitermedia research group in New York City. PC operating systems weren’t designed with touch in mind. “Unless you’re CNN that needs touch-screen devices to show information during an election, you’re better off saving the money you’d spend on a touch-screen and buy better smartphones or a better class of machine with more memory or better components,” adds Gartenberg. “There just isn’t a lot of functionality in touch for most users,” he says. “The value of these screens is more in mobile devices than personal computers.”
A crisis or catastrophe lurks behind every CNN headline: Devastating worm attacks vulnerable computers. Laptops stolen, along with critical data. Identity theft costs business millions. It’s easy to feel constantly under siege. But there might be a better way. Some experts say that setting up security metrics may be a less-costly long-term solution. What are security metrics? If measurements and benchmarks can be compared to taking a patient’s daily temperature, metrics are the temperature trends that reveal themselves over time. Like key performance indicators, security metrics gauge both where you’ve been and where you are currently. “Security metrics identify where the organization is accepting a higher level of risk,” says James DeLuccia, author of IT Compliance & Controls: Best Practices for Implementation (Wiley, John & Sons, 2008). “Accurate information about security operations ensures that only necessary safeguards are deployed, and done so where most effective.” Plus, DeLuccia says that security metrics can help an organization identify where they’re spending inefficiently. Areas to measure security DeLuccia suggests conducting an inventory of security applications, hardware, or processes. In conjunction, identify data stores and machines that contain sensitive information. Create performance goals for security control or process, and then take the “temperature” of each item through measurements. By doing so, “the organization delivers the necessary level of services and optimizes security technology,” Deluccia says. Here are a few areas for measurement: Measure your uptime from month-to-month, and document failures due to vulnerabilities in operating systems, network devices, or applications. Conversely, if outsourcing IT security, demand that your key vendors provide reports of their service levels. System security. Public-domain benchmarking tools can reveal your current level of exposure due to flawed setups of Windows, Solaris, or Linux. Online toolkits at sites like the Center for Internet Security indicate best practices. The guides offer step-by-step pointers on locking down your core platforms, including Exchange Server or MySQL server. Cost per user. How much are you spending to protect each user or customer? Can you decrease costs while increasing security over time? Compliance. John Kindervag, chief security architect with Vigilar, an IT security consulting firm, says that merchants using credit cards should measure their compliance with PCI requirements, always striving to better their performance. “Use the self-assessment questionnaires and resources from the PCI standards council,” he says. Medical businesses may wish to do self-assessments for HIPAA. Make comparisons over time Compare month-to-month, year-to-year to find out where underlying problems exist. “You want to look at this in a tactical way, using strategy and measurement,” Kindervag says. And DeLuccia points out that through understanding processes and setting goals, businesses streamline security. Reduce risk through review of users with access to sensitive data; replace poor-performing security software (or consultants) with better options. Applying metrics isn’t a quick, overnight exercise — but neither is growing your business. Measuring security alongside sales leads to a clearer view of your strengths, and where you need to focus your solutions.
A crisis or catastrophe lurks behind every CNN headline: Devastating worm attacks vulnerable computers. Laptops stolen, along with critical data. Identity theft costs business millions. It’s easy to feel constantly under siege. But there might be a better way. Some experts say that setting up security metrics may be a less-costly long-term solution. What are security metrics? If measurements and benchmarks can be compared to taking a patient’s daily temperature, metrics are the temperature trends that reveal themselves over time. Like key performance indicators, security metrics gauge both where you’ve been and where you are currently. “Security metrics identify where the organization is accepting a higher level of risk,” says James DeLuccia, author of IT Compliance & Controls: Best Practices for Implementation (Wiley, John & Sons, 2008). “Accurate information about security operations ensures that only necessary safeguards are deployed, and done so where most effective.” Plus, DeLuccia says that security metrics can help an organization identify where they’re spending inefficiently. Areas to measure security DeLuccia suggests conducting an inventory of security applications, hardware, or processes. In conjunction, identify data stores and machines that contain sensitive information. Create performance goals for security control or process, and then take the “temperature” of each item through measurements. By doing so, “the organization delivers the necessary level of services and optimizes security technology,” Deluccia says. Here are a few areas for measurement: Measure your uptime from month-to-month, and document failures due to vulnerabilities in operating systems, network devices, or applications. Conversely, if outsourcing IT security, demand that your key vendors provide reports of their service levels. System security. Public-domain benchmarking tools can reveal your current level of exposure due to flawed setups of Windows, Solaris, or Linux. Online toolkits at sites like the Center for Internet Security indicate best practices. The guides offer step-by-step pointers on locking down your core platforms, including Exchange Server or MySQL server. Cost per user. How much are you spending to protect each user or customer? Can you decrease costs while increasing security over time? Compliance. John Kindervag, chief security architect with Vigilar, an IT security consulting firm, says that merchants using credit cards should measure their compliance with PCI requirements, always striving to better their performance. “Use the self-assessment questionnaires and resources from the PCI standards council,” he says. Medical businesses may wish to do self-assessments for HIPAA. Make comparisons over time Compare month-to-month, year-to-year to find out where underlying problems exist. “You want to look at this in a tactical way, using strategy and measurement,” Kindervag says. And DeLuccia points out that through understanding processes and setting goals, businesses streamline security. Reduce risk through review of users with access to sensitive data; replace poor-performing security software (or consultants) with better options. Applying metrics isn’t a quick, overnight exercise — but neither is growing your business. Measuring security alongside sales leads to a clearer view of your strengths, and where you need to focus your solutions.
In the first half of 2006, companies spent $2.5 billion to reach consumers online, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers and Interactive Advertising Bureau report. But, to paraphrase advertising legend John Wanamaker, how much of that expense really works? Online, it’s sometimes easier to know, especially when it comes to paying for clicks on search results. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines offer advertising programs that highlight your business when customers search for your related product — and you only pay when someone clicks on your company’s ad. “The biggest advantage lies in your ability to manage your costs and spend strategically through only appearing for people who are making search inquires,” says Garrett French, a search specialist at Market Smart Interactive, a Morrisville, N.C. Internet marketing firm. “Every small business should experiment with paid search if they have an existing website that generates leads or sells product.” Here are ways to make it pay off. TIP #1: Consider the short-term and long-term benefits Click-through ads should not only be looked at as a short-term sales opportunity, but as part of the company’s long-term brand awareness strategy. “Search engines act as brand builders as well as shopping tour guides,” says Catherine Seda, author of Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales. “It’s interesting to note that search engine listings fall behind only print ads as a brand-building tool used by U.S. companies.” TIP #2: Know the different search engines Determine what your needs are and find what services match them best. Google AdWords is the most popular click-through service. Google provides a link to your website and a short text ad every time a potential customer does a relevant search. It has partnerships with America Online, Ask Jeeves, and Earthlink. Yahoo Search Marketing uses a system similar to Google. A key difference is the Content Match program: Yahoo takes traditional click-through ads and places them beside actual articles, not just related searches. Aside from Yahoo news content, Content Match includes articles from MSN, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic.. TIP #3: Find out which search terms consumers use Text-based click-through ads are like classifieds: the more words, the more it costs. Choosing the right words to “trigger” your ad are essential. “Any companies new to paid search should spend time doing keyword research to determine appropriate terms for bidding on,” French says. He recommends using search engine software to find out what words customers usually use to find your site. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines can show how viewers reach you. Basic Web counter software can also give search information. TIP #4: It costs whether they buy or not Search engines charge based on how many people click through the ad — not how many people are actually buying product. Experts recommend evaluating the cost of Internet ads without assuming every ad participant will buy. Also, be wary of “click fraud,” a growing category of crime in which competitors or organized rings of thieves click on your ad to drive up your costs.
Jason Wiener’s girlfriend left him — and that might be good news for your business. What do the love travails of a 31-year-old Chicagoan have to do with you? Suffice to say that Wiener’s quest for a new gal led him to online matchmaking services. His trouble finding a good match, in turn, led the software whiz to realize there might be better ways to find all sorts of things online, not just dates. And so it was that Dipsie — Wiener’s 18-month-old start-up — was born. Dipsie, Wiener claims, will do nothing less than usher in a new era in searching the Web. “We’re able to find more information and get people more relevant results than they’ve ever had,” he boasts. Better searches, of course, will make it easier for consumers to locate products and services, as well as improve how advertisers position electronic advertising — and that’s why you might care about Wiener’s love life. Whether Dipsie, which released its first product in late 2004, will deliver on such promises remains to be seen. But clearly it’s time to revisit the search engine. Google’s IPO didn’t end the search wars, it fanned the flames. Few fields are as rife with activity, and a slew of start-ups are angling for position. Some claim new and better technology than the PageRank algorithm made famous by Google. Others seek merely to be different — filling voids left by the big players. And though the technologies, in most cases, are brand-new and untested, they promise to change the way consumers search the Web — and the way advertisers reach those consumers. A look at three of the hottest search start-ups — all planning services for small businesses by early 2005 — shows how. San Francisco-based Blinkx launched last July and already claims more than a million users. What does Blinkx do differently? Its technology not only matches keywords but also locates related concepts. So if you’re reading an article on CNN.com about, say, the war in Iraq, Blinkx will point to other articles on other sites about those events, terrorism, and Mideast geopolitics in general — with far more precision than CNN’s related-article box. What’s more, Blinkx searches everything — not just the Web but also the contents of your computer, including e-mail messages and attachments and files on your hard drive, as well as weblogs and digital television content, which are currently ignored by most other search engines. The technology then organizes the data into channels: Local (for your personal files), Web, News, Shopping, Video, E-mails, and Blogs. Download the free software and Blinkx monitors whatever you’re working on, displaying links in a toolbar on the top right corner of your screen — in effect offering answers to questions you haven’t even asked yet. Suppose a Blinkx user e-mails a friend in San Francisco suggesting a visit to some Napa Valley wineries. As the recipient reads the message, the Blinkx channel icons will twinkle and change color. Clicking on one will bring up a list of up to 10 links. The Local channel might show the way to a PDF on the user’s hard drive that contains the Napa Valley wine train schedule. The Web channel might lead to the homepages of various wineries. Alongside these, when Blinkx rolls out search-related advertising in early 2005, will be paid ads. But these won’t be like the paid links we know today. Most current search-related ads are based on keywords or fixed phrases. Advertisers purchase the keywords and bid to be listed prominently when the search results appear. “That’s great if you’re Mondavi winery and can afford to buy the word wine,” says Blinkx’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Suranga Chandratillake. But suppose you own a gourmet cafe in Napa that offers special deals for tourists. How do you express your offer in a few words so that you will turn up on searches? “You can’t,” Chandratillake says. But because Blinkx searches both keywords and the broader concepts behind those words, advertisers can design ads based on descriptions and concepts. The technology, Chandratillake says, is aimed squarely at small companies that have increasingly been squeezed out of traditional Web advertising by keyword bidding wars. Write a few paragraphs that describe your offer — such as, “We’re a cafe, a family-owned business, near the wine train. Come in and get a free cup of coffee.” Blinkx will analyze the concepts behind those words, so that if anyone (like our hypothetical San Francisco friends) types in “Napa Valley, wine and coffee,” the cafe will get a high ranking — right alongside Mondavi, Starbucks, or any other big advertiser that’s paid handsomely for the keywords. “The small business that offers something unique for a niche can actually advertise effectively alongside the big guys,” says Chandratillake. “There’s no way of doing that with the Google system.” A different kind of assault on Google comes from Snap, a Pasadena, Calif., start-up out of Bill Gross’s Idealab that debuted in October. Bear in mind that it was an earlier Idealab company, GoTo.com (later renamed Overture), that pioneered online search and pay-per-click advertising and was sold in 2003 to Yahoo for $1.6 billion. Snap wants to go beyond GoTo. Rather than pay-per-click, it offers “pay-per-action” advertising. In other words, tracking software installed on an advertiser’s site registers a fee only after a sale is made. “You pay only when you actually complete a transaction,” says CEO Tom McGovern. As was the case with GoTo and other forms of paid search, McGovern expects Snap’s early advertisers to be smaller firms. “Small and medium-size businesses really made GoTo in the early days,” he says. “Dell and Compaq and Amazon didn’t come for a long time. If you come early, you benefit as far as the cost.” Of course, if Snap is successful, that discount won’t last long. Snap hopes to keep small companies onboard by adding special features for local advertisers — most of which are small businesses. Which brings us to poor lovelorn Jason Wiener. When struggling to find dates online, Wiener began to think the process would be easier if the technology recognized the concepts behind what people were looking for — rather than simply matching traits such as occupation, age, or hobbies. Wiener, for instance, loves to snowboard and might list that as a hobby. But a keyword search wouldn’t match him with, say, a woman who enjoyed skiing — even though they both love hitting the slopes. Hence Dipsie, which searches based on semantic rules rather than keywords or even concepts. Wiener claims his semantic algorithm can sift through Web information and get you in one click what might take several with a conventional engine — if it got you there at all. He also says the ability to map concepts will enable him to index some 10 billion webpages, more than double the four billion claimed by Google. The company’s search engines are currently targeted at consumers and do not yet feature paid advertising. But Dipsie has another product that’s geared to business owners: Dipsie SEO, which launched in late 2004 and is designed to help websites improve their visibility on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Suppose you own a small public relations firm. Dipsie SEO takes a phrase from your site, like “our public relations experts,” and rewrites it in semantically similar ways — “our publicists,” “our publicity pros,” or “our promotions staff” — loading the site’s pages with terms that help it do better on the search engines. Companies pay as little as $29.99 a month for the service — the fee goes up as the volume of information rises. There are scores of similar products and services out there. But most of them involve paying consultants to create new webpages or add keywords to allow buried information to be crawled by search engine spiders. Dipsie, says Wiener, “does it automatically. None of them can.” Keep in mind that none of this exists in a vacuum. Blinkx’s ability to scour your computer and all its programs, for example, is not much different from Google Desktop Search and a similar product planned by Microsoft. Will Google or Microsoft buy Blinkx and crush it, or ignore it? Who knows? At the same time, all the big players — joined by firms like directory giant Dex Media and online business service provider Interland — have launched search initiatives of their own. Many of these are aimed at small businesses, including affordable fixed-price plans that guarantee certain numbers of keyword clicks and local advertising programs. At the moment, it’s the trend that’s important rather than any one particular offering. With technology trends changing rapidly, paying attention now will keep you ahead of the curve — and ahead of your competitors.
(Or how Phil Kaplan, founder of FuckedCompany, learned to stop worrying and love the dot-bomb) Caroline Beddie had no idea what she was in for. Not a clue. The spunky 38-year-old had been a waitress at Ye Olde Kingshead, a tavern in Santa Monica, Calif., for more than a decade, and she thought she’d seen it all: the coiffed celebrities; the stargazers and wanna-bes; the surfers who consumed a little too much Bass Ale. But nothing could have prepared her for the night last January when Phil Kaplan, better known as “Pud,” showed up. Kaplan is the 25-year-old founder of FuckedCompany.com, a Web site that for the past year and a half has chronicled the daily machinations of the dot-com bust. A few days before, as Kaplan prepared to leave his base in New York City, he alerted visitors to the site that he would be visiting L.A. and stopping in for a drink at the Kingshead. Did anyone want to join him? You could say that again. “It was absolutely mobbed,” Beddie laughs. “And they were all there to see him. He was like their local hero. They would ask in these discreet, hushed tones, ‘Is that him? Is that Phil? Do you know which one he is?” The Kingshead is no stranger to stars, says Beddie. Tom Cruise pops by every once in a while, and on the walls hang pictures of prior guests Rod Stewart, the band Oasis, President Reagan before he was President Reagan, Tom Hanks. “But this night,” Beddie says, “everybody ignored the pictures because they were so desperate to meet this Philip person — to build up the courage after a few pints to talk to this guy. All night long, it was ‘Is that him? Is that him?’ I just kept saying, ‘He’s that tall guy at the bar, wearing a denim suit, hanging out and talking to people and signing autographs.’ I mean, people were waiting in line to meet him.” In the line was Kaplan’s aunt, Marlen Mertz. She had wandered over to the Kingshead from her nearby home, hoping to get a moment with her nephew. “It was amazing,” Mertz says, still slightly bemused by it all. “I felt like it was the Beatles! It was almost cultish. When I told people I was his aunt, I became famous, too!” ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVISORY: This article contains frank language, ribald slang, and a prosperous dot-com, which some readers may find disturbing. At the center of all of the brouhaha was Phil Kap- lan and his no-holds-barred Web site that, since its whimsical inception on Memorial Day weekend 2000, has detailed the tortuous ins and outs — mostly outs — of the dot-com debacle. As the site’s own “What Is It?” page proclaims, FuckedCompany “has pretty much turned into the source for news about dot-com companies. Bad news, that is.” The site now attracts some 4 million unique visitors a month, according to Kaplan, and has attained a cultlike following among the pink-slipped or otherwise dot-com disenchanted. It has also become a must-browse for headhunters, journalists, and Internet analysts — not to mention the just plain curious. For one, there’s that name, which is nothing if not attention getting, as if daring one to indulge in a guilty pleasure. Even Kaplan’s nom de Web, Pud, is obscene slang. “The site’s name is so direct and in your face,” says Anna Wheatley, editor of the AlleyCat News, a magazine that covers the business of New York City’s Silicon Alley. “It’s entertaining, if something of a gladiator sport. It’s terrible that you’re being entertained by carnage, a deathwatch. But what he has done so successfully is to make business into a form of entertainment. And Philip has turned himself into a personality, an entertainer. He is totally capturing the zeitgeist now. Totally! And I think he knows it.” Kaplan’s 15 minutes of fame have been extended by the mass media. In the past year, he’s been featured in the New York Post, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Industry Standard, and New York magazine, to name but a few. Kaplan has also made TV appearances on CNN, MSNBC, and CBS’s The Early Show, which hosted Kaplan last January after the Women.com site named him Internet Bachelor of the Year. “FuckedCompany is a site for people in the trenches,” says Kaplan. “It punishes the CEOs and the founders who have laid off so many people. The only people who don’t like the site are the founders — and, good, because they deserve it. All of the depressed, laid-off dot-commers love the site.” “Rock On, Pud” FuckedCompany is also a solid business of its own. Kaplan brings in revenues from banner advertising and online sales of merchandise that includes FuckedCompany T-shirts, mouse pads, and coffee mugs. Kaplan also says he reels in some $90,000 a month from 1,200 subscribers, who pay to search through unfiltered tips about layoffs and barricaded doors at dot-coms. Kaplan estimates that he receives some 400 unsolicited tips a day — often from programmers on the front lines. They’re the nameless souls who played with Nerf guns, worried about their sites’ “stickiness,” and populated the cubicles of Internet start-ups. Today their tips — often made anonymously with online pseudonyms like techdude, dottedeyes, and notagoy — provide the core of FuckedCompany’s database. And Kaplan talks back to them, which is key to FuckedCompany’s mystique, not to mention its sheer drawing power. He regularly starts message threads on his site, and he also E-mails 65,000 of his fans a free newsletter — signed by his alter ego, Pud — that has become increasingly full of what Kaplan calls “personal stuff.” On May 29, for example, Pud wrote, “Today is fuckedcompany’s 1-year anniversary! Woohoo! Hope everyone had a good Memorial Day. As for me, I woke up at around 3:00 pm, watched TV for a few hours, ordered Chinese delivery which never came, just finished about a million bowls of raisin bran, still wearing my bathrobe, ready for sleep again. Okay so Thursday night, I went on a blind date. I was all excited cuz I hadn’t been outside in weeks, recovering from strep throat and just being a loser in general.” After describing the disastrous date, in which he was “coughing all over the place, sweating, spilling crap on myself, trying to act normal,” Kaplan signs off, “i will forever suck. anyway … rock … on, pud.” “The site’s name is so direct and in your face. It’s entertaining, if something of a gladiator sport. It’s terrible that you’re being entertained by carnage, a deathwatch. But what he has done so successfully is to make business into a form of entertainment. And Philip has turned himself into a personality. He is totally capturing the zeitgeist now.” –Anna Wheatley, editor of Alleycat News
