You’re sort of boring lately. Or maybe I’m more detached. Or maybe I’m not looking in the right places. Or maybe I just like playing outside and making things with my hands and my brain more than pixels and code. I mean, I’m not going anywhere…don’t think I’m taking a hiatus; I really like you.
I just feel like we’re going in circles of silly lists, linkblogs (guilty), YouTubes and outbursts of “FAIL!” It’s 99% junk food. Can’t we do better?
Let’s take it up a notch,
Joshua
Where did all my RSS subscribers go?
Sad,
Joshua
See you soon.
100° kisses,
Joshua
I love you with the passion of 1,000 suns, but I won’t be able to come see you on your tour stop in Atlanta. The tickets for good seats are $105+fees each and that’s just dumb.
PEHDSTCKJMBA,
Joshua
Don’t quit your day job.
I think you’ll get by without a music career,
Joshua
Your domain expired.
I miss you,
Joshua
When you are choosing your words for pagination, please choose carefully and with a brain.
The previous/next dichotomy apparently throws some of you for a space/time continuum loop. “Previous” means “before.” You’re posting chronologically. So chronologically, if I click on “previous” at the bottom of your page, it should take me to PREVIOUS (e.g. older) POSTS, not to the page I was previous-ly on (full of posts I have already read.)
Please fix this,
Joshua
P.S. You could try the classic older/newer dichotomy if this is too much for you. Or just add “posts” or “entries” into the mix. Whatever you do, stop confusing the internet.
Welcome to the middle of nowhere. Something like 2,000 of you are descending on smalltown South Carolina for NewSpring Church’s Unleash Conference today. We hope you have a blast and get a healthy dose of southern hospitality.
I’m the scary-looking one taking pictures,
Joshua
P.S. Sorry our website is down right now. Apparently it’s a flaky router everything at our service provider. We’re They’re working on it.
I like you, but please stop forgetting my login information and/or crashing iTunes.
Gracias!
Joshua
Why are you making it so hard to subscribe to your RSS feed?
Honestly, it’s adding one link to your homepage,
Joshua
You had it all. and you threw it all away.
Dwell, as a magazine, you were a force of content meets form, the likes of which had never been seen before. Clean typography, brilliant adherence to the grid, huge, well-composition-ed photographs, clever design evolution from issue to issue without ever straying too far from the core of what made you so awesome. I waited anxiously for every new issue to see the ways your designers would change the simplest elements and introduce small alterations that were simultaneously subtle and completely fresh. More than any other source, you were my biggest design inspiration on a consistent basis for YEARS.
And then I pick up the February 2008 issue.
Your redesign has viciously thrown you from the pedestal you so rightly deserved. You made the logo bigger, much to the detriment of the cover. Your typographic choices look amateur and forced (what’s going on with the y-height on some of your header text? It’s so exaggerated.) The dotted lines throughout the interior layout read quick and easy; the show instead of implying. (Am I supposed to cut your layouts out now? You forgot the little pair of scissors graphic.) The new grid is cramped, with hardly any of the breathing room that made your past issues refreshing in the sea of cookie cutter, thoughtlessly-designed magazines on the newsstand. And while I applaud the motivation behind switching to recycled paper, the magazine FEELS wrong now. It feels cheap. Especially the cover. It feels like everybody else, and you were NEVER everybody else.
Please, correct me if I’m wrong. This is like the moment where the pupil feels like the teacher has made a misstep: he clearly sees it as a wrong move, but he desperately doesn’t want to be right. He loves and respects his sensei far too much. I still want to feel “At Home in the Modern World” with you. It just seems like I’ll be doing so for the content only now, and not for the design inspiration anymore.
Very, very sad,
Joshua
When I find that a photographer on Flickr who seems interesting, I try to make a habit of looking at their Favorites. Looking at what they like often leads me to other good photographers and so on and so forth. And then sometimes I find you. You probably have a few photos I like. Or maybe just that one. But I’m not sold on the whole of your photostream; at least not yet.
Conundrum: do I take a chance and add you as a contact? Something about a photo or two of yours is compelling; I can’t quite put my finger on it yet. But I’m scared. What if your photos kind of start, well, sucking? What if you’re inconsistent? I’m very picky, you know. But then again, what if you’re a diamond in the rough and your photo future is so bright that have to wear shades? Maybe I just need to give you a break? If I don’t make you a contact right now, I’ll probably forget to track you down again. And then you’ll be gone forever, into the internet ether. There needs to be a better way.
I want a trial period. I want to kick the tires. I want to know if your photos are consistently interesting enough for me to want to see all of them (ostensibly in perpetuity). I want to try you out without going all “hey, let’s be friends” and making you a contact immediately. Maybe the trial period lasts 2 weeks, and then Flickr asks me if I like you enough to keep you and upgrade your status, or dump you and be rid of your photos forever. Maybe I can set a preference for how long I want the trial to be.
I know I could set this up myself by snagging your Flickr RSS feed and keeping up with that via a feed reader or browser bookmarks. And then I could simply delete you if I stop finding it inspiring/interesting to follow you. Of course, by that point, if I’m still on-the-fence it’s too much effort for something I’m not convinced of, so why bother? If only there was a way to do this within Flickr before I go all commitment un-phobic, I might find you to be awesome. I might discover contacts within community that I never would have given the chance, otherwise. This might be a really cool thing.
Wondering if any other sites are doing anything like this,
Joshua
Ok, ok, I hear you - you were in line on day one and you plunked down $600+ of your hard-earned cash to buy an iPhone and then yesterday, a mere two months later, before you’re even done basking in the glow of the coolness of your new toy, it’s magically (deliciously) $200 cheaper. Ouch, it stings. Woe is you. Etc.
That being said, somewhere along the way I think your love of Apple and their sleek, functional products has gone to your head. You started to think that they’re your friend, that they have your best interests in mind, that all those products exists to put you at the center of the universe and make your life easier and better. You deserve better than this for all your years of dedicated fanboydom. And while all these things are true (in part), the bottom line is that Apple is a company and their ultimate goal is TO MAKE MONEY and TO PLEASE THEIR SHAREHOLDERS (by making them money.)
There’s never that perfect moment where you will buy a piece of technology or gadgetry and be set - something better will come out and the price of your precious will drop. Welcome to commerce. Things devalue. New cars depreciate 33% when you drive them off the lot. How’s that for instant? The timeline for this particular price drop was just a tad shorter than Apple’s typical marketing strategy.
There seems to be a consensus (not necessarily large, but certainly loud) that if you are a loyal customer and an early adopter, you should be rewarded for that. You should get perks. Now, obviously companies should do their part not to alienate their customers, but honestly - Apple exists to take your money and they will take as much of it as you will give them. We prove over and over again that we’re willing to pay more for our products, and they will continue to push that boundary as long as we let them.
Consider it early an adopter tax,
Joshua
The phrase “think outside the box” and/or any of its derivatives is not clever. It is not funny. It does not communicate what you want it to. It has become a cliché, a catchphrase, an advertising jingle, a supposed trump card for smarmy business consultants everywhere. It is a default, easy, tired, overused way for your copy to be completely lacking in originality or anything resembling something compelling. Essentially, it is a way for you to not do your job.
No one cares about your out-of-boxy experiences.
Please stop,
Joshua
All that stands between me and internet brand world domination? For those rare few early adopters or lucky squatters who signed up for various web services and chose urls like flickr.com/photos/blankenship and last.fm/user/blankenship to realize other people with that last name actually USE THE FREAKING INTERNET.
Flickr Blankenship? You haven’t uploaded a photo since September 18, 2005. And Last.fm Blankenship? You’re still listening to music, scrobbler plugin churning away in the depths of your iTunes, but you haven’t been seen on the site since May 2006. Have you people no sense of netiquette? Get the heck out of the city. I need url consistency here.
Please, magically wake up tomorrow, epiphany in metaphorical hand, knowing that your first priority is to eat a healthy breakfast and then promptly delete your respective (neglected!) accounts.
And send me a friendly email notifying said events.
Thank you, in advance, for your url aid,
Joshua (/blankenship)
As I’ve mentioned before, you’re a practically perfect blog-maker. And after a few hours of really digging in, changing styles and such, I’m even more convinced of your almost-perfection. So convinced that I’d ditch Wordpress in a second (including all the hours I’ve put into hacking a future iteration of this blog so it will do… well… exactly what you already do so easily) if it weren’t for one thing. Well, actually, thousands of things - my faithful readers and the 11,716 (and counting) comments they’ve written in response to almost 4,000 posts here over the past 3 years.
While your makers assure us that some form of two-way, reader-to-author communication is in the works, it’s no where to be seen and I’m not a patient man. In short, the people that read this site and comment are 75% the reason I even write online. This is a community. A community I like. I’ve worked hard to be a part of building it and I’m not willing to give that up just to have an internet monologue. That’s the last thing anybody needs.
So, please. Comments. Soon.
My love is a tumbling thing,
Joshua
Knock it off, seriously.
Sick of pointless, poorly-executed corporate identity makeovers,
Joshua
OMGLOLBBQ I love you.
On this day, March 7th, in the year of Our Lord two-thousand and seven, the crew from Unborn Media Inc. (who also run PureVolume) have publicly launched you - the eagerly-anticipated, oft-mentioned, social networking, one-stop cool people shopping network VIRBº.
Having known some of your handlers Ryan and Brad for close to 4 years and getting to know the rest of the team in the past few months, it’s been so fun to watch you grow from an idea, to an actual site, and then see what happens when you gets in the hands of real folks during beta testing. I can say without a doubt that you are the only social networking site I’ve ever found worth my time; that has a lot to do with the friends I know through you, but it has as much to do with your funtionality, customization options, features, and downright simple, wonderful, clean design sensibilities you rock every single day. I will be killing my MySpace page later today. It will be glorious. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I’m sure you approve.
VIRBº, you are close to me as well; I’ve been able to contribute some of your copywriting, brand consulting, and just generally be a “hey, what if you tried THIS” guy for design, usability, and features during the last few months. So many people are responsible for this truly collaborative effort from the UMI crew and the beta testers. It’s cool to see so many user-suggested features making their way into your final look and feel. You are loved. You are cared for. You are about to be the most popular kid in school. Only the school is the internet and you are a website, not a small child.
This is the start of something beautiful,
Joshua
P.S. I’ll be sending some peoples your way today. Hopefully, they will like you and want to be my friend so we can bask in the warm, network-y glow of you together.
Fine print: Get your Virb on. Virb puts all of the things that make you you — photos, videos, blogs — in one place. So you can find friends (and friends can find you). It takes less than 30 seconds to get started: Sign up today. There’s only a few spots every day for now.
Typically, I would be shocked and dismayed by additional charges to purchases beyond the scope of the “full price.” However, since your verbiage-savvy copywriters are so good at their respective jobs, I don’t feel bad about the extra $6.80 per ticket (plus taxes and other charges) I pay in addition to the “full price.” Why? Because you refer to said fees as a “convenience charge.”
I mean, I was just shy of massively angry until I saw that I was being given a “convenience charge.” And so I’m sitting in the office - content - thinking “this is just SO DANG CONVENIENT.”
Clever copy doesn’t make you friendly,
Joshua
You are (apparently) an “internet service provider.” In other words, there is this wonderful resource called the internet, and you provide the service of connecting me to it (for an outrageous fee that only a monopoly could get away with, of course.) The problem is, lately (always) you seem to have this “2 out of 3 ain’t bad” mentality.For instance, typically when I have an issue with you, you simply decide to become an “internet provider” (sort of) and the missing service comes in the form of irritable, unhelpful employees and phone trees so complex I started mapping one out one time while I was being bounced back and forth on hold and eventually just gave up when I RAN OUT OF ROOM ON THE PIECE OF PAPER.This weekend, specifically, you decided to ditch the “internet” part of your duties, and let’s be honest… that’s sort of the most important part.3 out of 3 please,JoshuaP.S. Luckily, due to your weekend of lacking merit, hack director Brett Ratner narrowly avoided getting today’s letter sent to him, expressing how badly X-Men 3 WAS THE VERY DEFINITION OF SUCK.
Who steals car stereos anymore?
While I’m certain we can agree that the movies have lied to us and there is quite literally no honor among thieves, I think I’m slowly beginning to realize that there is very little intelligence among thieves as well. After all, it wasn’t enough that you decided that my vehicle, out of the 25 or so vehicles in our lot, should be the target of your little midnight b&e, but you just HAD to actually break something, didn’t you? Do you know how much a replacement automatic window costs? I will find out soon, so thank you.
If you were perhaps intelligent enough to walk around the vehicle, you might have noticed that the driver’s side window was halfway down anyway. OR, you could have tried any of the door handles and realized that the back tailgate is sans functioning lock and has been since the day I bought the vehicle. I wonder what the thought process was in your head as you approached the SUV?
“I say, good fellow, I should probably check to see if this fine piece of machinery has any unlocked doors or partially open windows and AAAAARGGHHH MMMMMRRRRR HULK SMASH. SMASH, SMASH, SMASH.”
You could have just walked up to my apartment, politely knocked on the door and said “hey, I’m going to break into your vehicle and steal your stereo in a bit” and I would have said, “well, if you must, but let me make it easy on you, the driver’s side window doesn’t stay up very well, so you can just breath on it hard and it will probably fall down.” That would have saved me the headache of waking up to broken glass and the financial pain of having to get the window fixed now. Oh, and the steering wheel column, too… which doesn’t seem to want to give me back my key now. You tried to steal the whole car didn’t you? YOU DID. Silly, thief.
Why does my car have to be thief hot-wiring 101? And why do I have to get the dumb kid?
Sufficiently vexed,
Joshua