The Hard-Working Words Blog

OK, I’m biased. I’ve been a hardcore mac user for a few years now and just the idea of going back to the UI Siberia that is Windows sends shivers up and down my spine.

Not that I don’t like the big M. I’ve worked for it in the past, I have an Xbox 360 sitting in my living room and I do the vast majority of my work in MS Word (OK, that last bit is more by necessity than choice. If I had a better option that had the Word track changes feature I’d probably jump on it.)

What really bothers about marvelous and monolithic Microsoft is just how massively mediocre most of their marketing is.

I mean, when you’ve got budgets like I know they have and smart, smart people like I know they hire, you’d think you could come up with better work than, well, this.

So, yea. Doesn’t exactly start you salivating, does it? Doesn’t exactly get you ready to cue up at Best Buy for when this long-delayed update finally drops like a bomb on the sky-gazing, fearful world.

How many man hours and millions went into developing the yawn-inducing tag line: “Bringing Clarity to your world”? How many dozens of drafts did that home page copy go through before it limped broken and beaten onto the Vista homepage?

It’s . . . OK, embarrassing is probably the wrong word. But it’s certainly boring. And it’s got the stink of engineers and middle managers and ambitious ladder-climbers who “just want to put their mark on something” and weary, weary creatives who have gotten so used to having their work ripped up and reorganized that they just gave up.

The worst part? With this limp, lazy, no-risk-taking, no-promise-making site, Windows is setting the tone that all of their partners and hangers-on and immitators are going to imitate for years and years to come.

Last night Dominic Canterbury and I did an encore presentation of our “Top Ten Marketing Mistakes made by Small Businesses and What to do about them” class. We had a great turn out (in fact we were technically overbooked) and managed to cram quite a bit into one long two hour stretch. Dan McComb has posted some comments and pictures (goofy pictures, in my opinion) on the Biznik Blog. Chem it out.

Some of the best modern fiction today is being co-opted by spammers. My regular dose of “C i a l i s” and “v1agro” spam came in this morning, but at the bottom of the frame one of them had this:

“you, Mr. Bourne. And care for you.
Jason looked at her in the shadows, grateful for the darkness; she
could not clearly see his eyes. Then be reasonable and use your head,
he said coldly, suddenly feeling so old, too old for such a
transparently false lack of feeling. We know Carlos is in Moscow and
Krupkin isnt far behind him. Dimitris flying us there in the morning, ”

Which is, of course, from one of the “Bourne Identity” books. You see? Spammers aren’t evil. They’re spreading good literature to the world!

Am I the only one having a terribly hard time focusing on work (or on blogging) the last few days? It’s gorgeous out here. Terribly gorgeous. The type of gorgeous that ruins economies. Even now, typing this little tiny post and getting ready to go teach a Biznik class, my eyes keep drifting off toward the window. I want to go to the park. I want to play frisbee.

I wonder if anyone’s ever done studies on worker productivity and sunshine. Are sunnier places less productive than the dark and dreary? Or do the dark and dreary places see a giant drop in productivity when the sun comes out while shiny places like LA stay about the same all year long?

Hey, guys.

HWW #15 has been posted to the archive. Go dig in. It’s a good one.

http://haddadink.com/newsletter/2006-04-01/

Hey, guys

HWW #15 has just been sent out to the clamoring masses.

It’s a good one. It features a funny/embarrassing story about me. What more can you ask for? What, I say?

Sign up at Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »