archive: bryce.weblogs.com

Today's Silly Story

I can count on my co-worker Mary to keep me briefed on the day's biggest stories. Yesterday she broke the news that the US Pledge of Allegiance has been rule unconstitutional. Today's big story?

CNN is reporting that "one of the biggest reasons that men are delaying marriage is that more and more couples are choosing to live together before marriage. As a result, sex -- traditionally one of the main reasons for men to marry -- is relatively easily available." Right....

Web Wanderings...

Amy Wohl: "If you go to the Enron site and enter fraud into the search engine, you'll receive a number of possibilities, all from the Enron Annual Report, but if you enter honesty, the search engine will be forced to admit it has found nothing at all!"

Corante has a section on blogging that I just discovered via Doc Searls

And Kottke recently posted some poetry about art from Joe Maller

USA Today has two stories about the rise of digital photography and Ofoto, Shutterfly, HP, Epson and others trying to capitalize on the trend.

Intranet Usability

I just learned that our corporate intranet is readying to launch a redesigned site next month. To be honest, I avoid using it much because, while it has a ton of useful information, I can never find anything on it. The user experience is painful. So it just so happened that after two years, I finally unearthed a feedback option and shared my suggestions for improving the service.

In so doing, I remembered a post by John Robb on K-Logs and Jakob Nielsen's 10 Best Intranet Designs of 2001 -- both useful voices in this discussion. So I decided to share them not only with our web team, but also post them here for future reference.

Do you have use an intranet? What's yours like? I'd be interested to hear your experience.

Something New, Something Blue?

Europe's biggest fashion retailer (Sweden's H&M) introduces
wear-once, disposable panties for the summer.
"They are on sale now. They are good to have
in your handbag if something unexpected happens..."
(via today's issue of NextDraft)

US Pledge of Allegiance found "unconstitutional"

A co-worker just shared a really troubling story: Apparently, the US Pledge of Allegiance has been found "unconstitutional" by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. What's next? Outlawing the US Dollar because it says "In God we Trust" on its flip side? This is getting out of hand.

Time Travel

A year ago today, I was dashing around readying for our trip to Europe. Oh how I wish I were doing that again this year. We had such a good time.

Deals

One way or another, e-commerce is going to be successful. That seems to be the attitude these days. I recently received an e-mail claiming to be from Jeff Bezos himself announcing an "experiment" that Amazon is doing with reducing its free shipping to $49 orders.

Trying to beat Amazon at its own game, Buy.com is guaranteeing prices 10% lower than Amazon with free shipping.

And
REI has a 4th of July Clearance 6/27-7/7!

In The News...

The BBC has picked up on the Amtrak "crisis" this week.

Australia has sold the Sydney Airport.

And a 17 year old is sued over posting a fake story online.

Foreign Commerce Just Got More Expensive

Oregonlive.com:
"Banks and credit card companies [have] sniffed out [a] new source of fees this year. Now most major issuers levy 2% or more on overseas credit and debit charges." This is in addition to the 1% already charged by Visa and Mastercard for foreign currency transactions. So much for getting wholesale rates anymore.

Portland News

The Portland Business Journal has an interesting update on North Macadam development plans. And GlobeSt.com has identified the site of the 2003 Street of Dreams: Cooper Mountain.