I shred about 80% of the postal mail I receive. Most of the items chewed up by my shredder are the old stand-bys – offers for credit cards and insurance – and a few are for charities I have never heard of. As my intuition on junk mail has heightened over the years, many of these go right into the shredder without being opened.

The other day, my shredder stopped in the middle of shredding an item. When I pulled it out, I saw a shiny new Jefferson nickel in the address window. A nickel? Messaging inside the envelope mentioned something about sending the nickel back to the charity, accompanied by many more.

Just as spammers are trying to get their message across, so are snail mailers. Continuing that comparison, are nickels the new Trojan files attached to email? I cannot recall the name of the charity that sent that mailing with the nickel, and they certainly did not get it or a red cent from me.

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Recently I wrote about the canceling of the use of domain names by Internet providers, sending their users into a tailspin to change their email address and notify all of their contacts of the change. Now it seems like Google may be the next to do so.

The search giant lost the trademark rights to the GMail name in the UK, and the company that won the case is now taking the case to the US. This article on the GMail trademark case outlines much of the detail that led to Google losing the case.

Yet another reason to own your own domain name!

Domain Names • (7) Comments • Permalink

There has been much talk about Starbucks' founder Howard Schultz's Valentine's Day memo entitled "The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience." In short, he says that decisions made by the coffee chain in order to scale to its massive size, such as automatic espresso machines and putting beans in flavor-lock bags, have had a detrimental effect on the overall Starbucks experience. Or as I take that, Starbucks stores are losing their mojo.

Will Starbucks be able to turn it around and return some of the magic to the experience of paying several dollars for a cup of coffee? They can look to their neighbor in Redmond, Microsoft, for how to make a dramatic turnaround... from over a decade ago. In the early 90's Microsoft did not have an Internet strategy. Within a year, they were able to turn it around, introducing the Internet Explorer browser and the Active Server Pages language, and take a lead in delivering Internet solutions. Granted they licensed the Spyglass browser and remade it into IE, but they were able to go from nothing to something relatively quickly. Not bad for the early 90’s.

Then again, maybe Microsoft should look to its past for some help itself.

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Today is Election Day in Chicago and many other cities around the country. Winter or spring elections in the U.S. tend to be more for local offices and positions rather than national offices. If voting is going on in your city, town or other name for where you live, please vote.

As much as people think they do not have a say in whom their elected officials are and what they do, this is the one opportunity to make your voice heard. With record lows in voter turnout around the country, imagine what would happen if it were record highs instead. And all of the people, who didn’t vote because they didn’t think their candidate would win, went ahead and voted?

If you are not registered to vote, please let this be a reminder to do so.

Diversions • (0) Comments • Permalink

This past week the language got hot between Chicago and Los Angeles, the American cities vying to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Once a decision is made between the two, that city will be competing against cities around the world to be the host. A decision will be coming in April on the US entry.

Various elements of the plans for the Olympics have already been released. Most of the Olympic village will be on the South Side of the city, and will feature a “temporary” stadium as the main venue for the games. Temporary means it will be torn down after the 2 week event. Other elements will remain, namely the residences that will become housing afterwards. Other existing venues in the city will be used for the games, including Grant Park as a main party spot and Millennium Park for medal awards.

The notion of temporary structures is not new to the Second City. Most all of the buildings and landscape of the 1893 Columbian Exposition were designed to be temporary and are gone, with the exception of the rebuild building now housing the Museum of Science and Industry. Temporary structures is not unique to us, as the stadium from the 1996 Summer Olympics became Turner Field in Atlanta.

I hope this is not completely a case of history repeating itself. Granted, Chicago is a city that believes it has to continually improve and in some cases reinvent itself, which is part of the reason I live here! I only hope that in the planning of changes to the city, consideration is made to develop some structures that, long after 2016, are blatant, lasting symbols that the world came to Chicago to compete. The spirit of the Olympics would build leading up to the event, but those symbols would make it last a lot longer.

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