random thinking about everything2004.08.03

There are times when it's hard for me to formulate a post. Most of the time, the format of Assorted Sweets suits my mind better; I really do think about design and geekery and business and online culture all at the same time. My brain doesn't always fit into the nice neat categories (well, not singly at least) that my IA-ness tried to shove this site into.

So in that spirit, I share with you a few thoughts that have been going around in my brain this week:

Was my parents' generation equally in love with its own history back in the 80's? I guess so, to a degree. I remember 50's style diners were popular again in the 80's, but not so much the clothes or the music. Not that I remember at least. I guess you can always tell a person's age by the kind of music or design or movies or culture that makes them wax nostalgic. I do think my generation has distinguished itself by putting such an emphasis on "retro" as the terminology. The fact that I really want to subscribe to MuchMoreRetro really does fix my age rather well for the casual reader, because I remember when videos were sad and lame but cool and innovative and I used to love watching "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller" over and over again, to my parents' dismay. Oh, gimme a break. I was 11. What did I know?

Are we permanently locked into the concept of banner ads, regardless of size, when it comes to online advertising? Popup, skyscraper, rich media, interstitial, they're really all the same thing: a box of color and words and text and pictures hawking a product or service, click the box, please! I wonder this because I have no desire to own a site that is so overrun with ads that the content is hard to find. And really, I have my reservations about "rich media ads" for the same reason. They're in your face. They're intrusive. Isn't there a better way to get reader's attention without trying to draw their eyes away from the stuff they're there to read? So I've been thinking about alternative advertising. What about advertorials? Could this model be adopted online? Sponsorship of content, or even more wonderful: advertisers creating mini-sites with lots of content right on the publisher's site? The soft sell, as it were. Studies in sales have usually shown that people respond better to the soft sell than the hard sell. Are there any sites out there offering this kind of outside-the-box advertising?

I wish I knew why I find SQL so darned hard when I can seemingly pick up any scripting language in a short period of time. Inner joins, outer joins, intersects and unions. Which do you use when? I am so deeply boggled I'm beginning to feel like an idiot. I honestly wish someone would write a pseudocode to SQL parser, so I could write what I want in psuedocode (or even better, fill out a form with checkboxes and radio buttons) and have the SQL generated for me. Argh.

Vertical niche content-driven sites have always been my specialty, always will be. I think they're the best kept secret to owning and running an online business. My biggest problem is that I have more ideas for sites than I have time or hands to accomplish. I already know they'd work. I'm just short on the production end of things. Ideally I should find a few people who would be willing to mentor with me, let me mold the vision and the design and editorial focus, teach about the business aspects, they do the day-to-day work, split the profits, and learn how to do what it is I do. I don't have time to write a book about it, but one on one teaching I could handle.

Beginning to understand why Assorted Sweets works so well for my brain? Ugh. And the darn thing doesn't even shut off to sleep.

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