Blog: March 2007

RIAA wins Worst Company in America

Whether you think downloading music online is destroying the musical arts or saving them, it's clear that the tactics of suing their customers has had major negative PR consequences for the recording industry. The Consumerist recently ran a "Worst Company in America" contest, RIAA was the big ~~winner~~ loser.

Beating out such customer service disasters as U-Haul and Verizon, and hated representatives of profiteering run amok like Wal-Mart and Halliburton, the RIAA entered the tournament as the top seed and won by the greatest margin in each round. In the past few years, the RIAA has managed to rise above a competitive field to become the most hated organization in the popular consciousness of savvy online consumers.

posted on Mar 20, 2007 9:31 am (comment)

tags: IP, RIAA, service

NY commuter rail travel time map

A fascinating way to visualize transportation systems is the "travel time map", like this London Underground applet and others I wrote about previously.

In today's New York Times, they've created such a map for New York City's commuter railroads, centered on Manhattan; where express trains skip some stops making more distant stops quicker to reach, the lines fold back on themselves.

posted on Mar 18, 2007 11:53 am (comment)

tags: maps, New York, trains

Artichoke parties and Tank parties

Life has been busy. I'm finally catching up on pictures from January, when Jen Donovan departed from The Tank with a fun party, and Danny cooked the latest incarnation of the Guest Chef series, featuring artichokes, the lobsters of the vegetable world (eating them requires extensive disassembly and involves dipping in butter, the edible part is a small minority of the overall mass, and they are delicious).