On last Sunday's episode of AMC's period ad drama Mad Men, John Slattery's World War II vet Roger Sterling exploded in rage at the prospect of pitching to a Japanese client: "Why don't we just bring Dr. Lyle Evans in here?"

The other characters draw a blank on who exactly...

When I used to hang around Brooklyn hipster bars (so, so long ago) there was one tattoo type my fellow denizens sported that was meant to be ironic, even though it's ubiquity served to undercut the snark. I'm speaking of the bar code tattoo, a commentary on the commoditization of...

Google has been known to launch products (hello Wave) that get a lot of initial hype but end up being curiosities at best in the hands of users. This is not to diminish the areas in which Google still holds strong - search and e-mail. So the unveiling of their...

Facebook has recently rolled out major changes that affect personal users, with new privacy settings that allow more control over what you share -- from your profile all the way down to individual status updates. This led to a flurry of wall postings from my friends recommending that I check...

The last few election cycles, including the one just finished, have shown that self-described Independent voters have held the margin of victory in many of the high profile close races. Barack Obama won in '08 in part by successfully courting this group, as did Chris Christie in the New Jersey...

Google announced with great fanfare that they were incorporating results from social media sites like Twitter into their search pages last week. So did their search rival, Bing. The difference in how each company is doing this says a lot about the struggle going on within Google to define what...

As much as it pains me to use the phrase "there's more than one way to skin a cat," the avalanche of news and rumors surrounding Twitter, Facebook and Google all give truth to the old adage.

The biggest news over the past week is that Bing and Google...

I just had an absurdly Kafka-esque experience with Delta Airlines in Atlanta that involved missed connections, a seeming tour of the bowels of the airport, and some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced in my life.

The irony is that the client I was on my way...

I was a mix tape fanatic. Back when Maxell XL-II's were the mark of the audio connoisseur, I was going through a pack a week sharing great music with friends. I was told that my Mekons mix tape served as a de facto Greatest Hits for the bands on Hampshire...