The Spammy Rabbit Hole

The other day I had an idea to create an ad-supported, competitive trivia site that rewarded top players with prizes. Naturally, I googled the idea first.

To my dismay, there were plenty of results. Clearly not an original idea. Curious to see who beat me to it, I clicked on the first site.



Looks pretty phony, with cheapo Web 2.0 design and specious pull quotes at the bottom, right? So I clicked on the next site:



Pretty similar, no? This site lists "cpaquiz.com" in the footer as the owner. Navigating to cpaquiz.com, one finds this:



One of those weird domains with a stock photo and some links related to the URL. Odd. So I clicked on the third result in my original search, only to find a third nearly identical site.



This one lists "jv interactive" at the bottom as the copyright holder. JV Interactive's site is equally fishy, with silly stock photos and generic copy.



I couldn't help but feeling as if I'd been led into some sort of spammy rabbit hole. All of these dubious companies and websites, somehow conspiring together to accomplish...something. Keep reading...

Chase, You Win

In the four months I spent away from my Atlanta address, I received in the mail 10 credit card applications from Chase (and, incidentally, none from any other companies). The envelopes contained pre-approved apps for three different cards: Freedom, Sapphire, and Slate. Without even reading the terms of each, I was already partial to Slate and Sapphire due to their creative and evocative names (plus Sapphire is my birth stone).

And since Chase evidently REALLY wants me to sign up for a card, I finally caved in.

Please, Chase, stop wasting paper and trying to singlehandedly prop up the USPS. Learn to use email and social media to target people like me. Thanks.

Keep reading...

Even more bad bus shelter ads!

Another day, another terrible bus shelter poster. And once again, it's the copy that's to blame.

Now we all know Hawaii is heavenly and no one wants to leave. But insinuating to potential customers that where they live sucks? That's just not nice.

I totally get what the line was trying to say, but the writer just did a lazy job of saying it well.

Here are some possible alternatives:

Non-stop to Hawai'i. And back home, if you choose.

Non-stop to Hawai'i.

(And back home, too)

Non-stop to Hawai'i.

And back, but only because we have to.

Keep reading...

Siggi's Skyr is So Good

At the San Francisco Fancy Food Show in January, I had the opportunity to meet Siggi and try his eponymous Icelandic yogurt. It was good. Siggi gave me three coupons for free cups of his yogurt, which I have finally used. Siggi's is mainly sold at upscale grocery stores (like Whole Foods), and each cup costs about three bucks. Expensive, but it's the best store-bought yogurt I've ever had.

It's thick like Greek yogurt but not as tart, and comes in a bunch of creative flavors (like Orange and Ginger or Pomegranate and Passion Fruit). Plus it has a ton of protein and no fat, which is CRAZY! I love this stuff and implore everyone to try it.

Keep reading...

Goosebumps is Hideous (and it's not intentional)

If you were a kid in the mid '90s, you grew up on Goosebumps. R.L. Stine churned them out at a clip of about one per month from 1992-97, and everyone I knew had a shelfful.

And while some book fads from the '90s have faded away (au revoir, Animorphs!), Goosebumps can still be found at Borders, albeit with a different cover design. And therein lies the problem.


Book cover design is an art form, and generally speaking, it's getting better and better. And while it may be that publishers often pay less attention to individual covers for a kids' series (knowing that once kids get hooked, they can pretty much phone the rest of the series in), Goosebumps covers of the 90s were always cool. A simple two-color design with nubby, embossed lettering and a creepy illustration (done by Tim Jacobus). They were simple, but they had a consistent quality to them.


The covers of today are not only cheaper (no embossed lettering), the design is also far worse. Incredibly, it's the same artwork, but the rest of the layout is a hodgepodge of horrible design choices. They've tried to make the slime look more realistic with a Photoshop emboss/drop shadow combination, but it ends up looking extremely amateur and fake. And the type treatment has gotten worse across the board--the thicker type of the author's name is too bold, skewing and drop shadowing "Goosebumps" looks awful, and the tagline now gets lost and looks ugly.

How is it possible that this could happen to such a hugely successful series? I am truly aghast. Somebody, do something. Please. Keep reading...