An end of an era in instant photography

February 21st, 2008
Filed Under News, Photography | Leave a Comment

Polaroid Instant Film taking its final shaking. Polaroid has announced that they will cease production of its instant film citing ‘marketplace conditions.’ While arguably the quality of the photos from Polaroid’s instant cameras was terrible at best, it still has managed to hold a cult status in pop culture. As a child, I can remember many family outings, birthday parties and family gatherings captured with instant pictures. It seems that era has reached an end in a surprising-yet-not-so-surprising announcement by Polaroid that they will discontinue almost all of their instant film products. They’re citing digital cameras as the main reason.

I’m split about this one. Personally, I don’t own a Polaroid Instant Camera, so I’m not really affected. But the idea of ’snapping polaroids’ is something I couldn’t imagine going away. Now that most photography itself has moved digital, it just seems to me that the threat of a house fire isn’t what people will fear the most in losing their family photos — it will be a hard drive crash.

Chicago Sun-Times to outsource ad production — The rest of the story

February 20th, 2008
Filed Under Design, News | Leave a Comment

Crain’s Chicago Business is reporting that the Chicago Sun-Times has decided to outsource its ad production to Elgin-based Affinity Express as a cost-saving move.

Here’s what the article, and Affinity’s website, doesn’t tell you about Affinity Express. While it is true that Affinity Express’ corporate headquarters are in Elgin, Illinois, the design work is outsourced to a design sweatshop in Pune, India and Manila, Phillipines. The work coming out of these sweatshops is substandard and awful.

When I worked for Kinko’s the second time around (around the time of the FedEx buyout), they had outsourced the job I had held my first time around with Kinko’s to Affinity. There was a procedure to input the order on their website. One of the items on the web form was creativity, with a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being ‘do it exactly the way the instructions state’ to 10 being ‘be creative.’ One memorable job was someone who wanted an 11″ x 17″ sign advertising Smoothies at $2.99. It was marked to ‘be creative.’ When it came back, this was Affinity’s idea of a creative smoothies sign: The background was a solid dark orange, with black Arial type set at only 72pt, and clip-art ice cream cones - 4 of them - on the left side of the page.

Yahoo! rejects Microsoft’s takeover bid

February 16th, 2008
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For now, it seems, we’ll be spared seeing the terrible, bone-chilling image of “Yahoo! Live” or “MSN Yahoo!” logos gracing the front page of Yahoo!, at least for a while. Last week Yahoo! rejected Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to takeover the internet portal pioneer.

From the article:

“The proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders,” Chief Executive Jerry Yang wrote in an e-mail to employees Monday. “We believe Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo.”

But Microsoft is not one known to back down, shrug their shoulders and walk away. Now that they have it in their collective minds that they want Yahoo! they will not stop until they have it. So why do they want Yahoo! so bad? Google. Yes, Google. They want all other competition out of the way so they can compete head-to-head with Google with the goal of eventually either taking Google down, or aquiring it. So why didn’t they just go after Google in the first place? Arguably, they have the cash. Microsoft could buy a small Latin American country if they wanted to. So I’m kind of perplexed as to why they’re after Yahoo! to get to Google. This is uncharacteristic of Microsoft. They don’t want competition. They want dominance, total and complete.

Personally, I think they’d be better served by strengthening and improving their own product(s): MSN and Live Search. They already offer a lot of the same services as Yahoo! does: Search, chat, photo sharing, groups, mail, and more. If they’d sped the billions they intend to spend on acquiring Yahoo! on improving MSN/Live’s services, I think they’d find it would be money better spent.

Ya gotta love Chicago elections

February 8th, 2008
Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment

Politics on Mayzure.com Voters are told pen had ‘invisible ink’

From the Sun-Times article:

By Annie Sweeney/Staff Reporter

When it comes to election shenanigans, Chicago has been accused of just about everything.
But invisible ink?

Twenty voters at a Far North Side precinct who found their ink pens not working were told by election judges not to worry.

It’s invisible ink, officials said. The scanner will count it.

But their votes weren’t recorded after all.

“Part of me was thinking it does sound stupid enough to be true,” said Amy Carlton, who had serious doubts but went ahead and voted anyway.

As it turns out, Carlton was one of 20 voters at the precinct who were given the wrong pen to use. They were also then told, apparently by a misinformed judge, that the pens have invisible ink, elections officials said.

As a result, the votes were not counted. But officials insisted there were no dirty tricks involved.

“This one defies logic,” said Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. “You try to anticipate everything. But certain things just … they go beyond any kind of planning you can perform.”

By late afternoon, five voters had been contacted and told to come back to the polling place to vote again. And elections staff had left messages at the homes of the rest, Allen said.
Carlton and Angela Burkhardt, another voter who was told the same invisible ink story, spent a good part of the day calling and e-mailing the Board of Elections to get answers.

“I am furious and devastated and I just feel stupid,” Carlton said. “I feel so angry.”

Both women agreed that this election meant a lot. They had spent a good deal of time researching candidates.

“I have been voting since I was 18,” said Carlton, 38. “This is the most important election of my life so far.”

Burkhardt planned to go back to vote late Tuesday. She worried about those who might not be able to return.

“I worry about the other people who were there,” she said. “Maybe [they] can’t get off work. I am a person of privilege. I can go back. What if you couldn’t?”