As some of you may have heard, I am now officially a US citizen — an endeavor that has taken almost eight years and several thousand dollars to complete, despite the fact that my wife was born and raised in the US of A, and that I have lived here for over 12 years.

One of the platforms that both parties are debating on this election year is whether or not to give amnesty to illegal immigrants (and perhaps amnesty is not the right word since these people have not been officially convicted of any crime). Point being…Democrats want to pursue some kind of “pardon” for all illegal immigrants, while Republicans want them to “wait in line like everybody else.” Well, having immigrated to this country myself, I have some opinions on the matter which may or may not interest you.
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Oooh! What’s this? Looks like the web development landscape is ready for some excitement. The folks at MacRabbit (makers of CSS Edit) have announced their newest endeavor which they have named Espresso - an all-in-one approach to web development, an area which (in my opinion) is currently dominated by Coda. I’ll be very curious to see what kind of punch this new app packs, as it promises some interesting features — perhaps the most intriguing being the ability to extend the functionality a-la TextMate with Sugars (or plug-ins to us common folk).

My inner geek is giddy with possibility!

Anyone who works with interactive media for a living knows that social communication platforms have been around for some time, but large companies (who have a tendency to move slowly but impact everything in their path) are just now learning to understand how to use these tools. What will this mean for social media? Well, we’re not quite sure yet, but there is one organization that aims to find out.

The good folks at Best Buy have agreed to host the Social Media Club (a newly formed national organization dedicated to everything related to social media) this Friday at 8am. In case this sounds interesting to you (and if you work in the field, it really should), Doug Pollei has posted more information on this event.

I was just downstairs watching tv with my better half and saw a commercial by American Express that quite frankly, left a very nasty taste in my mouth. You have undoubtedly seen it (as I have already seen it like four times in 30 minutes). It goes something like this:

The scene is of some business people having lunch, and when the bill comes, the one guy pulls out his comic-book hero card to pay for lunch. The clients (who are german) comment in their native tongue that the card looks like something right out of kindergarten. They laugh at the guy, and quickly leave the table.

The commercial then proceeds to show the business partner (a woman) pull out her American Express Gold card and in a condescending tone says “I’ll get it,” dropping her card on top of his “childish” card.

I cannot begin to tell you how wrong this is on so many levels. It’s a typical (and despicable) psychological game often found in the world of advertisers. Make you feel ashamed of what you have so they can sell you their product instead.

What’s wrong with a comic-book card? Doesn’t it still represent money? Did I miss something? I don’t think so…but American Express certainly did. I’m sorry, but I am no less powerful as a consumer because I pay with something other than your piece of colored plastic. The point that you are trying to make could have been done so much more tactfully and respectfully — instead, you have managed to insult a great number of potential clients. Congratulations! I hope you fire your ad agency, because I’m very close to firing you.

A quick post to announce my wife’s new online store – KitchenNut. Anyone who has had the good fortune of being around whenever she comes out of the kitchen with a new batch of cookies will be happy to know that this is the beginning of a series of new hand-crafted goodies. And although I am slightly biased, I must say that they are gooooood.

And on a more technical side, thanks to Luke and Brett at FoxyCart for making the e-commerce side of KitchenNut possible with an easy-to-use shopping cart solution. We’ll figure out a way to get some goodies your way.

So seriously folks, what are you waiting for? Get your goodies on!

Why are you still here? Go on now!