Every child's dream is to become a video game beta tester, and I think this is the closest I'll ever come. The DailyMe team has-at long last-completed the new site, and the programmers selected me to participate in the "QA" process before it goes public. Though not quite a nomination for a Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes, you can still imagine how honored I was... and am.

My only worry is that I seemed under-whelmed when initially recruited by Mrs. Boss. This was mainly because I didn't know what "QA" stood for (much like I don't know how to end that sentence without a preposition). I first mused that I was being invited to a "Question & Answer" session about the site, but this theory was just as soon thrown out: I know nothing about the site to answer, and I doubt that phrase is ampersand-optional. The team quickly explained that it stood for Quality Assurance, which leads me to where I am now: a "practice" consumer, viewing our product with a critical eye before someone less forgiving does so. I'm not going to lie: it feels pretty cool to tell my friends that I'm "QAing" today, but the incurably pedantic ones need time to get past the "Q not following directly by U" thing.

My main area of focus on the site is in the keyword search field. Our server uses a set of precise algorithms to match up a user's keyword preferences with later articles, and I want to assure that this process is accurate. You can imagine a customer's dissatisfaction upon feeding the "word" baseball and receiving only obituaries (though I'd say the two topics are equally boring), and that's what I want to avoid.

Other aspects of QAing are equally important, but far less exciting. I've made sure that DailyMe arrives where and when a customer's preferences suggest, and the rest of my time has been spent searching for broken links. The latter is tough, because such links are never obviously messed-up to the naked eye. Fortunately enough, my eye usually wears undergarments'which explains why I was chosen for this task.

In due time, all users will be able to give our site the ole' college try. And I hope it's soon-because I'm getting lonely(grl15) on dailyme.com.

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

In the 1997 cult hit Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, two ditzy heroines claim to have invented the Post-It Note in order to impress their former classmates. A good choice in office supply: just consider the ubiquity of the product, and the rarity with which its origin is questioned. But who’s to say that these little squares of “caution” yellow shouldn’t be given more thought? I’ve discussed the “parking spot” people—and generalized that everyone gets hung-up with some type of weekday minutiae—but I consider the Post-It to be more universal than previous examples. If you’ve never written a Post-It reminder, then you’ve at least received one from someone who has; and if you’ve never received a Post-It reminder, then you won’t appreciate what I’m about to describe.

That being said, I think we have to be a bit more cautious with the device. The habit of leaving Post-Its for oneself and others is obviously contagious, but communities have done little to encourage safe sticking. My boss pastes about 10 on my cubicle each day, and I come home to read a similar number of pasties from my mom. It’s difficult to digest such quantities. In the long-run, their bright color (now in several different hues) loses its edge, and the collective body of Post-Its sinks into a dull background. One hundred notes convey fewer messages than a distinct one.

I theorize, however, that accessibility is to blame for this over-use of Post-Its. Just decades ago, great physical labor stood between us and an adhesive piece of paper: if we wanted to seal an envelope, we had to lick it. But saliva is not a necessary component of the product in question, and so there is much less discretion involved. People will always be too trigger-happy with cheap, easy, sticky notes, and only an intentional price floor can change that.

There is a way to make high-frequency messages more effective through such a medium, though; Mrs. Boss put it into action just last week. She began taking advantage of a Post-It’s stainless glue, various sizes and colors, and started fixing them to creative, “contextually relevant” places. No longer bunched together on my least favorite cubicle wall (it’s pleasant and considerate, but sooo two-dimensional), the notes instead pop up at various, unexpected times of day in unexpected places: my chair, my monitor, my phone. I have since learned that the Post-It program was installed on my computer so the option exists to leave one on my desktop. (It’s actually one habit of the highly effective Post-It-er, and is perhaps the best solution I’ve heard.)

So I say this with affection for Mrs. Boss, who shares in a good laugh with me about her being my window to the working world. By the way, let us know if you find out who really did invent our beloved Post-It!

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

P.S. Don’t rebut that one larger Post-It, filled with ALL of a boss’s messages, would be superior to several separate little sheets. There is something alarmingly pleasurable about crumpling one of the squares into a closed fist and aiming for the trash can, because it symbolizes completion of a task. Nonetheless, I don’t condone the exclamation of basketball terms when a shot lands in the wastepaper basket (e.g. “For two!”, “And it’s good!”, or “Swish!”).

I always count my blessings that the Earth is—beyond a reasonable doubt—round and without end. Our ancestors put up with misconceptions about a flat planet for years, but could modern man even handle the notion of a “terminal edge”? We have evolved into a species that always fears the finish, and our habits verify this fact (when was the last time that television-watchers were satisfied with a series finale?). Of course, this idea is no better put to work than by our farewell customs: people these days would prefer a novelty e-card to the warmth of a genuine goodbye hug, and I’m no exception. This is one reason why it will be difficult to wrap up my internship at DailyMe come the end of the week.

Yes: by this time on Friday, I will be putting my seat in the full upright position in preparation to land at an airport close to college. But before I recede from the blogosphere completely, I’d like to reflect on some of the DailyMe team members who made my summer fun and informative (FUNformative!). The first word that comes to mind is “roast”, but those are usually done with permission.

The CEO/Founder a.k.a. The Founder/CEO: The dual-title alone explains why this guy got the corner office, but don’t think for a second that our fearless leader lacks humility. This is a man who shares a refrigerator with his employees, which says a lot more than “Please! Call me by my first name, and shorten that to a nickname if you’re promoted to management”…we have that policy, too. The Chief was never a stickler on time, but time was often cruel to him. Like the time he bought three atomic clocks for the office, only to find that they were out of synch. We did “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” to decide which one read correctly.

Mrs. Boss a.k.a. 20-Words-Or-Less: I’d like to keep this reflection short and sweet, because that was my direct supervisor’s style. She has plenty of fun things to talk about, but wait until lunch to hear about them. Always the champion of focus--Mrs. Boss can bring a meeting back to center from just about any digression (just about any digression), and sometimes manages to fit an eight-hour workday into six. She taught me a lot about Sales and Marketing (her two areas of expertise), and skillfully wore both hats throughout my internship (three hats, if you count the DailyMe manual-fit cap we produced for a convention).

The V.P.s a.k.a. The Veeps a.k.a. The Two Programmers a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2: These guys only have one thing in common—their job--but it happened to be the only thing I was using as a basis for nicknames; this is why they have been aggregated for the sake of description. Not that they really mind, having spent months aggregating your relevant news with their well-tweaked DailyMe algorithms. You could almost say it brings things full circle. Either way, these are some very particular characters: they like their work hard, their lunches cheap, and their cubicles by the window.

At the end of the day, I’m happy to have worked with such a lively crew. These co-workers taught me both the written and unwritten lessons of working for a company, and the only ones I neglected to learn were in messy cursive. I will sign-off now, but not for the last time. I plan to make guest web appearances throughout the school-year, and cannot wait to keep you posted on all irrelevant things DailyMe. (And of course the actual launch of DailyMe, scheduled in the upcoming weeks!)

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

www.dailyme.com

I used to wonder why my co-workers were so fussy about keeping the office locked, but that was before I met yesterday's odd intruder. It was an experience worth sharing, but one that has also made me wiser.

That's not to say, of course, that my prior stance was unjustifiable. Though I can't think of physical obstacle besides the lock that would stand between an ill-willed stranger and Suite 135, the random-osity of such a hypothetical has always kept my fear at bay. Plus, I'd imagine most strange visitors are into the "go big or go home" thing.

The answer to that question entered the premises at around 10:41 yesterday morning, accompanied by a stack of loose papers and not much else. He cleverly introduced himself with all the boring words known to thwart further inquiry ("deputy", "inspector", "appraiser", "property", "tax", "local"), and subsequently showed me his files. Comprised of only an out-dated list of building tenants and some scrawled notes in the margins, the literature—and visit--felt alarmingly unofficial. My sentiments were compounded moments later when he entered the conference room to interrupt a meeting between the CEO and our editorial consultants. It was here that he requested only a business card, declaring that he was just "scouting" for his "group".

We probably would have pressed our "scout" to reveal more about his group, but he had already switched into consumer mode. I'm usually flattered when someone develops an interest in the product upon hearing its name, but this was a bit much: he began dancing towards the table, bellowing, "Is this one of those online companies?!" He may have gotten an abridged explanation if no theatrics were involved (and if a meeting wasn't in progress), but was instead met with a polite request to leave. He departed, leaving me the rest of morning to analyze his behavior.

It didn't take long for me to conclude the guy was creepy, but I also constructed two scenarios to explain his "boogying":

1. As a charismatic orator, he wanted to emphasize his words with gestures. Considering the mechanical, robotic nature of his moves, it can be gathered that he associates "those online companies" with the distopic effects of technological reliance in the Digital Age (killer machines, oppression, terminators, et al).
2. Controlled substances.

On a side note, I'm pleased that someone finally made use of the chairs in our mini-lobby. Our inspector friend enjoyed the leather guest seats both before and after his ad-hoc meeting with the staff, and praised the lumbar support in particular. Comfort is one of the few areas where you can trust a stranger, so I accepted his review at face value.

I now know how easily something bizarre can seep into the white-collar working day. Hopefully this newfound insecurity won't approach mania, because it would be tough to wire my cube with an alarm system.

Peace, Love, Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

We recently began our first film project at the DailyMe HQ, and I can't stop saying "Lights, Camera, Action!”. An unnecessary utterance (in that I usually hold the handy-cam), but one that makes-up for the lack of expertise and studio resources involved in our visual media debut.

We embarked on this project with nothing but a few steady camera-hands and the pleats of our dress pants, but the intentionally low-budget clip is coming along nicely. It will be available wherever blogs are read (or videos are watched) sometime in coming weeks, most likely in a streaming video format (as opposed to what?). We are not releasing many details about the video yet, but it is designed to give viewers a look inside an intern’s head throughout his daily office doings. The film employs modern innovations like sound and color, but has few other special effects. We figured you’d manage, but are having our footage professionally edited to be safe.

The three-day shoot was an event of trial and error, and our vision evolved significantly as time passed. The nightly break in filming was what really set me off, though, as I soon forgot the importance of consistency. Consequently, several deleted second-day scenes featured me inexplicably decked out in a new shirt color with shorter finger nails. Realizing the mistake, I offered to come back later with a blue button-down and some acrylics…but they only cared about the former. In the end, we had no trouble re-creating the first day’s conditions (barring weather), keeping both my hands and blue dress-shirt dirty through Friday. Find me another intern/actor who stays clean after doing his own stunts!

I will alert you as to the film’s release in coming posts. When you finally see it, look out for some unannounced Daily Me staffer cameos (won’t name names yet). Until then, I suggest all student readers out there start purchasing their school supplies while the deals are hot. At this point, there are probably GIVING protractors away.

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern