Dollarshort

Okay, Who Put the Content in My Spam?

2008-07-22T20:31:04-07:00

The trend of receiving news headlines as spam subject lines is nothing new -- I've been getting them for years. They're the regular sort of pill, penny stock and love aid pieces of junk mail sent with subjects that are meant to cause you to actually open the mail. Boring and annoying, but nothing innovative.

However, for the last couple weeks I've been receiving spam with made-up, but possibly true, headlines in the subject line. Just random enough to be real, yet too over-the-top to not have been headline news. Even though I'm not gullible to open the spam, I am gullible enough to question the truth of the headline. And then, I find myself sadly entering this faux news into Google to see if there is any truth.

While I'm sure these are automated using real news headlines and keywords, I love picturing some spammer trying to think these up.

Here are some of my favorites:

Barenaked Ladies Die of Cocaine Overdose [1]
Bill Clinton Found Hung in Bathroom [2]
JFK Memoir Reveals Illegitimate Heir
Miss Universe assassinated on plane home
Police Open Fire on Elderly in Iowa
Pepsi Sues Coke for $892mm
Boy 4, Pulls Off Sister's Ear
Heart Transplant Kid Kills 10, Shots Himself
Michael Jackson Dies in Bed
Rat Poison Found in Water Bottles
Catholic Church Condemns Metrosexuality [3]
Woman Loses Leg in Shock Attack [4]

[1] There was some truth in this one: Steven Page, the singer/guitarist of the band was charged with cocaine possession a couple days ago. The entire Barenaked Ladies collective was not found dead, though. Considering their music, it's an easy mistake.

[2] This is a headline Bill Clinton would probably write himself and he wouldn't be referring to suicide.

[3] This turned out to be an Onion headline.

[4] My favorite, for the clearly blinded-by-the-light mishearing of the word "shark."

Five Facts About Mena Trott

2008-07-19T01:45:19-07:00

When meeting new people at Blogher, every introduction inevitably starts with the "what's your blog?" question. For the first time in the past seven years, I don't have an easy answer. The answer, for years, has been rote -- I'm dollarshort.org, but I blog at something called Mena's Corner. But that hasn't been true for a while. Then I blogged privately at Vox -- an answer that didn't really excite those who wanted to check my posts out. As I awkwardly explained this answer to one woman, I jokingly said "I need to come up with a better answer for tomorrow."

So if the answer is "dollarshort.org," here's a view into the old Mena and five fun five facts about the new Mena.

I still speak at conferences now and then.

I'll be speaking tomorrow at Blogher about taking back "naked blogging." It's all about pulling back from the blogging spotlight and retreating for various reasons. The past week has caused me to do a lot of thinking about my choice to stop blogging publicly (I've blogged consistently and privately on Vox for the past couple years). For example, not making this list of the "50 Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers (don't know what the awkward quotes around female are all about) gave me a chance to reflect on my role in the blogging world. On one hand I questioned if making myself so forgettable was a good thing. On the other hand, I didn't the same pangs of jilt (I like that phrase), I would have felt if this list had been posted a couple years ago. This makes me feel I made the right decision to pull away. That said, I still want to participate and build back my blog. And I still want to be out there and speak. So I'm taking more speaking engagements lately, including The Start Conference in August.

I've been blogging at another blog -- Nested -- off and on since I was pregnant.

This has been a quite a fun project of mine because I started completely anonymously. I wanted to see the blogging experience from the point of view of someone starting completely fresh and didn't want to rely on any of my connections in the blogging world to build traffic. I'd love to get back to the two to three posts daily schedule, but am still struggling to find the time to do this and take care of my daughter, Penelope. Which brings me to the next fact.

I'm a stay-at-home mom now.

When you are a co-founder of a company and your spouse (and co-founder) still puts in crazy start-up hours, it's impossible to ever really be removed from the day-to-day. I'm part-time now which means I come in once a week (with Penelope in tow) and work from home on a individual project basis. I actually have been putting in almost full-time hours designing a project launching soon and have had a chance to blissfully do some pure design work. I'm a stay-at-home mom that just happens to work-at-home too.

Having a child has changed me (in a good way).

I had no idea I was going to be the parent I am right now. Many of the neuroses I carried with me my entire life seemingly vanished overnight. This isn't too say I'm still neurotic, I'm just less neurotic. I like to think of it this way -- I'm like the patient in the mental ward (figuratively) who has gone from self-soothing through rocking to just looking like there's a good song playing somewhere.

Being a mom has forced me to become less self-centered and more aware of the small thing/big thing differences in life. Yes, I still have dreams that I'm being picked on by my seventh-grade classmates but when I wake up I'm able to laugh it off a bit better. Being at Blogher has made me more aware of this change. For example, in 2005, when I attended the first Blogher someone had written a post about how (and I paraphrase) "Mena Trott had the chance to talk to all these fabulous and interesting women at Blogher and instead chose to sit by herself and bury herself in her computer." The person didn't take in account that I'm actually quite shy when it comes to introducing myself. I almost never approach anyone because I'm intimidated, but once we're in a conversation I'll become quite extroverted. Since Penelope has been born, a lot of this fear has disappeared, though I still find it difficult at times to go up to a person and say hello.

I'm so so proud of Six Apart and everyone at the company.

Once again Blogher has been a massive reminder of why we do what we do. I have met women at this conference who have used our products since inception and they're incredibly complimentary and effusive. I've been wanting to say this for a long time: Yes, we seriously messed up when we changed our licensing FOUR years ago. The industry was a bit different then and for a company that (at the time) had only about 500k in funding, we wanted to be sustainable. We may have been stupid with our decisions and execution, but we were always ethical. And, we paid the price by losing a number of our best customers. But to this day, we're a company of bloggers for bloggers who really want to do the best for this industry. Hating Six Apart is so 2004.

Bonus Fact

I'm even more proud of our customers and all bloggers (whether they use our products or not)

Back to Blogher. When I'm talking to these women, I'm amazed how far we all have come. When I go to my dentist or see a relative, I don't have to explain that my job has something to do with "online journals that are often written daily and in reverse chronological order." If someone has internet access, they read a blog (even if they don't know it). It has been a revolution and any tool that can make a person feel less isolated and connected to a greater group is remarkable. I've talked to bloggers who have been saved emotionally (and physically) because of blogging. And that's a really awesome thing.

Posting from TypePad from the iPhone

2008-07-11T22:49:20-07:00

While waiting in line tonight, I was totally thrilled to see the TypePad logo featured in the video playing on the giant iPhone. And now -- with my very first iPhone -- I finally get to use the application that our team worked so hard to bring to our users. Great work, guys and gals!

Seven Seven

2008-07-07T12:34:51-07:00

Today's date (7/7) reminded me to look up the cocktail of the same name that John Travolta's character drinks in Saturday Night Fever [1]. I'm certainly no mixologist so I hadn't a clue what could possibly be in that drink. It turns out that a Seven Seven is made with Seagram's 7 whiskey and 7-up.

[1] Incidentally, I watched Saturday Night Fever for the very first time only a couple weeks ago. It was on television and I had time to kill before heading out to Baby Loves Disco (completely unrelated to the viewing). The movie, unfortunately, only led me to be disappointed by the lack of both desire and dance skills of the babies in attendance.

A Look at Things to Come

2008-06-03T16:39:15-07:00

With my urging, my parents recently transfered all of their old 8mm movies to DVD. I received a copy in the mail last week and had the ability to watch about an hour of baby/kid Mena footage.

For someone who is already prone to the depression that is "oh my God, time is going by so fast and we're all going to get old and die," watching these films is very bittersweet. Still, there are some gems that don't inspire to me to say "aww, the good old days," but instead "this is what I get to look forward to?"

Here's me, probably four or five, being the same Mena I am today, but just smaller:

Dreaming About Childhood

2008-05-21T09:14:47-07:00

The other day, after a particularly stressful dream, I twittered "At what age will I stop having dreams about the mean girls from elementary school?" I should have known that my public acknowledgement of those elementary school demons would only serve as a encouragement to my brain bring them front and center -- all week.

The agonizing thing about these dreams? They usually follow the same script. In my mind, I know what to say and do, but I always ended up regressing to a nine-year old. You know, like a dream.

Here's a little powerpoint to show you what I mean...

I hadn't planned for the New Dollarshort™ to rehash childhood traumas -- that's what archives are for -- and I'm sticking to that decision. However, if I'm dreaming about this shit, it's technically occurring in the present day, therefore I'm not rehashing my past.

Generations of Moms

2008-05-11T15:26:50-07:00

As part as my Mother's Day gift to our moms, I created a photo book of pictures of Penelope (since she's the one the moms really want to see). One page of the book, however, wasn't Penelope but instead a family tree of sorts documenting all the moms in our families going back to Penelope's great-great grandmothers. I'm quite proud that I was able to have a photo of every woman.

I love seeing the visible class and age differences in our two families. While five out of seven of the mothers on my side were born outside of the United States, all of the women on Ben's side were born and raised in California. And for the most part, my collection of moms were born about ten to fifteen years later than Ben's side.

In other mother's day news, Penelope and I were featured in a San Francisco Chronicle story about being online and pregnant/birthing. I loved seeing a photo of Penelope in the paper this morning and I'm certainly going to frame her first press mention.

And yes, I was in labor for 32 hours and it was quite unpleasant. But that's why today I got to have Dim Sum!

Wasted on the Young: Vlogging from the Past

2008-04-30T13:15:42-07:00

Yesterday, I spent way too much time watching teenagers on YouTube bleat and bitch about their daily lives. You have to hand it to these kids with regard to production values -- they've mastered the art of self-indulgence. And they're just so addictive to watch!

It got me thinking. What would my own vlog be like if I had had the tools available now, but in 1994 -- when I was sixteen years old.

I'm pretty sure it would have went something like this (watch it on YouTube for the larger size):

Five Years with Anil Dash

2008-04-23T13:46:56-07:00

I'd be remiss if I let the anniversary of Anil's five years [1] at Six Apart pass without a post here on Dollarshort. Especially since Valleywag already mentioned his dedication in their own special way.

Whether you like Anil Dash or not, few can honestly doubt his passion for blogging and for our company. Even the fine folks who like to accidentally misspell his first name in comments will have to admit he has a zealousness to his craft of evangelism that very few in our industry possess. Even if he drives you crazy with his desire to play devil's advocate or his need for a little exaggeration here or there, Anil does so with such sincerity it's difficult to truly fault him.

Anil is Six Apart -- as much so as Ben or I am. And it's been a pleasure to work with him and learn from him. We were friends before we were ever co-workers and this friendship began as a result of this pathetic post that Anil wrote in 2001. Even if Anil now takes pleasure in mocking his tendencies to bloviate, he is, deep down a person who can still be humbled by some praise or a sincere gesture by a friend.

Since Anil isn't dead and I'm not writing his obituary, I should probably wrap this up. What better way to end a post about his commitment to blogging and Six Apart than with a photo that shows the dedication writ large?. Here is a photo from the week five years ago when he became an "official" employee. He's crashing on the couch in our office -- aka the spare bedroom in the Trott apartment -- after a long night of work.

[1] Today is also the five-year anniversary of our first funding announcement and our intentions to launch TypePad.

I'm a Pioneer Woman, Not a Polygamist!

2008-04-22T16:35:52-07:00

To Ben's dismay, I'm a big fan of those Old Time photo shops that take up real estate at most tourist attractions. Ben hates them, but has, on more than one occasion humored me and taken photos. I know they're pretty tacky and a rip off but I just can't resist the lure of tie-in-back costumes.

So when we were in Old Sacramento this past weekend and I got the urge to take ye old fashioned shot, I let Ben take a pass and instead partnered with my wee buddy who can't yet protest. She had been in a bad mood the entire day, so Ben was worried about a breakdown. But, as soon as she put her little costume on, she started beaming! In fact, with the exception of this photo of the two of us, she was smiling in every shot.

As an aside, in my copious free time, I'd like to start an Old Time Photo business that uses period costumes that are a lot less gimmicky -- like clothing from the 20s or 30s, that is not gangster or flapper-themed, but something that your great-grandparents might have worn in a family photo.