Luther Vandross passed away last week after a long long battle back from a stroke suffered a couple of years ago. I'd say I'm a reasonably big fan of his music. I read this coverage of his funeral in the Washington Post.

The author memorialized Vandross as best as it could be said. I'd like to be memorialized the same way, which is as follows:

"Vandross was known as one of modern R&B's great lovermen, and with some 25 million of his albums out there, the man provided the soundtrack to more candlelit seductions than the Census will ever count."

This one straddles the design and research category. I've been asked to suggest an on demand webanalytic tool for a couple of clients. In case you're not familiar with the on demand model, it's an ASP delivered service that folks can use to track page views, path's through the site, and a ton of marketing info. The technology works by the website administrators including a piece of JavaScript in the head of their HTML documents that shoots a beacon back to the ondemand provider. The website administrator then logs into the on demand provider's dashboard to configure and read reports related to their website.

A washington post story just profiled our pal and colleague Sara who rides to work downtown.

Sara's also been involved with reviving the moonlight memorials ride in DC. Learn more and register here.

Finally, don't forget. Ride to work on May 20th. Sign up for Bike to Work DC coming soon.

This item on slashdot refers to a a new bit of research on online consumers. The articles suggests that:

Some have argued that the instant nature of shopping from home over the Internet leads to quick purchases while others have contended that easy price comparisons on the Web allow buyers to do more research first.

Well, no kidding. I contend that consumers use the internet primarily as a research tool and secondarily for making actual purchases. I've got no research to assert my claim, but that's what this type of research suggests, and, without any data on which of these "pensive" consumers made purchases online as well as off, this doesn't really refute it.

Olga and I got married on March 18th, 2005. It was without a doubt the best ceremony and reception I could have imagined. Thank you all who made it possible and celebrated with us - in person and in spirit.

I think most folks who attended would agree it was a lovely time. If you don't believe me, ask someone who was there. Or, check out our growing gallery of wedding pictures. If you've got wedding shots to add to these, drop me a line and I'll give you upload permissions.

We'll add more photos as they come in as well as some streaming audio of ceremony music and some toasts.

The Pope is dead...but he lives on at eBay. There are THOUSANDS of Pope-related items for auction on eBay. Some of them are what you might expect...rosaries, medals, photos. I'm probably not even too surprised by the Pope-Soap-On-A-Rope and the Papal doll that look like a surfer in a dress. But others are aboslutely hilarious.

I challenge everyone to find any better than these.

The top three I could find are:

Pope John Paul II - Rug and Stage from 79 Philly Visit
This is a piece of the stage from when the Pope visited Philadelphia. I was two, my parents were there, but there's no way I'd spend $500 for this fugazi. No bids as of 4/8/05 at 5:30 PM.

When I was in London a few months back I was jazzed to see a bodum store. An old friend of mine had owned a great vaccuum coffee pot with the red and white logo on it. The pot was glass, made of two globes, and made on of the best cups of coffee I'd ever had.

I wandered into the bodum store and was amazed at how many of their products seemed to stand out as easy to use. So, never one to be fooled (well almost never) by swank design shops with expensive coffee cups, I had to buy something to give it a try.

When I got back to the states (since the exchange rate was insane) I bought a couple of coffee cups from amazon and www.wholelattelove.com. You can also get them from the bodum online store, but some of the products are out of stock...

Caught a new show on TLC last night called Town Haul. Someone described the show to me earlier this week as a reality show like "While You were Out," where a team of designers chock full of sophistication remake someone's home while they're duped into going to a themepark for the day.

So I imagined this one would be the same, where some folks were lured out of their small town for the day, while some design team came to town and made a bunch of changes to make their town better. "What could they do?," I thought, "Remove all of the country stores, county fairgrounds, and pickup trucks?" Then, when the townspeople were out at a free-pizza give away two miles away, the design team could replace them with 4 $tarbucks, a polo field, and several volvos?