BobLeland.com

IYP’s to LSP’s

Bob — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:57:31 +0000

Ah, the Yellow Pages. A term that brings up memories of the plastic wrapped goodness that graced our front porches every year. As a yout I remember coming home and seeing the unwrapped yellow book on the counter. My mom would leave it for me to open knowing I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The difficulty in breaking through the iron like wrapping was entertainment enough. After an hour or so (And finally resorting to scissors) I would have it fully removed from its plastic cocoon. We received two books every year. One for the larger part of Massachusetts we lived in and a smaller refined regional version for the Metro West area which covered Concord, Acton, Carlisle, Sudbury, Boxboro, Bedford, Lexington and a few others. It was enjoyable to learn about the different zip codes in the area and dive through different phone exchanges as well as the other basic local information it provided (I was a geek). In reality though it wasn’t really local. When I looked up a sporting goods store I would find a tawdry list in small type that was barely readable (My mom actually went out and bought a pair of magnifying glasses at CVS … Read the rest

Waving Goodbye to Bush

Bob — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:00:05 +0000

It wasn’t a typical morning for me today. Usually I crawl out of bed, yawn and scratch my unmentionables before blindly picking out my wardrobe and jumping in the shower. This morning was unique in the way that I didn’t yawn. In fact, I immediately tuned into the events of the day as we were going to be inaugurating the 44th President of the United States. The anticipation was like going to your first middle school dance where the boys stand on one side, the girls the other and the cool kids were in the parking lot with a bottle of mom’s 10 year old brandy. It wasn’t just the fact that I voted for Obama that made the anticipation so exciting. It’s because we all get to wave goodbye to Bush. Forget the low approval rating and the indiscretions. The only real impressive thing he did in office was nimbly avoiding a thrown pair of shoes at a press conference (George, if you read this, I have an opening on my corporate dodge ball team so feel free to ping me). I actually don’t dislike Bush, I don’t really know him, but he was a below average president … Read the rest

What Happened To Fruit Pie The Magician?

Bob — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:22:56 +0000

So this is a sad moment for me. As a kid I adored Hostess cakes. My grandmother lived in Natick, MA and on the front side of the Natick Mall right before Speen Street there was a Hostess Factory and Store where we used to stop on every trip to her house. Driving to see grandma on Sundays was like a Pavlov experiment. The minute we entered Wayland I started salivating for Fruit Pies. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Twinkies, Cupcakes, Ding Dongs, Ho Ho’s or Suzie Q’s but there was something about a Fruit Pie (Yes, it deserves to be capitalized) from Hostess that made all the bad things go away. Plus Fruit Pie the Magician was the coolest. FPTM was the Hostess Fruit Pies mascot and everyday hero to millions of kids across the country. The guy could make Fruit Pies instantly appear with a wave of his magic wand! I mean come on. Could there be anything more amazing to a 10 year old than a cartoon magician who made snack cakes appear out of thin air and tried to save the day with sugary goodness? I don’t think so.

I recently found out that Hostess … Read the rest

Typography and Me

Bob — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:16:14 +0000

I remember driving with my parents to New York (A trip worth forgetting with mom at the helm and her uncanny ability to miss important turns) when I was about 12 years old or so. We were on I-95 in Stamford, CT and the agony of the trip was starting to wear on me as was the funk of the empty McDonalds Big Mac wrapper sitting on the floor next to me. I glanced out the passenger window as we were cruising in the passing lane going 45mph and saw something that sparked my interest. It was a billboard. Now I had seen many billboards in the past but this one erased my ADD temporarily and I just stared at it with an unparalleled curiosity until we passed it. The billboard was a picture of the typical cartoon chiseled handsome guy in sunglasses and it said only two words – Ray Ban. We all know about Tom Cruise and his emerging role in Risky Business around that time but I wasn’t as enamored by the coolness of the sunglasses as much as I was the words – Ray Ban. The words were just downright beautiful. It wasn’t a script or … Read the rest

What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been – Part 1

Bob — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:30:12 +0000

As iconic as the Grateful Dead are my reference to their classic compilation has more to do with my business adventures than it does with the hazy resemblance of cross country concert tours. The last seven years of my professional life have been hectic and daring with a sprinkle of urgency to say the least.

It began with an ending. It was 2001and I ran a marginally successful web design company that I started in ’97. The reason I call it marginally successful is because I had a decent dot com client base and was able to charge an abnormal amount of money for a service that is now commoditized by template engines and cut rate service providers. Back in the mid to late nineties websites were a new and unknown territory for businesses who typically relied on print advertising for getting their message out. Newspapers and magazines were how people kept up with news, pop culture and niche verticals that were specific to their tastes. The idea of digital media was foreign. I will go into more detail about “the web design fad of the ’90s” on another post but wanted to give you an idea of the shift … Read the rest

It’s About Time For Bob To Blog

Bob — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:01:53 +0000

It’s been two years since I originally contemplated starting my blog. Seems like a long time considering it’s a such a natural element in today’s web existence. As a matter of fact one of my closest friends and business partner Ben Saren, who has a great blog (Your Suspect), consistently picks on me about my “pretty looking” blog with lorem ipsum all over it.

Being an entrepreneur and living in the clichéd Web 2.0 space I have experienced enough to justify that I have some valuable insight, enough in fact to start sharing my adventures using this blog as an avenue. This is not to say that my words will have any wisdom but I do feel that by not blogging I am actually hindering my growth as a professional. I have seen blogging evolve from personal diaries and soap boxes into a sophisticated network of vertically driven information vessels. It just seems like it’s about time to jump aboard and see where it takes me.

What am I going to blog about? Well the foundation will be about business, product development and design/UI/UX. The rest will come as I see fit or wherever it takes me. I … Read the rest