The King of Pop is dead and a product of the media has ceased to be. From his debut with the Jackson 5 in 1969, to his moonwalk at Motown 25 and the later allegations of child molestation, we as a culture have reveled in his actions. Not only have we consumed Michael Jackson’s prodigious musical output, but also his public (and quite possibly criminal) foibles.

Last week’s post resulted in a number of lovely emails and positive feedback. Thank you for all of your kind words! Writing these articles is a lot of fun, but getting little notes from you makes it even more enjoyable! It’s a beautiful day here in Vancouver, and what better way to start it than with a few random observations?

Things remain interesting around smashLAB. (Interesting is code for “really great and also really fucking hard”.) Lots of new lessons for us, including some that have taught us a little humility, which I’ll talk about in a future post. That being said, here are a few more random observations.

“So, do we just say ‘fuck it’ and change our name?” was the question I started the day with. Over the past year we’d watched pages of accolades and general “good stuff” about our design studio erode into comments like: “smash lab = fail”. (Actually, that was on page one of Google for some time.) Nine years in business and we were contemplating dropping our moniker. How did this happen?

I have a theory. It could prove incorrect or even shortsighted, nevertheless, it’s a bet I’m willing to make. I think businesses on the web are going to get a lot smaller. In the web world, we’re currently experiencing the fallout of the second of two tidal waves. The next one, however, will be slower, more distributed, and come with far less of a shock.

The past few months have been full of wild ups and downs. My wife has been privy to me coming home and looking like I’m going to fall down from exhaustion, freak-out completely, or dance on the ceiling. (Oh, what a feeling!) I’ve made note of some points for myself, and thought I’d share them with you (you can also read #1, #2, and #3). Here goes…

Every week I receive a handful of emails from PR firms, wanting me to write about something they’re helping promote. I rarely do so for them, but it’s not that I wouldn’t. It’s just that their tactics suck. They sell their clients on the notion of “blogger relations” but in fact, they’re treating email like a fax machine. They send the same generic message out to a ton of bloggers, piss everyone off in the process, and then bill their client for doing so. (Nice.)

Somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s likely an idea for a startup that rears its head from time to time. Perhaps it’s an iPhone app that reads minds, a search engine that’s better than Google, or it could even be the best way to buy music online. I can’t tell you how to make it a success, but I can share a few obstacles that you should be mindful of before starting out.

I’m going to risk alienating some of my readers today; nevertheless, I believe this to be an important discussion, worthy of a few ruffled feathers. As I write this, American auto-makers are scrambling to tap TARP funds that might keep them on life-support, and I believe their wish will be granted. I also think it’s shortsighted, disastrous and highly un-American.

I don’t know your design process, so, it would be foolish for me to generalize. For the sake of this post however, I’m going to have to. When I’m finished you can feel free to tell me that: (A) I’m a moron, (B) It won’t work; or, (C) This is how you always did it anyways. Any of those are fine–including (D) You might be on to something. Regardless, here’s my hypothesis.