Author: Matt Maldre

Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Group, says in his article, “Richard Branson on Office Ties and the Company Dress Code,” “It used to be that the one male in the room with an open neck (which was usually me) would…

I was tooling through the comics reading platform of graphic.ly and found there are over 500 free graphic novels. Here’s 14 I added to my library. To view 9 more (including a Mr. T comic), view the full blog post.…

A friend posted this picture of someone with a “murse.” Murses get made fun of, because they they remind people of purses. But let’s try to get some respectable man bags out there. Stand behind your man bag. Be proud…

Last week I ordered this INCREDIBLE illustration on a yellow/orange tshirt.

With Kerry Wood retiring in the middle of the season, he won’t have any more stats for fantasy baseball leagues. But what if there was some sort of retirement league? Stats could be kept on: — Appearances at the ballpark…

It would be cool if there was a public way for people to read books at the windows of these unused storefronts. Books would probably be too long, so perhaps one-page articles or stories. Maybe even a short news story…

I created a nuclear arms race between Starbucks, Caribou, and Dunkin Donuts. Last week I tweeted the following to ALL THREE AT THE SAME TIME. They should offer frosting as a topping on coffees. @dunkindonuts @starbucks @cariboucoffee #getonit 10 reasons…

It bothers me so immensely when Wrigleyville residents complain about “how hard” it is to get home on game days. Um. Wrigley Field was here WAYYY long before any of its residents. 100% of the people who live in Wrigleyville…

Replaced incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents. Put all my computer equipment on two surge protectors. Put the computer surge protectors in a desk drawer that is easy to access. Every morning before I leave for work, I turn off the…

Would you like to know how much electricity you use? ComEd offers your past 24 hours of usage history. 1) Go to comed.com 2) Go to the tab “My usage” and select “My usage history” You will see a nice…

Where do you keep your blog drafts? I have a single Google doc for blog drafts. It has 41,558 words. It takes about 30 seconds to save. I’m gonna try Evernote again. I’m gonna take that huge blog drafts doc…

(photo credit of Jabba the Hutt can by bevreview) What happens when your logo looks like Jabba the Hutt? You start to learn the language of the Hutts, Huttese. Achuta [hello] Dolpee kikyuna! [I am a friend!] Goodd√© da lodia!…

In case you missed it, yesterday I posted about how other companies should have an experts bar. A few ideas come to mind: Disneyland and Wrigley Field. Read more about how this would play out at “Disney should have a…

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s twitter account pointed me in the direction of a “Time Out Chicago” article about their new identity, “We are here at the Museum of Contemporary Art.” The commenting is closed on the article, so I’m…

There needs to be an easier way of selling on etsy. Their posting form is way too long. There’s a total of 14 fields to fill out. — Who made it? — Categories — Photos — Item Title — Description…

Looking for a teapot in the Prairie School Style? Good luck. I was looking to buy my girlfriend a teapot for her birthday. She lives in Oak Park the Prairie School center, and she likes that style. I looked high…

We consume a lot. But what do we do with it? I explore these thoughts in a post, “3 keys to doing something with what we consume” on my blog about syndication.

Last week I met someone online that will be attending a conference with me on May 1 for Eloqua. We exchanged contact info via email, and it got me thinking about how when I meet him in person and I’ll…

Do you tell any online services where you are currently are? Foursquare, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook Places? What happens when a service aggregates all the locations of your friends into one service? Find out at “Where are your friends?” on…

The Art Institute of Chicago has this thing on their website where you can browse all their artwork. You can even make collections of their artworks to show to other people! (Read more about “My Collections”) Last week a chicago…

Did you know the great third baseman Luis Salazar of the 1989-1992 Chicago Cubs also played for the 1984 Padres? The despised 1984 Padres that beat the beloved Cubs in the 1984 playoffs. Luis Salazar even played three games in…

On the Grand Moff wookieepedia page, there is an ad for Huggies diapers. I love seeing Huggies diapers next to the Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin of the Death Star.

If you want to buy a bunch of baseball cards from one seller online, where do you go? Checkoutmycards.com has lots of great sellers of cards. But you probably don’t want to pay shipping from multiple sellers. You want one…

The clouds were moving very fast yesterday. I took eight shots–normal exposures, each about 30 seconds apart. Then I brought each photo into one photoshop file as a layer. Each layer got its own hue. And then each layer was…

Base stealers in baseball are the best. Sports highlights should show ballplayers stealing bases instead of hitting home runs. The greatest base-stealer of all time, Rickey Henderson has his own autobiography from 1993, “Off Base: Confessions of a Thief.” Given…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much I consume and how much I actually produce. I think my consuming-to-creating ratio is leaning too much on the consuming side and not enough on the creating side. Over on my blog…

Walgreens writes some unrelevant posts on their wall. I am starting a project where I write silly responses on their wall. What sort of silly stuff am I writing? Find out on my Google Plus post, “Unrelevant Facebook posts?” (if…

Three dance critics got together to talk about “The art of the critic” at the Chicago Cultural Center. — Zachary Whittenburg, Time Out Chicago — Laura Molzhan, Chicago Reader — Sharon Hoyer, New City The three critics were all very…

Did you know your friends can pin stuff to your boards? Yeah! You can add contributors to specific boards on your pinterest. Ideas on how to use collaborative boards on pinterest: 1) Research at work Does your company want to…

I bought “Orange Happy Tree” from the artist Todd Webb. I really like Todd’s work, it’s very optimistic. Here’s my message to Todd when I bought “Orange Happy Tree” on etsy. Wooo! I saw your tweet about the goose, and…

Artsy.net has 15,000 works of art from over 3,000 artists represented by over 200 of the world’s most respected galleries and museums. (AUG 4, 2016 UPDATE: now 350,000 images by 50,000 artists). They describe their site: The people behind art.sy…