My friend proudly unveiled the freshly pressed website for her new online business.

What a disaster! Given that her business was built up around the concept of selling coloured craft materials, it made no sense at all that she had chosen to present the whole thing in black and white. Then there was the ludicrous forgettable and utterly unpronounceable URL. It even included a redundant silent letter, for goodness sake!

My friend wanted to ignore my feedback on the grounds that I was a mere academic. What would I know about big business and web design?

I reminded her of my association with large professional services firms and my work on intranet developments with Silicon Valley companies in 1995. From across the room my other friend SL looked on, turning green with envy on hearing of all the fun that was had in the heady days of the dot.com boom.