More big changes are on the way for the site. Last night I bought a domain name. First, I need to apologize to the long-time readers of this blog — I hate changing phone numbers, email addresses, etc, so I don’t like to make people change their bookmarks. But I need to preface this by saying that I never wanted to call the site, or the blog for that matter, “The Go Button.” The problem has always been that the .com was not available. It’s the site of some wifi finder app. What that has to do with go buttons, I don’t know, but nevertheless, the internet is a “finder’s keepers” world, and somebody else found it first. If thegobutton.com had been available, I would have bought it years ago when the blog was still hosted on Blogger.

This past May, I had two weeks off between jobs, and during a feverish four days I learned to code HTML, decided to expand the blog into a full site, hand-coded the whole thing, and launched the new site at thegobutton.net. I did take some time trying to come up with a better name before buying a .net domain, but nothing was good enough, and anything that was was already taken. So I decided that since I had to pick something, I would stick with The Go Button identity even though it’s a pretty terrible idea long-term not to have a .com. My hope was to come up with a better domain name in the first 3-6 months, and get the transition over with quickly before I had built up a lot of long-time readers, and before the GoogleBot got all comfortable with indexing the site. This summer I spent many days sitting on the couch in front of my full-height windows at my apartment at Reagle, just daydreaming and hoping that inspiration would come if I put myself in a relaxing situation. Some ideas did come, but for various reasons they weren’t good enough.

Last night on the Slow Boat to Washington Heights (otherwise known as the A train at 1AM), I decided to use the time to think more about possible names, or at least better logos for the current site. I was thinking that in 13 years working for Dewynters Advertising I should have absorbed more about proper logo design and branding. If you haven’t heard of Dewynters, they’re a British ad agency that has done some logos for theatre. If you know what this

or this

is, that’s because of Dewynters. They know a thing or two about logos. So I started to think, if Dewynters was designing a logo for a musical called The Go Button, about stage managers who talk about stage management and computers (an excellent idea for a musical if I do say so myself), where would they begin?

Finally I had no choice but to drag out these archaic tools called pencil and paper, and began making sketches of logos for The Go Button. Some of them might actually have been nice. But I let my mind keep wandering about images that are iconic to stage management, and came back to the headset (which I already use on the back of my business card, shown here:)

And almost before my brain could think about it, my hand was writing on the paper, headsetchatter.com. Well that certainly sounded like a domain that was available, and while it doesn’t quite have the theatre / technology metaphor of a go button, it’s close, and also suggests a place for discussion and sharing of experiences and ideas, which is really what the site is about. Things said on the site might be the things discussed in typical headset chatter — anything from “how are you liking your new flashlight?” to “did everybody see that there’s a new Starbucks app for the iPhone?”

Once I had written those words, all work on the Go Button logo ceased, and I couldn’t wait to get off the train and buy the domain before some cybersquatter came to ruin my great idea. I was very happy to find it available, and for about $7, snatched it up. I also grabbed the Twitter and AIM accounts for it. In fact, you can go to headsetchatter.com right now, and well, nothing terribly exciting will happen, but it will drop you off at the front page of The Go Button.

So what does this mean for the site? Nothing, in the larger sense. The focus and content of the site will remain the same. Over the coming weeks (my show starts previews tonight, so I should have some more free time), I will quietly be building a rebranded version of the site in parallel to this one. I’m thinking the layout colors may change a little. If all goes well and this really seems like a good idea, eventually the headsetchatter address will be unlinked from The Go Button and will start pointing to the new site, once I need to start testing it online. And then someday thegobutton.net will take you to headsetchatter.com, until in May of 2010, it will probably be released into the vastness of the interwebs.

In all honesty, I plan to use my next day off to stock up on Monster drinks and Mountain Dew, order a pizza, and spend like 18 hours straight working on this. So when I say “someday” it might actually mean “overnight.” It will happen when it’s ready. And once again I apologize in advance for making you change your bookmarks (I advise against doing it before the new site is launched), but I’m very happy that I think I have a web identity that will be more successful in the long term.