Ben Woods is a freelance writer who has written workplace- and humor-related articles for Belo Corporation and Scripps Interactive Newspaper Group websites, American City Business Journal newspapers and other technology and independent media websites. His first book, a tech-humor fiction novel titled The Developers, delves into government conspiracy, online privacy and crazy people on the Internet.

He works in Baltimore as a web developer for Advertising.com, a Time Warner AOL subsidiary and the largest online display advertising network in the U.S. and U.K. During the past five years, he has held full-time computer programming positions with companies large and small, collected a stack of employee manuals and health insurance cards and worked with a litany of CEOs, PMPs, BBMs and A-HOLEs.

Woods has a journalism degree from Purdue University and is working on a master's degree in Professional Studies at Towson University in Baltimore.

BenWoods.com
This website is the home for author, columnist and web developer Ben Woods. This site is home to my past and current attempts at combining humor and technology into a worthwhile read.

The Developers (The easiest thing to find on the Internet: crazy people.)
The Developers mixes the insane and obscene with technology, romance and pop culture. But while the book's web development group tries to make its mark on the virtual world, it encounters pre-eminent issues that will soon be shaping the Internet of the future: Are individuals losing their remaining privacy due to the World Wide Web? Will online social interaction eventually replace in-person gatherings as a necessary means?

Corporate Ties
With the financial world in constant flux, some businesses take preventative action, at the expense of its personnel, to avoid crisis situations. For example, in June 2005, Fortune 500 company Western & Southern Financial Group, based in Cincinnati, announced plans to move everyone with its Louisville, Ky., subsidiary to corporate headquarters. Instead of laying off 300 sales reps, actuaries, computer programmers and analysts, the company gave the “choice” of relocation. Each person mulled the idea of exchanging a laid-back, business casual dress environment for a cafeteria, a fitness center and a strangling - by a necktie (corporate attire only, please) and organizational bureaucracy. Two months later, the men and women in suits arrived to document the documents, proactivate the buzzwords and cage the circus animals (aka tech support). Was the job worth uprooting families and lives? And why exactly do people give up their independence to become company drones?