links for 2009-07-02
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Mat Honan's excellent advice for wannabe San Franciscans.
The Giant Squid (who just wants to be loved)
Len Peralta has a fantastic project going called Monster By Mail. You send him a few bucks and a name, and he draws you a monster. And for another few bucks, he’ll do a time lapse video of your creation coming to life. Of course, I couldn’t resist. Here’s the one I commissioned, paired perfectly with one of my favorite Jonathan Coulton songs. Thanks, Len!
Speaking Disasters and Lessons Learned
Scott Bekun is writing a book for O’Reilly Media, due out in October, called Confessions of a Public Speaker. He’s asking for stories of public speaking disasters. I couldn’t help but add a couple of my own.
Story 1: Always Carry a Thumb Drive
I was doing a day-long session on Community Design and had prepared an extensive set of PowerPoint slides with copious notes on my Mac laptop. But when I got to the venue a few minutes before it was set to begin, we realized that my laptop would not work with their projector, and I had to move the presentation to their PC computer. We all looked at the two computers with a feeling of doom and impotence. How to get the file from one to the other?
One of the conference techs ran off in search of a burnable CD. Another went looking for an ethernet cable. I stood there frozen in fear.
Then someone from the first row of the audience stepped up and said, “Excuse me, would this help?” and handed me a small USB thumb drive. We transferred the file and all was well.
Now, when I speak, I have a handful of those thumb drives in my backpack, just in case.
Story 2: Make Sure They Know What You’re Talking About
In 1997, after I’d been working at the highly influential HotWired website for a year or so, I went back to my alma matter to give a talk to a web design class about working in the nascent web industry.
I stood in front of the class and told what I thought were highly entertaining stories about life at HotWired for a half hour. When I finally stopped and asked if anyone had questions, one hand meekly raised in the back.
The question was, “What’s HotWired?”
links for 2009-06-26
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My photographer friend Lomokev has a new site up using a familiar theme.
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My friend Gayla Trail's book about gardening in small spaces is coming out soon. It's gonna be great.
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Fray author Nikol Hasler is writing an advice column for Milwaukee Magazine. You should send her a question.
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Collecta is called one of the three best new search sites after only a week online. Not bad. (Disclosure: I'm Collecta's Creative Director.)
links for 2009-06-24
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More on the Guardian's crowdsourced journalism project. (And, of course, it was done by Simon Willison – hi Simon!)
links for 2009-06-19
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This is brilliant. The Guardian is using Wisdom of Crowds techniques to crowdsource a political investigation. Open-source journalism. Bravo.
Untitled June Update
My mom says she always knows when I get incredibly busy because I stop updating my website. Sad but true.
So here’s a quick list of what’s been keeping me awake at night for the last few months.
- I had laser eye surgery. It hurt. A lot. And it took far longer to recover than they said it would. But now I can see clearly without glasses for the first time in over 20 years. It’s wonderful.
- I’ve been working my tail off on MagCloud, which has built the finest collection of independent magazines anywhere. In a time when there’s news of another publication folding every day, we’ve got a growing community of brand new print magazine makers. Makes me proud.
- My other client just launched. Collecta. It’s real real-time search. Do a search and the results come in as they happen. It’s incredible. And I got to work with some of the most badass nerd ninjas online today. I did the visual/interactive design for the site, and let me tell you, real timeliness changes everything. Designing for live flowing data is fundamentally different than designing static information. Remind me to write more about this.
- And, oh yeah, Heather and I bought a house. Well, half a house. Next month we’ll be moving in to the top floor of a 100 year-old house, from which, if you look out the kitchen window at just the right angle, you can see the bay. We’re thrilled. I’ll have a back yard for the first time since I lived in one (that’s another story – it was college, okay?). Buying real estate in the middle of the mortgage crisis. I’ve always had an unusual sense of timing.
I wish I had the time to write more about all of this stuff, but now I have to sleep. Sorry, mom.
links for 2009-05-28
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Heh. To be fair, I was just making a funny. I think it's great that companies are using Twitter to take care of their customers. It's just too bad they're not paying more attention to the customers that come in the front door.
About
Derek Powazek has survived 13 years in the web biz, including stints at Blogger and Technorati. He now works on HP's MagCloud, publishes Fray, and consults with startups. About »
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