JPG Issue 5 Published
Just a thought from 25 March 2006 about For Sale, JPG Magazine, Photography.

Tonight Heather and I published Issue 5 of JPG Magazine. This issue was a real labor of love for us.

The "Photography is Not a Crime" theme is very close to our hearts, and something we talked about a year ago when we were first starting the magazine. We left submissions for this issue open twice as long as usual, and it took twice as long to produce.

It's full of stories about photography, brushes with the law, and helpful information for photographers who get hassled. Most of the photos come with little stories of getting yelled at for shooting, or bending the rules to get the shot. Together, they paint a portrait of some of the darker corners of the life of a photographer.

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I Live in the Future
Just a thought from 23 March 2006 about Design, ETech, Geek, Internet, Powazek, Technorati.

So today I found myself at home, sitting on the couch, plugged into my laptop. I was talking to a gentleman in Australia, where it was already the next day, over the internet with Skype. We talked about the web, blogging, and community, while his daughter squealed in the background. He recorded the conversation and has now made it available to his listeners as a Podcast.

Is this what it's like to live in the future?

Dear Business Week
Just a thought from 18 March 2006 about Fray, Geek, Internet, Journalism.

Thanks for featuring Fray, my humble site, in the lead of your recent story, You Are What You Post. We always appreciate journalists taking the time to use a 5 year-old personal story contributed to our "obscure" literary site as a to peg to hang a fear-mongering, hysterical story on.

But it would have been nice if you had at least linked to the original stuff to let readers judge the threat for themselves. The original story was called Letterman on Drugs and was written by the talented storyteller Lance Anderson.

Young Josh posted his story to the posting area that follows every Fray story. His contribution appears at the top of the second page. As you can see, he's in good company. There are 39 pages of stories like Josh's.

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Four Themes from skinnyCorp
Just a thought from 15 March 2006 about Design, Flickr, Geek, Internet, SXSW.

Another one of my favorite sessions at SXSW Interactive 2006 was Zero-Advertising Brands, where we got to watch Maggie Mason talk to the guys from skinnyCorp, the makers of Threadless among other creative commerce/community hybrids.

One of my favorite things about talking to folks that really get the user-generated web, is that when they tell you their secret recipies, it all sounds so easy. Here's George from Flickr in the Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps talk: "We listen to what our users say, and then iterate the design." See? Easy.

So when the guys from skinnyCorp opened their komono in the Zero Advertising panel to share their four steps to success, I took notes and made my own translations. Here goes.

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SXSW to MPAA: STFU
Just a thought from 15 March 2006 about Apple, Geek, Internet, Movies, Music, Politics, SXSW.

One of the most interesting panels at SXSW Interactive 2006 was The Future of Darknets, moderated by JD Lasica. And while the concept of Darknets - communities using private subnetworks to communicate and collaborate out of view of the larger internet - is indeed fascinating, the panel was not interesting because of the intended topic. In fact, we never actually got to hear much about DarkNets, much to my disappointment, because the panel was hijacked the moment one panelist said, "Hello, my name is Kori Bernards, and I'm from the Motion Picture Association of America."

What followed was an hour-long firing squad as one audience member after another directed angry questions her way. The feeling of pent-up frustrations with the movie biz was palpable, especially as her claims of flexibility and excitement within the MPAA to find "creative new solutions" to the problems raised by the audience rang more and more hollow, the more times she repeated them.

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It Has Recently Come to My Attention that I am an Idiot
Just a thought from 14 March 2006 about Geek, Life.

We interrupt this conference-related revelry with an important announcement. It seems that in the haze of my cold medication, I made some adjustments to my email server's settings which resulted in the last few days of mail getting unceremoniously rejected.

So, if you sent me mail in the last week, please resend. I realize this request subtracts a few points from my geek cred, but I'll just have to live with that.

I'm firstname at lastname dot com, as always.

Observations from ETech
Just a thought from 11 March 2006 about ETech, Geek, Internet.

I returned from O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference with a stack of business cards, a nasty case of the sniffles, and a brain stuffed with ideas. It was a fabulous time. Here are a few observations from my days in San Diego.

• "Web 2.0" definitely means something to someone, but no one's sure who or why. (We do know, however, that it's not Bruce Sterling.)
• Flickr is the Web 2.0 equivalent of the iPod: A canonical example for any story, whether it's about funding or design or technology. It's all Flickr, all the time. (It's well-deserved - Flickr does most things right - I just worry about the inevitable backlash.)
• MySpace makes designers nervous. The mere mention of the word sent most people into a tirade about why design does, or does not, matter. (My two cents: Everything has design. The only question is, does the design speak to the desired audience?)

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My Blogger Code
Just a thought from 10 March 2006 about Blogging, Fun, Geek.

Congrats to Jason for getting Blogger Code 2.0 out! I whipped up a little design lovin for it. Oh, and, here's my code. What's yours?

What I'm Up To
Just a thought from 4 March 2006 about Design, Geek, Internet, Life.

So I'm starting a design studio. Something small, specializing in participatory interactive projects - sites that do something. It'll just be me and a partner, at first. We've even got a small office space already, and an ever-growing list of clients. There's just one thing we do not have. A name.

I have spent the last month trolling whois every night. A good web company needs a good domain name, and lemme tell you, they're all taken. I mean, all of them. Even the sarcastic ones, the ones you look up even though you hate them. Makes a guy wanna make up a new word like "blog" or something.

So I'm wondering, dear reader, are you the kind of person who's sitting on a cool dotcom that you might be willing to part with? If so, drop me a line. I'm serious. You'll save me from the dysfunctional relationship I'm developing with the Whois Lookup.

More details on the company, whatever it's called, soon. For now, I'm doing what every serious dotcom businessman does to start off his business. I'm speaking at a conference. Hope to see you there.