http://www.powazek.com/ They may not be deep thoughts, but they're the only thoughts I've got. en-us Tue, 26 Dec 2006 16:11:20 -0800 http://www.powazek.com/2006/12/000619.html I almost didn't make one this year, but I'm afraid that after the last couple years of Bug calendars, he's developed a small following - especially one particularly excellent little boy I know. So if you're a little boy, don't buy it, because you'll be getting one in the mail. For the rest of you, here's a link.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/12/000618.html People are often surprised to find out I am, or was (depending on when you catch me), a smoker. I've never been a pack-a-day kinda guy - more like a pack-a-week - but still enough for me to feel it in my lungs when I'm smoking, and feel it in my gut when I'm not. Right now, I'm not. It's been a few days, so the hard part should be over. But it's the routine stuff that's hard to change. I miss the excuse for a walk. The multi-tasking when walking the dogs. The reward for a task well done. The selfish pleasure of taking a few minutes out of every day to do something just for me. The strangest part is, for the last few days, I've had this constant nagging feeling that I've forgotten something. I'm sitting on the couch wondering, what was it? I took out the... http://www.powazek.com/2006/11/000617.html There's just a few days left to submit to JPG Magazine Issue 8 on the themes Tourist, Intimate, and Embrace the Blur. Published photographers get a hundred bucks and a year's subscription - and if you're published in Embrace the Blur, you'll also get a Lensbaby 3G! So what are you waiting for? Here are mine.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/11/000616.html After over two years of publishing, just under two months of life on the new site, and two weeks of really hard work, I'm thrilled to say that subscriptions to JPG Magazine are now available! Subscriptions cost $24.99 for six issues a year in the US. It's a little more pricey for international shipping, but we've made it as affordable as possible. (Pesky shipping!) In addition to the basic 1-year subscription, we're also offering two other packages that include a gift box filled with goodies: a copy of Issue 7, some stickers, and an awesome JPG pocket ultra-pod. I've been using my JPG tripod for a couple weeks and it's great. It stands up to my heavy gear like a champ, and still folds up small enough to fit in my camera bag. We think these gift boxes are a great deal, and the perfect gift for the photographer in... http://www.powazek.com/2006/11/000615.html My book, Design for Community, has just gone out of print. It lives on as a download, but it's just not the same. As we like to say at 8020, there's just something special about those dead trees. After I finished writing the book, back in 2001, I wrote a little story about what it was like. It was published online in a couple places, both of which are dead and gone now. (No wonder I feel like the last man standing all the time.) So on the occasion of my book's passing from one medium to another, I'm reprinting this little How To here. If you've ever considered writing a book, I hope it helps you in your long, masochistic journey.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/10/000614.html One of the many gifts of our increasingly networked world is the diminishing boundaries between communities. And the magazine business is about to get hit by a boundary-blurring tidal wave. It's already started. What's the difference between NBC and Joe Everynerd on MySpace or YouTube? They're all just usernames - each with an equal chance of getting seen. The traditional roles of content creator and consumer have been irrevocably blurred. Magazines, on the other hand, still have very high walls between their writers and readers. The writers and editors enjoy the illusion that they do something no one else can. The readers, then, have only one job: to consume the product. But if the internet has taught us anything, it's that the world is full of people who know a lot more than you do about something. Continued at the 8020 blog. »... http://www.powazek.com/2006/10/000613.html I talk to my grandma most weekends. She's an amazing woman. She lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, and yet, every time I call her and ask how she's doing, her answer is, "I can't complain." She probably said the same thing when she was homeless in Siberia. In winter. I think, for her, to complain is to invite disaster. The same goes for happy, too. Never brag, or consider yourself lucky, because then it'll go away. It's superstitious, sure, but grandma Powazek has been right more than she's been wrong. I trust her. That's why, when I think about how great things are going right now, with the company and the magazine and the wife and basically everything, it fills me with equal parts excitement and dread. Maybe it's the grandma in me, but I just don't want to think about how lucky I am right now, for... http://www.powazek.com/2006/10/000612.html The submission period for Issue 7 of JPG Magazine has just ended, but you can still vote for another week. Get your vote on in Big, Self-portraiture, and Hometown! Here are my submissions. And submissions are now open for the first theme in Issue 8: Tourist. Let's see your best travel shot!... http://www.powazek.com/2006/09/000611.html Or: Consumer-Made Media and the Almighty Buck Jason Calacanis is the P.T. Barnum of the weblog world. Barnum took a hirsute woman and turned her into The Bearded Lady. Calacanis took something as banal as paying writers to write and turned it into An Issue That Must Be Discussed. And I'm glad, because it is. If you don't know the story, here's a recap. Calacanis sold Weblogs Inc, a network of topical blogs, to AOL for a staggering amount of money. Then he was put in charge of netscape.com, another AOL purchase, which was once the most visited site on the web but had since been micromanaged into a wasted wreck of pointless marketing nonsense. Calacanis announced that he was simply going to clone the tech news darling Digg. And then he did. The new Netscape differentiated itself from Digg in three key ways: It was uglier, it worked against... http://www.powazek.com/2006/09/000610.html I'm going to be in Denmark for the next few days. I'm speaking at the ubercool Knock Knock conference all about community-powered media and what we're up to at 8020 Publishing and JPG Magazine. Wanna follow along? I'm going to try to post updates to Twitter and photos to Flickr in a kind of realtime travelogue experiment.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/09/000609.html Exactly two years ago today, JPG Magazine began with a simple mission to honor the amazing work coming out of the online photographic community. Today, after six issues, on JPG's 2nd birthday, JPG has been reborn. Everything is new. You can now create a membership and upload your photos. Members can directly create the magazine by submitting their work, and voting for other members' submissions. And then there's the magazine itself: bigger, fatter, less expensive, more often, and, soon, subscribeable. I feel like what I imagine fathers feel like: Proud, happy, exhausted, and in desperate need of a nap and a shower. But enough about me. Go see the new baby.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/09/000608.html My nephew Hugh is two years old. And, as the husband of the sister of his mother, it is my duty to impress him. I am determined to be the Cool Uncle. Heather and I are in Chicago for a family visit. We're all gathered at a nice restaurant for dinner - Heather's sister Claire, Claire's husband Owen, and their two boys: Eamon, 6, and Hugh, 2. Dinner is lovely, and the paper tablecloth is gradually covered in spent tic-tac-toe grids, doodles, and food scraps. I've noticed, in the short time I've spent with parents, that they basically do not eat when their kids do. They eat in the spare moments in between questions and/or tantrums, and then chow down on fast forward just before the staff comes to clear the dishes.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/08/000607.html There's an old story. I don't know if it's true, but it goes like this. Penguins mate for life. And there's a moment when some boy penguin is looking over that infinite expanse of black and white when one female penguin stands out. And he stands out to her. And then, well, that's it. Of all the penguins, these two are now together for life. A couple months ago, Heather and I went camping with some friends. One morning, we emerged from our tent, bleary eyed. There were a number of dogs camping with us, too, and one of them came trotting over to me, happy as can be. And I did what I always do. I reached out with both hands and gave him a nice hello rub. Slowly, in my early morning haze, it occurred to me. Something smelled bad. Really bad. I looked down at the happy... http://www.powazek.com/2006/08/000606.html When I was 16, I became a vegetarian. Years later, I spent the summer in Alaska. When my friends and I went fishing, I decided that if I could catch one, I'd totally eat it. So that's what I did. I figured, once you take a fish's life with your own two hands, you're allowed to eat it. Last night I fired a gun for the first time. My friend Ford grew up around guns in Nevada, so they were always a normal thing. Me, growing up outside Los Angeles with semi-hippy parents, I wasn't even allowed a cap gun.... http://www.powazek.com/2006/08/000604.html My fellow San Franciscans, got plans Friday night? If not, come watch me get intimate with Heather Gold! Inspired by Shabbat Salons, comedian Heather Gold brings the talk show format into the 21st century. Her live talk show mixes thinkers, entertainers, doers and the audience with humor, curiosity and yes, a little soul. This Friday's show is all about "Intimacy" and features comedian and survivor's rights activist Betsy Salkind, author/spoken word artist Michelle Tea, and yours truly, talking up digital intimacy. It all happens the JCCSF, 3200 California Street, from 8:00-9:30pm. Hope to see you there! UPDATE: It went great! Heather posted a great wrap-up....