2007 with Bugsley Dante
Just a thought from 26 December 2006 about For Sale, Photos.

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.

Quitting Smoking. Again.
Just a thought from 10 December 2006 about Life.

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 trash, moved the car, paid the bills. What did I forget?

It's every nicotine-addled cell in my body crying out for a fix. It's my dopamine-starved brain, pinching me in the back of the neck, yelling, "Hey stupid! Go do that thing! You know the one."

I'm not willing to say I'll never smoke again. But, for now, I've had enough. And I've quit enough times to know that this feeling will pass. New routines will develop. And, for a while, I might be able to live up to everyone's expectations of me.

Last Week to Submit to JPG Issue 8
Just a thought from 24 November 2006 about JPG Magazine.

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.

Subscribe to JPG Magazine!
Just a thought from 11 November 2006 about JPG Magazine.

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 your life ... especially if that's you!

Oh, and one more thing: As a special thank-you for all my peeps, here's a $5-off coupon. Subscribe with this link and it's just 19.99 (in the US). That's how much a single issue used to cost. Cool, huh?

Our little magazine is all growed up. Sniff.

How to Write a Book in Three Easy Steps
Just a thought from 6 November 2006 about Books, Writing.

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.

Continue reading “How to Write a Book in Three Easy Steps” »

Magazine Thinking: A Tale of Three Communities
Just a thought from 31 October 2006 about Internet, JPG Magazine, Magazines.

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. »

I can't complain.
Just a thought from 11 October 2006 about Life.

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 fear it will all go poof.

So, me? I can't complain.

Vote for JPG Issue 7 Now
Just a thought from 5 October 2006 about JPG Magazine, Photography, Photos.

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!

Will Post for Money
Just a thought from 22 September 2006 about Blogging, Internet, JPG Magazine, Technology.

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 its own bottoms-up process by pegging stories approved by staffers at the top of the page, and they started paying the top contributors.

Continue reading “Will Post for Money” »

Come with me to Denmark
Just a thought from 19 September 2006 about Life.

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.