TagDirectory.net is attempting to raise $250,000 (at $20 per listing) by selling tag links.
I.e. pay $20 and you get your link on this page under the tag webdesign.
Not a bad concept if he can garner the kind of traffic the original million dollar homepage has.
I’m guessing this will not be enough. Penny Arcade is now on Rails.
Along with the slick new visuals the guts of the site also got a huge upgrade. Penny Arcade right now represents one of the largest implementations of “rails” on the intertron. I went and looked at a website about rails and then I got a headache. From what I gathered it’s either some kind of cutting edge programming language, or a way to liquefy a man’s brain inside his skull. I’m told that it means the site looks better and loads faster regardless of whatever hippy web browser you decide to use. Fuck M$!
Penny Arcade is in the Alexa Top 5,000 most visited websites.
For some of the RoR critics, it will take an Alexa top 100 eCommerce site like eBay or Amazon to start using Rails. Sorry, folks, chances are you are not getting into the Alexa Top 100 as an eCommerce play anytime soon. (Can we say … premature optimization?)
Scoble and Co. on Rails
Some of the comments in this Scoble thread were rather amusing as well.
Some commenters seem to think that there’s another way to scale web applications besides throwing cheap (~$500 - $1,000) boxes at a three-tier system (web, app and db servers).
This is how Google runs their entire server farm. I guess Google “doesn’t scale.”
But, yes, actually there is another way. You can always throw $10,000 MS or Sun boxes at a three-tier J2EE or .Net system.
Note: this post ended up sounding a little harsh but that’s only intended for the naysayers. 
I’ve long admired people who have had the gusto to introduce themselves to people they respect and admire and ask for a little bit of guidance.
One of the greatest lessons in life is learning to seek out wisdom from those who have already achieved what you aim to accomplish.
Don’t ask Larry from accounting who’s part of the water-cooler gang. Instead, talk to that new guy in sales who’s always hitting his numbers, always coming up #1 and who seems to have his stuff together. Or whomever you have tons of respect for as a person.
What about ‘The Dude’, you ask?
As I say in my sidebar — there’s nothing wrong with being The Dude.
In fact, being financially, socially and otherwise comfortable enough to be the dude is a sign that you do in fact have your schtuff together. Your ducks in a row. Your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted, if you will.
My goal is to one day be financially independent so that I can, if I so choose, dedicate 100% of my time to a project that I love. Or, 80% of the year doing that, the rest to goofing off in exotic far-away lands. Yes, we should all let our people go surfing.
But, this isn’t about financial independence. It’s about the journey.
It’s about what I can learn along the way. How I can grow and become a better person (better coder, better designer, better startup guy, better friend, better son, etc) in the process.
The Wisdom Compendium
To that end, I’ve begun contacting people who I come across in my travels (online and off) to see if they’d answer a few interview questions, which will then be posed to wisdomcompendium.com.
Hopefully others will gain from these interviews as well in their journey through life.
These aren’t meant to be “hard-hitting,” journalistic-type interviews.
I’m trying to get at those core things people do, believe and practice on an ongoing basis that makes them successful in whatever they pursue.
When I was growing up, one of my friend’s parents (who I had tons of respect for because he was a well-respected lawyer in the community) once told me that it doesn’t matter what you do in life.
He said, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an architect, lawyer, doctor, head chef, engineer or carpenter. As long as you do your job to the best of your ability, always striving to be the very best in your craft or profession — that’s what matters most.
Thus, I’m going to try and interview a diverse cross-section of people from all kinds of backgrounds, crafts, skills and professions. (Of course, it’ll probably be mostly startup entrepreneurs and technophiles for a while!)
The Wisdom Compendium’s First Interview: Garrett Dimon
Garrett Dimon is a talented web developer, user-interface architect and coder with a passion for accessibility and web standards.
He’s the creator of the excellent YourTotalSite as well as his own popular weblog on simplicity, less code, agile development, Ruby on Rails and more.
Garrett is also an Information Architect at Bright Corner.
His unique blend of technical ability and design-savvy compelled us here at The Wisdom Compendium to inquire further into his work and seek advice on pursuing that rare path of skilled coder + designer.
His business card says it best:
Garrett Dimon is on a mission to make the Web a better place. Armed with usability and efficiency, he’s convinced that if it needs instructions, it doesn’t work. That’s why everything he does – from information architecture to site development – is elegant in its simplicity and a complete joy for the user. When he’s not obsessed with usability, he can be found playing basketball or crusading for better content. If it’s about the Web, he’s all over it.
With roughly a a thousand subscribers to his Weblog and growing (as well as being a prominent member of the 9rules weblog network), Garrett Dimon is an up-and-coming star and one to watch.
MySQL AB (the parent company that owns / runs the MySQL project) used to support a win32 mysql admin tool called MySQL Control Center.
They’ve since discontinued support for MySQL CC. So now all their download links for this product take you to this page where you can download their new “MySQL Administrator” which isn’t nearly the same thing. (i.e. you can’t create tables with it or *gasp* manage your databases)
So, my good karma deed for the day is mirroring a copy of the classic MySQL Control Center for win32 platforms:
Hopefully this’ll show up in google’s index for future MySql Control Panel seekers.
I’m proud to announce that I’m the newest member of the Sprout development team.
I’ll be working with Sprout on a part-time basis - hacking Ruby on Rails code and working on integration with the core application development being performed by Scott Barron.
Scott’s a core member of the Rails development team, so, I think I can learn a thing or two from him.
What Is Sprout, You Ask?
Sprout is creating a suite of web apps for small businesses and startups that do more with less.
Simple and elegant, yet powerful - it’s the new black.
The Big Act
Be sure to check out The Big Act, Sprout’s weblog.
The Story
This page does an excellent job of explaining the opportunity and reason for Sprout’s existence.
There are 20 million businesses with 10 or fewer employees in the United States alone. Our mission is to build a suite of web hosted business applications uniquely designed for these very small businesses.
Stay tuned for updates.
I just realized how cool this is.
I’ve setup MSN Messenger (hey, it does the trick) on my dad’s PC in St. Louis. (meanwhile I’m many thousands of miles away out here in Phoenix)
Now, whenever he’s online, MSN Messenger pops up and he can see when I’m online. We chat all the time now.
Anyway - if you have the opportunity to get your parents setup with IM, I say go for it! (my mom still doesn’t have broadband Internet… I’ve been trying to explain to her for years how things like the Yellow Pages (you know, the dead-tree format), buying newspapers to lookup movie times, etc. etc. are all obsolete now.)
My main man Gabriel has knocked out an incredible design for WhoLinksToMe.com.
Gabriel and I have been working together on Niner Niner this past year.
Now we’ve teamed up to bring you lots of web 2.0 goodness, from WhoLinksToMe.com to a few other fun little sites we’ve got in the oven.
Hint: the project involves tags - you know, everyone’s favorite web 2.0 buzzword.
A friend of a friend of mine is auctioning off his downtown St. Louis loft on eBay!
He’s setup a website at LoftAuction.com.
He started the auction at $1 and No Reserve, which means, if it only goes for $50k (a measly sum), he would still have to sell it. (no hidden minimum reserve amount)
Bidding is now open. I actually bid on the item up until it reached $10.50, then decided to bow out of the quickly-escalating bidding war.
Aside: this guy is quite the entrepreneur. Back in 1996, he bought up tons of 4 letter domain names (ticker symbols) of Nasdaq-listed companies, and gradually sold them all. (Not sure if he was squatting on them or not.. still a nice coup d’etat nonetheless.)
Welcome, Steve Lord of the United Kingdom, to the Niner Niner blogging team!
Steve is the 200th writer here on this tiny but ever-expanding weblog network of ours.
It was just a little over a year ago that Gabriel and I put together the concept of Niner Niner and began flushing out our initial prototype of how things would work.
We had some initial success with our first experiment in collaborative, tag-team blogging with HIPAA Blog. From there, things expanded as we gradually added more blogs to the network.
I’d like to thank all of our writers so far this past year who’ve helped make Niner Niner possible. I hope it’s been a worthwhile journey for all!
Special thanks to:
Christy Patrick
Laurie Barak
Sarah White
Nancy Callahan
Chris Bunting
Georganna Hancock
Tom Simpson
Harry Fuecks
Jim Moser
May 2006 be an even bigger and better year for all of us here in the Niner Niner blogging family!
You are currently browsing the Shanti’s Dispatches weblog archives for November, 2005.
Shanti A. Braford blogs here.
If you really want to know, just read this.
