A massive, massive thank you to Mike Propst. He's the designer behind Emurse, Engadget and now AlexRudloff.com. A pretty impressive lot, if I do say so myself. Probably a few little kinks here and there, as it's getting late on a friday night. Let me (us) know what you think though, and if you find anything looney. Apologies if things look funny during the transition. I think comments might not be working right for a bit as well, sooo... All good.

My site's starting to gain more cred with google lately, and I've encountered a more.. let's say.. diverse group of readers. It's no longer simply a blog to keep my mom and some friends updated with what's going on in my life. I intend to keep writing it exactly for that purpose, but the new design reflects me a little better. The old design was something I threw together on a plane late one night. Mike's the official world's-most-experienced-blog-maker after serving as the sole weblogs, inc designer for, gosh, way to long. It's truely a blessing to have him on our side.

Helped Launch Netscape.com

It was June 15th that we put the beta Netscape online. Love it or hate it, we certainly made waves ;)

It was a project I wasn't initially supposed to be involved with, at least, not to the extent that I was. When Jason and Brian took over the netscape.com domain, I was offered the opportunity to go to AOL sort of as a netscape/weblogs, inc contact for Blogsmith. Gavin, Mike and I had been working on Blogsmith for a few months and Blogsmith was a small indie startup still. Moving one of us to the "inside" made sense.

At some point last March, the three of us flew out to meet the Netscape team at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. One thing led to another, and I was asked to be the lead developer for the project through the product launch. The next couple of months were absolutely insane. Kathryn was out in California so I was left on my own in DC and pretty much worked around the clock. We launched the beta on June 15, 2006 and then spent the next month or two cleaning things up. We overloaded the servers, we got hacked, we had less functionality than we initially anticipated, we had scope creep into areas we didn't plan for -- you name it, and we dealt with it, all in a very short amount of time for a project of that size.

My reason for joining Netscape was to tackle the challenge of launching under such a tight deadline. Once things calmed down and things were humming along, Blogsmith happened to be purchased by AOL. I was able to slowly (perhaps without his full knowing/understanding) delegate most everything to Tom (suckah!), and transfer back to rejoin Gavin, Mike and by then, Celly on the Blogsmith project.

I was the first to drop off Netscape I guess, soon followed by Jason and then C.K.. The current team though is absolutely incredible and firing on all cylinders. The developers over there are top notch and working on some amazing technology that will certainly shake things up when its released.

It's been a hell of a year and a half personally, and Netscape is a big part of the story. I'll never forget someone ease dropping on our conversations out in LA, seeing it posted in the Digg comments and then everyone successfully burying it before it gained any strength. Riding segways around Venice with groups of people yelling "Freaks!!" at us and Jason, for some reason, acting like a Robot the whole time. Or discussing the merits of the Viceroy's amazingly delicious bacon with Wil Wheaton. Of course, using the then newly launched Emurse.com to staff up was enjoyable as well ;) (nod to Finke) (yea, I know, a plug.. I couldn't help myself)

I think the biggest lessons I learned was to sleep when I'm tired (oops), how to work with a boss like Jason (notoriously demanding) , script kiddies will always find a way, script kiddies don't like being called script kiddies, when talking to the press you're always on record and most importantly, anything in any amount of time is possible if you have a dedicated and focused enough team. Distance be damned.

Congrats on a successful first year for Netscape.com (the social edition). I absolutely can not wait to see the things planned for the next year. Trey and his team are men amongst men, and Tom's dedication and leadership holds great promise for the entire Netscape brand. Keep it up guys -- NETSCAPE FTW!

UPDATE: I've been quoted in the Netscape article on the same topic, "Happy Birthday, Netscape"

Mike Propst's amazing new work went online yesterday. Feedback/bug hunting most certainly appreciated!

It's one thing when we all take to IM'ing each other while we're in the same room... It's another when we decide we need to have a conference ichat...

If you look closely, Gavin's in all three.



We've been working out of my home office the last few days.. Lots of neat stuff coming on all of our projects. Stay tuned..

One year ago today, after speaking briefly with Brian twice on the phone, I quit my job as a contractor on a military project to join my business partner on a little startup project called Blogsmith. I left the office and went straight to the airport to board a plane for NYC. We were up all night coding the parts of the CMS that were slated to be demoed the next day at Winstock 2005. The next day, we streamed the UCF game in the 75 Rock boardroom while Mike passed out on the floor. I went from a government mandated 40 hour work week, to working a 30 hour day. There was no contract, no written agreements and I wasn't even sure there was going to be a paycheck. Gavin and I figured, at best, we had food on the table until February.

The past year has been a great one professionally. First Blogsmith as an independent company, then AOL for the Netscape re-launch, then back to Blogsmith as an AOL property. We wrote Emurse the July before all this started, which admittedly we had to shelve for a bit, but it too found traction. We juggled 3 major projects this year and I've spent more than 75% of the year living out of a suitcase (I just added it up...). I feel as if I haven't stopped since I boarded that plane to New York. It's been a heck of a trip.

Me, Mike, Gavin, and Celly at the bar outside of the Portofino. Missing from the picture is Brian Alvey, Puggles, Christoph, and all of our new AOL friends.

The world is an office. Or at least.. The bar is.

Saturday.. In Mike's yard.. I think it was the first of July?

Gavin and I traveled to Detroit yesterday morning to visit Mike Propst and his beautiful new wife. They were recently married over in Scotland in a friggin' castle. I'm not sure which, but if I were a betting man, I'd say it wasn't Scotland, and the castle was named Hogwarts. The reception was a lot of fun though and I'm glad we made the hike out. We had to leave the party a little early to get the rental car back on time, but not before checking out the musical stylings of Wally Pleasant. His lyrical genius speaks to me.

We didn't get to check out downtown Detroit.. Maybe next time I guess.. I had it in my mind that every radio station here would be playing Kiss nonstop, maybe a little Alice Cooper to mix things up. Instead, it seemed more like Jamie Collum... That's okay.. It's just... not what I expected.

It does kind of smell here though, which I had always been told, but never really believed. Kathryn says thats part of the charm. Mike Hubbard told me to wash my hands before I leave, because "we don't want it spreading to other cities." Hah.

There's been a lot said about the hazards of the "Hive Mind" lately. Jaron Lanier wrote an excellent essay here. Mike Propst touched on it recently in relation to our attempts over at Netscape.

I just wanted to throw my two cents out there on a particular aspect of it, and explain why the hive can be dangerous without some sort of mechanism for followup.



This just isn't true. It's the top result on Page 2 when my name is searched via google. For the non-geeky folks reading this, I'll do my best to explain why this would be such a "horrible" thing to be said.

To digg users, who are notably young and 94% male, this admission would have been evidence of "gaming the system." Gaming is naturally against the spirit of the democratic site, where the better content should win out with more votes. It strikes many of them as unfair to ask people you know to "digg" material that you submitted. In Weblogs, Inc's case, they believe that its an unfair advantage to have colleagues. Oddly, I'm positive everyone of these kids have begged their friends to digg their false accusations, but hey, what's hypocrisy in the face of teenage angst and a cause.

In reality, what was said was in response to the suggestion that Digg has anti-asking-your-friend-tools and we should develop them too. I replied with something funny like "i can assure you that they don't", or "if they do, they don't work very well", or something to that effect. I say this after doing our own research and evaluation, judging the content posted there, and more importantly by simplistic logic. I simply don't think that they have such tools, can't have such tools, and shouldn't have such tools. If they do have these tools, then it's obvious that they suck. Plus, what would it matter to them. Digg wants more people to come to their site. E-mail your friends. Please. From Netscape's perspective, I think it's a losing battle. I'd rather spend our resources on finding ways to innovate within the space. And yeah, e-mail the hell out of your friends. Spread the word.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I was misquoted as saying something that I didn't, and now it's attached to my name on google for ever and ever.

Digg.com takes pride in their we-have-no-editors approach. That's their whole jam. That's their cause that they sell to the young teenage male. Ask someone like Ryan Block, the managing editor at Engadget.com, about how he has to defend himself and his organization what seems like once a month. Without linking to any of that nonsense, the kids over there pretty much look for any reason to attack him. He's constantly taken out of context or reported as doing something that is either completely false or not entirely accurate. The problem is, there's no way to address it. It gets posted, it gets indexed, and there's no one to call and pester for its removal or correction. The only responses are buried deep in user comments and probably never seen nor read.

That wouldn't be such a problem if there weren't a large number of people who trust digg. There are even more people who trust the Google Results that index Digg. Like a growing number of employers.

Imagine I was misquoted as saying something worse, maybe something that could actually get me in trouble. Maybe it's time for a promotion, or theres a new boss to report to, or I seek employment with another company, or whatever other scenario you can think of. In the heat of all the anti-netscape sentiment, some 14 year old brat posts a misquote on a "news" site, and now there's zero method for rebuttal. Awesome... An organized, democratic method for slander controlled by the Hive Mind where liability is skewed in the name of social news and lack of editor accountability.

At Netscape, we've tried to develop mechanisms for users to report stories as inaccurate. An on-duty "anchor" (there's someone online 24 hours, 7 days a week) can research the story and alert users to the dispute. Often, it doesn't need to be removed, it simply needs a notice posted addressing the concern for other users to see. It's simple, it's clean. It's still democratic and user's still have a voice. There's just a basic system of checks to keep things in balance. Seems resonable (and proven) enough to me.

There's a lot of issues surrounding the Hive Mind. Maybe this post can help serve as a plain vanilla example of a basic aspect of it. This particular case is small, it's silly, it doesn't even matter -- but it's a simple demonstration of how the unrestricted hive can't be trusted. It's kind of like the Hitchhikers Guide. It's entertaining but it's inaccuracy has potentially dangerous consequences if you put to much trust into it.