Create your own Brand but stay in the Community

Jeffrey Zeldman, a pioneer of web standards and a longtime blogger, quite wrongly posted about the death of the personal home page.

In it, he critiques bloggers and webified folks alike for, perhaps, unwittingly giving away our content and “brand” to other third-parties.

We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments. Did I say we are witnessing the traditional personal site’s disappearance? That is inaccurate. We are the ones making our own sites disappear.

Everything I know is Wrong

I read Andrew Keen’s brilliant book The Cult of the Amateur over the weekend. I read it in one sitting.

I’m stunned. I’m shocked. I feel lost.

In short, with a mere 200 pages, Andrew convinced a hardnose like me that I’m wrong. About everything. About a great many things having to do with the internet.

I spent most of Monday in a fog. I felt like deleting my blog, shutting down my business, and going to work on a lawn crew for the next ten years. I’m not joking.

I think I’m starting to recover a bit. But who knows?

oDesk vs. Elance

My friend Alan LeStourgeon at Affiliate Confession has had some success with using Elance to hire writers. In fact, Elance liked his comments so much, they interviewed him.

Since Alan has already covered a great deal about Elance, particularly from the perspective of a buyer, I thought I’d do the exact opposite and cover oDesk from the perspective of a provider, and in this case, a provider who has yet to actually get his first assignment.

As such, this review is hardly objective or unbiased. It’s really just some points of difference that I’ve noticed and has caused me, for the moment, to tip the pendulum in oDesk’s favor. I thought I’d share them with you.

Still not getting Twitter. Help me out.

I’ve been on Twitter now for a while (maybe four months?). And this is the second time I’ve joined. And I’m still not fully getting it. It’s extremely time consuming when I use it.

While it might only be little flashes of light throughout the day (using Twirl), it’s still distracting when you are working on a project. Or on the phone with a client.

Dumb Job Ads: Website design ~ several projects (Orlando / Clermont)

This made my day. Another fool discovers Craigslist.

Hi!

I am looking for a couple possible candidates to collaborate with me and execute some web-site designs to be developed and presented to investors. The outline for the initial project will involved similar features to Myspace and Ebay (but not as involved, of course)

The designer/programmer chosen will have the opportunity to be a part of several other projects that are being mapped out currently.