Kelly Smith | Made in Seattle

Mollio is a simple set of html/css templates which I discovered via the bookmarks of http://petercooper.co.uk/ Quite nice actually.

You’re going to want to check this out. In particular, some good image handling scripts. FYI, if you see a similarity between this site and http://www.emilychang.com (which I just happened to notice) its because they are both part of Ideacodes in SanFran.

I’m hearing rave reviews about Expression Engine lately. It powers the nicely designed Veerle blog and is said to be so flexible that you can make it do just about anything. You really can’t say that about WordPress…love it though I do. It also powers http://markboulton.co.uk/ I’m going to have a look around as I’m [...]

So my friend Marcelo over at Sampa pointed me to Microsoft’s Office Live today. I went to the homepage and thought I’d have a look around. I clicked on the first screen and got this on the second screen:

It seems that there are still parts of internet culture that Microsoft has a hard time understanding even after all these years. Let me be yet another lone voice in the wilderness to help them understand the future. CLOSED SYSTEMS WILL NOT WIN ON THE WEB. If you can’t make it work on my browser, you’re not gonna work in my world.

Let me put it another way. If you tell me I can’t use your software unless I buy a certain brand of PC, you’re not gonna work in my world.

Let me put it another way. If you can’t make it work in my browser you might as well have sent me an email saying “we don’t get the web…please come back later when we do.”

Let me put it another way. If you tell me I must use some of your software just so I can try some of your other new software, I’m going to opt to not use your other new software.

Let me put it another way. If you can’t prove you can develop web based software applications in a cross browser environment, which I know to be hard, then I seriously wonder if the stuff’s worth trying anyway.

Let me put it another way. If Firefox had the better browser before you released IE7 and I made the switch as a result AND you detected it…shouldn’t YOU be incenting ME to go back and use your other browser software that I wasn’t using in the first place?

Some of my friends know that I’m developing a project called ImageKind within the four walls of our little venture called Curious Office. I’ve got two full time developers and three “production” people that do some other stuff. And, ofcourse there’s myself. Because of the nature of our business, we’ve also got tens of thousands [...]

So, I predicted over on my company blog that Fox bought Meetro. This kind of web2.0 consolidation will occur in a big way in 2006 and I expect several more announcements like this before the end of the year. Newsvine will be a winner. SimplyHired will be a winner. CalendarHub will, at some point, be [...]

Holy smokes, Pictage gets $29 million from Apex for their new photo sharing application. Now, bear in mind that this is aimed at professional photographers such as wedding photographers and such. Now, as near as I can tell the look and feel of the site kind of sucks. But, there is a point to make here. Remember that Flickr is not that old. People were sharing digital photos online for 10 years before they even started their company. Arguably, you could have said that the issue of photosharing had been solved LONG before they launched their company.

So, why today is it the world’s largest photo community by far? Two reasons. First, they focused. The idea of building community into photosharing was perfect (after all it is called photo “sharing”). Second and more importantly was near perfect execution. If you can build something that other companies already do and you know customers already use the stuff but you do it ten times better then I think there must be a good business opportunity there. I visit sites like Zazzle and it makes me realize that people live with poor functionality to get something done. But, if someone comes along and pays attention to detail and shows consumers that they can accomplish their task with far less pain then I think consumers will migrate away from incumbent sites.

Make things easier. Amazon nailed it early with their “1 click” to buy concept. That’s about as easy as it can get although I would argue that they too can learn from some of these new Web2.0 companies who’s interfaces blow away the old guard in terms of appearance and workflow. I’m trying really hard to bear all of this in mind as we keep quietly developing away on ImageKind.

A 2003 Ferrari Enzo crashed at 6:08 AM on February 21, 2006 in Malibu, California on the Pacific Coast Highway near Decker Canyon . In the first few hours after the crash, there was a lot of confusion as to who the driver was. Follow the links below and read on…its a great story.

The driver was convicted of fraud and counterfeiting in Sweden in 1993 and 1994.

More great coverage over at Mobhappy…

Thanks Adam Flick for the great tip.

Then you’ll love hearing that Jackie Stewart has helped launch the Silverstone investment company that is “business angel network for Northamptonshire that focuses on innovative companies from the motorsport and other business sectors”.

There is little info about this exercise but you can find some material here: http://www.silverstoneinvest.co.uk/news/feb0306.html

If you’re both a car and a tech nut then this is worth pondering for a VERY brief moment of time…and then that’s probably enough.