Kelly Smith | Made in Seattle

Josh Peterson at 43things interviews Jason Fried at 37signals. Perhaps judging only by the flattery of numbers in their company names, Josh is a fan of Jason. Well, I’m a fan of both. Great interview.

Well, according to the US patent office the intellectual property was awarded to Balthaser. The Patent Office’s web site says the patent covers “methods, systems and processes for the design and creation of rich-media applications via the Internet.” Geez. Whatever. This is yet another ridiculous patent issued by the US Government who clearly demonstrates that they are not able to figure out if Ajax is a powdered sink cleanser or a technique used in web application development.

ImageKind is seeking a front-end design technologist. We’re looking for someone who is a cross over from graphic design into computer science. You should be passionate about symantically correct HTML, love design, and also be an expert at cross-browser CSS, AJAX, Javascript, ASP or XML. Our office is in Pioneer Square in Seattle and you will be part of a small and dynamic team. If you know C# that puts you at the top of the stack but it isn’t necessary.

http://www.tribecalabs.com/home.htm

I was reading over on 37signals blog about HP’s new slimming effect for their new camera.

This is so goofy. Maybe I should make and sell some new Photoshop filters so you can do this with ANY digital camera.

Filter> Distort>Puke&Binge
Filter> Distort>BackShave
Filter> Artistic>De-fugly
Filter> Render>SmoothFat
Filter> Stylize>MakeKateMoss
Filter>Artistic>RemoveTwinkyEffect
Filter> Render>Liposuck
Filter> Distort>FattyRender

We are proud to announce that we’ve hired Kevin Saliba from Expedia to take over day to day operations at ImageKind in the new role of President and Chief Operating Officer. Kevin brings a great deal of relevant experience to the organization. He held a number of different roles at Expedia to include Director of Strategic Initiatives and other roles in Product Planning, and Marketing. He also played a key role in the success of Expedia’s private label & affiliate business. His previous experience includes positions with Magna International, Omron Corporation, and Micrsocan Inc. Kevin holds a B.Sc. in Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from Cornell University.

Kevin sees a great deal of potential at the cross roads of print-on-demand and user generated content and we’re excited to have him.

I’ve noticed people are selling and promoting their various ImageKind galleries in a pretty funny way. Here are some examples:

http://www.booksonposter.com

This guy has framed our entire site and is trying to build a little business off our entire infrastructure. Funny. Not sure I approve

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/fur/205622729.html

This person is trying to leverage Craigslist traffic to promote his ImageKind gallery. Interesting. It’s driving 1% of our site traffic.

http://www.nateowens.com

This person designed a custom site where all the “buy my prints” buttons actually link to his Imagekind account.

http://acida.deviantart.com

This guy is using an imagekind banner in his deviant art account to link to ImageKind so he can sell prints of his works. Clever!

It’s fun to see people start to think of their own ways to promote their ImageKind print business! Maybe we need a new contest…

I haven’t kept up with the latest iteration of the lightbox.js scripts but just found this today. As a method of showing an image on a webpage, it’s getting incredibly smooth.

Techcrunch writes of Kiko selling on eBay. Too funny. I touched on this awhile ago in a post http://blog.curiousoffice.com/?p=59 about this very thing happening. I have no crystal ball but this is what happens when you can start something cool for a few hundred grand. You can take six months to do it and make $100,000 on eBay or work a job for six months. Many young developers, particularly overseas, will start to do this as their planned exit. Just watch!

I saw on TV that returning soldiers from Iraq CANNOT bring water bottles on board the airplanes but they are allowed to bring on their government issued firearms. Yet, I’m barely surprised. What is the world coming to?