Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
Over the last year, the community around this site (and before, when it was The 2.0 Life) has evolved. The site is now one part techie, and one part technological novice – people coming to learn about and discover new technologies. That balance has been my hope for this site all along, and I’m thrilled that people are getting value from it.
In an effort to make Digitizd an even more useful place, and to connect new people with technology and help techies get more from it, I’m launching not one, not two, but three new arms of this site. (Well, four, but we’ll get there).
You’ll be able to find all the arms of the network in the nav bar of this site, and each one has its own unique brand of awesome. Digitizd Plus, a place for tips, tricks, and other bits of cool technology, has been up for a while, and now we’re adding to the family!
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Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
Forgive the rant.
There’s this funny trend happening on the Web the last few months. It started with people like Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Patrick Rhone of Minimal Mac, both of whom have sites I read daily and love. Their basic hypothesis is this: we have too much unnecessary stuff, and it affects our lives negatively. So they preach “minimalism,” the systematic getting rid of the extraneous.
That idea, valiant as it is, has warped. As the trend of minimalism has caught on, the definition has changed, and the mantra has gone from being about getting rid of the unnecessary, to looking around your room and saying “what can I get rid of to show everyone how little I have?” Minimalism has given way to lessism.
Read More CommentsPost by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
Ever since The 2.0 Life became Digitizd, I’ve been thinking out the subtle tweaks of how to make this community even awesome-r than it has already become (completely thanks to you guys). A few subtle changes have been made, and there are some bigger ones coming down the road. To keep you up to date:
The logo
Isn’t the new logo awesome? I’m a huge, huge fan of it, and now have infinitely more appreciation for people with design skills, because I have, well, none. Luckily for me, Bronson Dunbar has those skills in spades. He’s a great designer, great to work with, and a really good guy. And, by the way, he’s for hire!
He’s also got this cool, new program called Project Assistant that makes tracking your time (critical for a freelancer, useful for anyone) immeasurably easier. He’s offering it for $5.99 (a great deal) until Jan. 31 – so get it before the price goes up! Definitely worth checking out – and if you need a designer, hit him up. Tell him I sent you.
Offshoots
It’s just occurring to me now that I started two small companion sites to Digitizd without telling any of you! Let’s remedy. First, there’s Digitizd+ – it’s full of tips, links, tricks, and tools I come across that are too small for a full post, but are still brimming with awesome.
Then, there’s Digitizd Required Reading, a running feed of articles, videos, and stories anyone who wants to live digitally ought to know about. Please feel free to send me tips or ideas for either one!
Sponsor Digitizd
Instead of running ads, as I’ve always done on my sites, I want to do something different. I hate ads that I don’t control, don’t care about, and can’t recommend personally. So here’s what I’m doing: I’m starting a sponsorship program! Instead of just letting someone sell ads for me, I’m going to be selling them personally, one week at a time.
Companies (vetted by me, and I won’t choose a single one I wouldn’t recommend to you all anyway) will be able to buy ad space, a “Thanks for sponsoring Digitizd” post, and the eyeballs of some smart, interested, curious readers. It’ll let me promote products I really like, and the money will let me start to devote more and more time to this site (and a few other projects in the pipeline…).
If you’re interested in sponsoring Digitizd, head on over to the Sponsorships page.
And, by the way, I’ll never be able to say this enough, but THANK YOU ALL for being part of this community, sticking around through the mess that was moving domain names, and making Digitizd such a fun and useful place! This site would’ve been long dead if it weren’t for you.
There’s more coming soon, and I’ll make sure you’re in the loop about it all! A lot of cool stuff is happening, I can’t wait to share it with you!
And now, we return to our regularly scheduled content.
Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
Everywhere you look the last week or so, there have been blog posts, newspaper articles, and anything else you can imagine, all devoted to the biggest things of the 00’s, the naughts, the 2000s, or whatever else you want to call them. And there are a lot of good candidates, from the iPod to the Blackberry and much more.
But I’d argue that the biggest thing to happen in the decade from 2000-2009 was search. Search existed before 2000, but became the integral part of the infrastructure of the Internet in the decade that’s just ended, and isn’t showing any signs of reversing that trend in the decade to come. I’d argue the Internet’s success is totally dependent on the maturation of search, and its effects are felt by nearly everyone.
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Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
The 2.0 Life was my baby, my project, and the greatest resume tool I could have ever imagined. It was also hard to spell, a difficult domain name to explain to people, and a phrase that not enough people fully understood.
Plus, let’s be honest—I get bored easily, and like breaking things so I can figure out how to rebuild them. And this process, full of 301 redirects and .htaccess files, certainly fit that bill. But I digress.
The result of all this is that The 2.0 Life has changed—Welcome to Digitizd!
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Merry Christmas, folks! I hope everyone is having a good, work-free holiday.
This is but a quick note to tell you that, for the next day or so, everything imaginable will probably go wrong with this site. That’s because we’re re-launching!
The 2.0 Life is becoming Digitizd, and is re-launching with a new name, a new focus, and a new look!
More on that later – for now, if you want to see the work in progress, head on over to http://www.digitizd.com and check it out! I’ll keep this up for a while, and keep you all posted on what’s going on – thanks in advance for your patience as we move.
Happy Holidays to all!
- David
I really need to get over this whole “I have to constantly be tweaking something, all the time, always” thing. But sometimes, it comes out pretty well.
If you haven’t noticed, there’s a brand-new look at The 2.0 Life. I’ve been redesigning and tweaking for a while now, trying to figure out how to get the best of the blogging-style designs, along with a more attractive and easier way to find better content. And I think I’ve found some good stuff. (If you’re reading in RSS, here’s the link to the new design)
Read More CommentsPost by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
Forgive me, anyone who’s not between 16-24 – this one’s not going to do you much good.
There’s constant discussion, on the Web and off, about what students really want. We’re a group of early-adopters, but we’re also super-skeptics when it comes to using something.
What we want, what we like, and how we work and act are a total mystery to most companies. And that bodes poorly both for companies, who can’t figure out what we want, and for us, who never get what we want from companies that don’t get us. Some have tried to figure it out, but no one seems to have hit it yet.
Which is why I think the Network of Cool is so, well, cool.
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