silent, but deadly. (aka zinedistro quietly comes out of beta)

z!nedistro has been flying the ‘beta’ flag since our launch around valentine’s day of 2006. we really weren’t finished building what we wanted to show the world. so it really was a beta. i know its terribly trendy right now to announce a product as a beta, have problems, never fix them and never come out of beta.

however, we’ve decided to run with it warts and all. we’ve grown the site out a lot since the original launch, or at least far enough to remove the beta. here’s a short list of things that have changed or have been added / improved since the beta launch:

• user accounts. (yes, its true. there were no user accounts when zd! first launched.)
• ratings, tags and favorites. you can now do all of them on zines.
• the zine library keeps growing.
• all of the zines have at least a few tags.
• the interface has been cleaned up a bit. the wildness has been tamed some.
• you can see other our faves, your faves and everyone’s overall faves.
• tag sorting by: all, alphabetical or popular (cloud style).

lots of more goodness is coming. stay tuned. same zine time. same zine channel.

btw, if you haven’t read ‘getting real,’ we highly recommend it.

join the resistance. fall in love.

zinedistro is a part of the resistance army.

i know, exciting isn’t it. have a seat, catch your breath, calm down.

…

better? good.

no, seriously, though. this has been the plan all along with theresistancearmy.com; to use it as an umbrella for other projects that were being done by me and my friends / comrades. for awhile it was just a pretty link to my personal blog and my now defunct podcast [1].

its been kind of up and down with its direction, but we’ve decided on a vision for the resistance army that is a little clearer now, at least for us. that vision is basically making a home for a our projects that are otherwise disconnected. here’s the current resistance army project line up:

• z!nedistro
• web based library of downloadable print zines.
• ListYourList
• a site for making lists. about anything. eli blogs about it.
• Sweat Shop Free Printing
• just like it sounds. sweat shop free garments printed with eco-friendly inks and chemicals. bookis’s blog. brooke’s blog.
• the resistance army shirts
• i’ve been designing shirts printed by friends for a couple of years that are fairly political. there will be more of that happening soon.

there are plans for some others that are top secret right now. [2] some of them have already shown their face a little, but are still being developed. [3] the main thing that ties them all together is the people working on them. we’re all friends and we all care about each other and each other’s projects. stay tuned for more.

1. it was called ‘a liberation frequency’. i only ever released one show. that first show was about liberal/progressive failures to see that having bush is not the problem; having a president at all is the problem. the second show that i had recorded, just not edited down, was about the history and origins of the FBI and COINTELPRO and their significance in modern radical politics. it was basically a summary of a talk that i heard Ward Churchill give a few years back at NCOR (national conference on organized resistance). then i realized that i should have just rereleased his talk, since he did a much, much better job than i ever could. [return]

2. as the old Frenchman counseled, you must always have a secret plan. [return]

3. for the fourth time in my life, i’ve decided to run a small record label. this time the plan was to do just an internet record label. everything for download for free with nice downloadable booklets and cover images. just only on the internet. no ‘real stuff’. but then james was playing a show with southerly at kilby court in salt lake city on valentine’s day 2006 and i couldn’t say no to that face. so we put together a sweet little cd and booklet. we still need to build out the resistance army audio project (T.R.A.A.P.) site out, but the music is already up if you want it. two records by james miska. live at boing 9.9.2005 and saol, ceol [return]

new features quietly rolled out

a couple days ago we rolled out a new iteration of the site that was mainly some bug fixes, but also added a couple new features / enhancements of features.

the three main user actions for zines (ratings, tags and favourites) have all been ajaxified. what’s this ajax business, i speak of? well, let’s just say is web nerd speak for ‘makes web sites slicker.’

basically, in lay speak, when you need to send or receive small amounts of data, say a rating for a zine or maybe a tag, ajax is a neat approach. before ajax the entire web page would have to refresh just to send a tag or rating or whatever. now only the piece of the page that we’re doing something with changes. for example, when you click on “add zine to your favorites” it immediately switches to “150 is one of your faves [x]“. then to unmark it as a favourite, you just click on the [x] and its no longer a fave. no more page refresh.

same goes for tags and ratings. go ahead and try them. they all need some tags. go on, you’ll love it.

more features are being worked on for the real near future. most notablely in the user arena (i.e. changing passwords or email addresses, better management of faves, ratings and tags, and much more).

stay tuned. same zine time, same zine channel.

do projects with friends

all of zinedistro are friends. even before we started. eli and i have known each other for like 12 years. and now we’re all going to be living together. awesomeness ensues.

“Do you have advice or insights for other people who are trying to create their own projects?
It’s great fun to work on projects with your friends. It’s better than watching TV, so go for it.”

(Via Web 2.0 Awards – Interview with Mike Tatum of Wayfaring.)

tags : [ friends (t d f), zinedistro (t d f) ]

zdhouse-seattle

looks like there is going to be a zinedistro house.
instead of having eli move to salt lake, where everyone else was living, we (shane, bookis, brooke and myself) are moving up to seattle. shane and i rented a car last week and drove up to seattle to do some house hunting. on the evening of the first day of looking we found a perfect house: four bedrooms, close to the ave, and civ-friendly. tomorrow we go to sign the lease and by mid-april the team will be one. i cant wait for the first time we sit down to pull an all-nighter together. all we need are some snacks, the computers, and a yoga ball for when you reach that point where if you stare at the computer screen for one more second you’ll go crazy. it seems corny, but there is something about that atmosphere that makes what we are doing seem that much more real and valid.

going home

austonia was rocktackular [and we didn’t even see a single show.] we put eli on a plane today back to seattle today and we’ve decided to go ahead and hit the road.

a full recap will be written when i return.

Funny story…

I was watching "Oprah" today, and uhh… She had a guest on whom was just an average guy, he was a writer. This man had several children who constatly were coming home with rub on tattoos. he tried for a few months to come up with some sort of chemical that would easily remove these. He finally came up with something and was realeasing it on the show.

So as Oprah was questioning him he let her know it could only be applied in bomb form. they switched to the big screen to show a plane dropping one of these super cleaning solution bombs on an entire city. As it hit everything went bleach white and produced 5 megatons of suds. after it all settled the screen cleared and it revealed. everyone was turned into.. get this…. Green Triangles. GREEN! can you imagine. oprah freaked out, she was yelling, throwing shit and thats it.

That is a true story by the way, it was told to me by Why! at SXSW at the “panel” The Orthley Children and Their Computer, An extremely wierd expierience.

After that we went to Bruce Sterling Presentation: The State of the World which was very odd as well Bruce talked about culture, writing, politics, poetry, and many other things. It ended with a very touching poem (he cried). I was worried the audience he had wouldn’t connect with what he was saying but to my dismay he had a standing applause. It made me happy.

Besides SXSW we went to Mothers cafe which is a Veggie/Vegan restaurant, I got “Deluxe Nachos” ohh… I would say there were… lets see… The best nachos I ever had. They had many other awesome vegan plates.

After everything, I made “bookies” and a Chocolate cake with a Blueberry marble frosting. it looked sooooo good, but it’s cool I cant eat any.

Now we are sitting around at the co-op, a band called Gem arrived from the netherlands whom schooled me on their culture. it was awesome. Until Next time

The New, new, new world.

Today We all got up, left, and went SXSW crazy. We went to things like “sink or swim, the five most important start up decisions” which featured Cablel Sasser founder of Panic, How to make the most of maps, Tagging 2.0, and DIY now more than ever. Oh and of course Keynote Conversation: Heather Armstrong / Jason Kottke .

So, today I want to get into the things ive learned and thought while at SXSW. here it goes:

The importance of Blogging
The close knit community of developers
Small teams of 6-10 people making some of the best software.
The money going into blogging.
The HUGE amount of blogs people frequent.
Most admirable Web apps/companies never had a business plan.

I guess what I didn’t realize is that a “Alpha” blogger is writting what a large group of people want to hear and read, just like a writer for a paper or magazine. So in that sense it’s great these people are documenting what they see and making a living off of it. some other Advice ive heard from panelist that I think is important that were doing or I hope we do in the future is:

Fail Fast.
Never make the same mistake twice.
Start learning everything that intrests you now and self-teaching that is a great method.
99% of a succsesful Product/Site is Execution, 1% is the great idea.
Don’t get Loans or investors for your project if you don’t have to.

I feel very lucky to come hear and get to meet all these great new people, hear amazing stories, and get a name out for Z!neDistro. Until next time.

Living and learning the awesome world of geekery

The day started at about 9 or so, everyone got up and left in no particular order. Where we headed was the first official day of SXSW. Shane, Eli, and I rode bikes while emily and Brooke Walked. I have to say Austin is much prettier than expected, I rode through the campus and close to a river which is surrounded by a bombardment of trees and other such greens. Then emerging into downtown, which looks about the same a any small downtown. Except, One building stands out above the rest, not just vertically but in architecture as well. It’s a tall glass building with various pointed towers at the top. Very nice.

As for SXSW everyone has there own intrests, so I mosied around for awhile stopped in “Better Blogging Brainstorms” but just caught the tail end of it. Then made my way into Battle decks which could be so funny if.. ya know.. they had funny speakers. so this is how it goes; one speaker comes on stage just as he would if giving a lecture, this person has a projector and a remote for the projector. They click for the first slide and something tottally random like a hen saying “your mother was a snowblower” pops up. The speaker has to then start blabbling away on the subject to convince a panel of jugdes that he/she knows what there talking about. Funny but dissapointing. anyway, Then I stopped at “Book digitalization and the revenge of librarians” (BO-RING).

All of us then met up at a place called Koriente for some curry and tea. This place is awesome, A great supply of Quality tea and quite a few vegan options.

Next, Jim coudal and Jason Fried opening remarks. Which really kicked off the event for me. They were Hilarious and this was just the start to a new world for me (which ill get to the specifics a little later) In the evening I stopped by “How to increase creativity at work” which was a bit corny but fun and alot of the crowd was participating in group stretches an breathing techniques. At 5-6 was Tantek Celik whom shane made familiar to me on the drive. He was a Great speaker, from him I started to realize the great community in the web design/programing world.

That night Brooke, Emily and I Headed home while Shane and Eli went to a bar party. In my opinion there is nothing better than a nerd party.

I’m quite pleased with our first day here, we’re getting to meet people and our name is going around.

eat breakfast, register, play with legos, go home

the 5 of us (me, shane, bookis, emily, brooke) got up this morning at the leasurely hour of 11am and left the house all decked in our yellow zinedistro shirts ready to fill our bellies with delicious vegan food from veggie heaven, and boy were we hungry. shane ordered 9 california rolls and was full after one. that’s right, he ate one and was done, but he did have plenty of leftovers for later.

after breakfast we walked to the convention center and registered. the crappy web cams they were using to take pictures resulted in really crappy pictures where it is about impossible to know that the person wearing the badge is the person in the picture. nonetheless, we got our badges and headed off to look for something to do. we found legos.

“interactive play” brought a shitload of legos and dumped them on some tables and on the floor and really had our number. in the end we spent about 3 hours there separating out the red 2x6s and making towers and all kinds of crap. shane made a sign letting everyone know what flickr tag to use (legosxsw) and there is already one picture up by that tag. awesomeness. all 5 of us joined in on the nerdery and walked away better people because of it.

from there we left to find some sxsw parties and instead found a shitload of free energy bars, and then we all gave our free beer tickets to our friend “no neck noel.” so, he is gonna be getting something like 5 free beers a day on us. get crunked!

we walked back to colemen’s place and we are in the process of making some of shane’s pasta and updating our blogs and relaxing a little before our busy day tomorrow.