Shortly after that I spent some time working on a personal publishing tool.  The theory was people / companies wanted sites that didn’t look like boring templates that were as easy to maintain as a blog.  How could we lose? Easily apparently.  Again, kinda neat, but didn’t go anywhere.

Later I found that what I really needed was a job, so I got one.  Then I got the itch and started something new on the side.  It was just what the world needed – another social networking site.  This was was focussed on readers.  Imagine book clubs that 1. were online, 2. were dynamic communities, not hacked up forums (are you hearing this BN.com?), and 3. weren’t trying to shove new books down your throat.  The real play there was in mining the data to trend consumer purchase direction and cluster it until the cows came home.  Maybe someone else will do it.

Then I worked on a photo-sharing site with a friend on the West Coast.  Being on the East Coast, collaberating wasn’t as easy as I’d have hoped.  Oh, and it’s a really busy space and the thought of a gorilla in the space adding the differentiating features that we were running with, in like a weekend, and then shooting us right out of the air … yeah, that wasn’t very appetizing.  But it was in Django, so I got to see what the other side of the fence is like.  I still prefer Rails.

So here I sit.  TempMine v 1.0 is coming along.  There a few of us working on it.  We’re going after a real pain point, a real market, a really good thing.  This one should be interesting.

Rather than do this all in super steath mode (how about only mildly stealth?), I’m going to blog it from start to finish.  Maybe it’ll help me with my sanity, maybe it’ll push me closer to the edge.  In any case, it’ll at least be good read if you’ve finished the rest of the internet.