Come see me at SXSW, Friday at 5pm

I’ll be on a panel called Try Making Yourself More Interesting Friday at 5pm, in Room A along with Brian Oberkirch (Small Good Thing), DL Byron (Bike Hugger), David Rees (mnftiu.cc), and Kristina Halvorson (Brain Traffic).

I’ll be talking about Photojojo and the topic is how to get people to pay attention to what you’re doing.

As usual, if you’re in town and want to meet up, drop me a line!

I’m in Vegas at PMA this week (& we’re doing an HP/Photojojo Photo Safari)

I’m in Vegas for PMA this week. I’ll be speaking on Sunday, looking for new products for the Photojojo store with Jen (our new store manager) during the week, helping with the HP+Photojojo Photo Safari at the Neon Boneyard on Wednesday, and hanging out with Jen, Steph, and Katherine and Cari from SF on Wednesday night and Thursday.

If you’re in town and want to meet up, drop me a line!

What do Guy Kawasaki, Chris Messina, and Dave Morin have in common?

They’re all taking part in our first-ever Jelly speaker series, Jelly Talks.

Once a month, we’ll be inviting some amazing speakers to visit their local Jelly and give a talk.

Each talk will be streamed live to all other Jellies taking place on that day, and we’ll follow it with a collective Q&A.

January and February kick off with my buddies Chris Messina and Dave Morin debating the relative merits of Open ID and Facebook Connect and how you can implement it on your site, followed by Guy Kawasaki talking about tips for entrepreneurs in February. (These talks will be in San Francisco, with Jellies from Boston, New York, LA, San Diego, Bangalore, Chicago, Vancouver, and Columbus tuning in.)

I’m so incredibly psyched to have these guys come speak at Jelly, and I can’t wait to see the speakers other cities line up in coming months!

A big thanks to Yahoo! for sponsoring our community and helping to make Jelly Talks happen, and to Josh Spear, Mike Arauz, and the gang at Undercurrent for making the connection!

Upcoming Speaking Engagements: Macworld, PMA, SXSW

Jan 7th: I’ll be on stage at Macworld with my pal Rick Smolan talking about Photojojo and cool new things in digital photography.

March 1st: At PMA this year, I’ll be doing a solo session on day 1 of DIMA (the series looking at emerginc tech trends in photography). I’ll be talking about some of the “wacky” things we’re doing with Photojojo and how brick-and-mortar retailers can get involved.

March 13th: And I’ll be going to SXSW for the first time, where I’ll be sitting on a panel my friend Brian Oberkirch is organizing called “Try Making Yourself More Interesting” talking about how we built Photojojo’s brand and community to be more human and fun.

If you’ll be at any of these events, come by, or drop me a line. I’d love to meet you!

My Year in Cities – 2008

One or more nights were spent in each city. Per Kottke’s specifications, * indicates cities visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

• San Francisco, CA*
• New York, NY*
• Brooklyn, NY*
• Chicago, IL
• Düsseldorf, Germany
• Cologne, Germany
• New Delhi, India*
• Nainital, India
• South Lake Tahoe, CA
• Brookline, MA
• Edison, NJ
• Woodbridge, CT*
• North Bennington, VT

A quick look on Dopplr revealed that I spent a whopping 31 days in New York this year, burnt 12,281 kg of CO₂, and had no travel in March or June.

See also: Katherine’s list and Chrysanthe’s list

More Yammer, less Twitter

We’ve now been using Yammer at Photojojo for three months, and it’s been a really useful tool for ambient office communication.

For those of you who don’t know, Yammer’s basically a private, company-specific version of Twitter. Even in a real office (we’re usually sitting just a few feet away from each other) and with a small team (we’re just three people — p.s. we’re hiring) it’s been really cool to know what people are working on, what they’re noticing, etc. There’s a lot of things that just don’t merit a verbal or email interruption but are still worth putting out there. Yammer fits the bill.

In addition to sending a quick note about we’re working on, we also end up using yammer as a semi-live chat space… the Air app is usually open on each of our laptops, and it’s taken the place of IM.

As a side note, I’ve noticed myself twittering a lot less since we started using Yammer in September. I’m averaging 10-12 yammer messages a day, but only 2-3 twitter messages.

p.s. I also talked briefly about our Yammer usage on a PSFK panel last month.

How to get an Airport Express to wirelessly extend your Linksys WRT54GL

I have a Linksys WRT54GL wireless router running the latest Linksys firmware and an Airport Express (g, no n) running firmware 6.3

The Airport Express used to sit in my bedroom hooked up to some speakers, and the Linksys in my living room. By the time the Linksys’ signal reached my bedroom, it was spotty on my MacBook Pro, and streaming music dropped our frequently. (As did Skype, iChat video, etc.)

The Airport Express can be configured to extend a wireless connection (as opposed to joining it) using WDS, but there’s a lot of conflicting and outdated info on whether or how the it will work with non-Apple wireless routers.

After fiddling for a half hour or so, I got it to work. Here’s how…

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I’m speaking tomorrow in NYC — PSFK Good Ideas 2009

I’ll be on a panel tomorrow morning in NYC for PSFK called “Good Ideas in Collaboration” where I’ll be talking about Jelly and Photojojo.

Fellow panel members are Andrew Hoppin (NASA),
John Geraci (Outside.in & DIY City), and
Matt Stinchcomb (Etsy).

There’s 6 tickets left at this moment and it starts way too early in the morning.

Photojojo Photo Safari in Brooklyn this Weekend! (10/25)

Photojojo’s putting on a series of events over the next couple months in NYC and SF. They’re called Photo Safaris and the idea is simple: anyone with a camera is welcome, we find a fun event, location, or organize a tour, you have fun shooting for an hour or two, then we go to a bar, show off everyone’s photos, and give away some prizes from our sponsors.

The first one is this Saturday, October 25th in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Hope you can make it.

Link: Photojojo Photo Safaris
Link: RSVP for this Saturday

Room available in my apartment (San Francisco)

UPDATE: Room now taken!

One of the rooms in my apartment just opened up, and we’re looking to fill it by November 1st or sooner. We’ll start interviewing this week.

The apartment is a three bedroom in San Francisco that I share with two other people, and one of them (Jenny) started grad school and moved into school housing*.

The room is small (12′ x 13′), has a window, a large closet, and is quiet. The rent is very cheap ($550/month + utilities) and the lease is month-to-month.

• In Duboce Triangle (seriously great, super walkable neighborhood with tree-lined streets, and lots of places to eat.) A quick walk to the Lower Haight or Castro. 2 blocks from Duboce Park (swell dog park — and the apt itself is dog-friendly.)
• Within 3 blocks, you’ll find burritos, burgers, vietnamese and chinese, bars, a gym, and a 24-hour Safeway (grocery store)
• Washer and Dryer in unit.
• Bike parking in back.
• Shared Kitchen + living room + bathroom
• 2 blocks from the Church St. MUNI (K,M,T) and N-Judah, J-Church, F-Market, and 22.
• Available 11/1 or sooner.
• $550/month. (Yes, really. It’s rent controlled because my other roommate has been here for a while.)

We might be picky, but if you are awesome and are interested, email me. And if you know someone who might be interested, pass it on. Thanks!

* Jenny was going to move out a few months ago but she decided she didn’t want to give up the room and stayed on a bit longer. In the end, paying for a room she wasn’t using didn’t seem like the best idea, so now we’re looking again!

I’m hiring for Photojojo (San Francisco, CA)

We have a really cool new full-time position open at Photojojo, working with me, Susan, and Kelly in our San Francisco office in SOMA.

Briefly, we’re looking for someone entrepreneurial, smart, and savvy to take charge of our online store business. We started the store two years ago and have seen impressive growth despite it being a sideline until now. We’re aiming to put a lot more time into the store, and we’re looking for a perfect someone to take over buying, marketing, promotions, and overall direction. You’ll have a good deal of responsibility, lots of flexibility to be creative, and the opportunity to learn and grow a ton.

Please pass it on to your photo-happy San Francisco friends!

Details: Photojojo Jobs: Entrepreneurial online store manager wanted

I’ll be in Cologne, Germany next week for Photokina

I’m traveling to Cologne next week to go to Photokina, the largest photo tradeshow in the world. (It only happens once every two years — nuts!)

Looking forward to seeing my pal Mareen, meeting new friends like Fabian Töpel, and finding some cool products to sell in the Photojojo Store!

If you’ll be at Photokina, drop me a line so we can meet up!

I’ll be in NYC this weekend (8/16 - 8/18)

I’ll be in NYC this weekend (August 16th through the 18th) to attend NYIGF for Photojojo. If you wanna meet up know of something great going on, let me know!

(And if you’re free Saturday night, stop by House 2.0 and hang out!)

Congrats to Joe and AirBed & Breakfast!

My pal Joe Gebbia’s got a really cool site called AirBed & Breakfast… it’s sort of like an up-market version of Couchsurfing. It lets users rent their apartment to people traveling to their city, and travelers get a cheaper stay than a hotel, and some local flavor.

I wrote about them back in March and am thrilled to see ‘em getting more and more attention. Just in the past few days, they got a plug in the Wall Street Journal and a post in TechCrunch!

Their marketing strategy for the site, by the way, is spot-on. Instead of trying to attack the entire world at once (and spreading themselves too thin, with cities upon cities with no listings) or concentrating on one city at a time (slow), they’re latching onto popular events and conferences.

By creating campaigns around design and political conferences and major events, they make it temporal, and relevant. In one stroke, the site is worth talking about and blogging about for anyone who’s talking or blogging about that event. Smart.