8 Ways to Sunday

Dean Allen, creator of Textpattern and Textile, is starting his own hosting company and shirking venture capital to fund it with up-front money from the first 200 customers. It’s an insanely great hosting package, for $199, for life.

I encourage any bloggers who are starting to outgrow their current hosting providers to look at the specs, read the thread in the Textpattern support forum, and go for it. Those using PHP/MySQL tools should be especially interested, since the servers will be optimized for this. WordPress users may also be interested to know that if you choose to become part of the “VC200” 10% of your one-time payment will be donated toward the WordPress development effort.

I just took the plunge, and I’m looking forward to a big fat upgrade come June.

(thanks for the tip, Photo Matt)

Update: As of about 4:45 4:15 PM my time on May 26th, all the spots are gone. People on the Textpattern forum are joking that Dean should write a book on how to finance your business start-up by raising $40,000 in 75 hours. It wouldn’t have been possible without the goodwill and trust Dean had already built up in the blogging community or without the ceaseless patience that he and Jason Hoffman showed in answering absolutely every question someone posted about the new service. Way to go, guys. Congratulations on your successful fundraising, and best of luck with the new venture.

Now where are keys to my account, already?

IBM’s developerWorks site is running an article from web design consultant Carolyn Snyder that anyone who makes web sites should read. She lists some of the tricks that web designers and power users rely on daily to get around the web, but that non-technical users have no knowledge of at all. This discrepancy can cause serious usability problems when web sites are desgned with the assumption that visitors will know the same tricks that the developers do.

Anyone who makes web sites should read this article. You’d be amazed at what constitutes a “trick” for some people (more than one window at a time, for instance).

(citation: atmaspheric | endeavors)

You know how some Peanut M&Ms get stuck together during the chocolate coating process and come out kind of “conjoined”? Sometimes, I pretend that I’m attempting to separate them in a daring high-risk surgery performed with my teeth.

Sadly, neither twin ever survives.