SOME RANDOM DUDE

I thought this would be a perfect topic for discussion as it is extremely pertinent due to recent events. Over the past couple weeks, I have been approached multiple times about putting advertising on Some Random Dude. I have been very clear about my thoughts on the subject, but I thought it would be even more interesting to hear your thoughts.

I was telling a colleague of mine about the present offers I have been getting and how I would most likely be holding off on them. He suggested that the opportunity for ad revenue could open up an interesting possibility for this community in the form of a community fund. If the community agrees on advertising, then ads will go up. All the money brought in from advertising (after taxes of course) will go back to the community in the way the community desires. This whole method is quite intriguing to me as it is adding a very large democratic element to the regularly closed-door environment of advertising. In addition, the advertising will be directly benefiting all the right people - the folks who bring in the revenue to begin with.

So, I leave this all up to you. Please leave your comments and/or email me directly if you feel it is more appropriate. I think giving the community a say on this topic makes sense in so many different ways. At the very least, I am pretty sure it will open up a lively discussion.ads, advertising, blog, community, discussion, money, online advertising, revenue, site, some random dude voting

A site I helped work on, The Apartment, just launched. The project was to rebuild their site/blog in a much more interactive model with greater potential for user interaction. The site was built in Flex and was relatively large in scale. On top of it, this was my first Flex project, so it was quite a learning experience.

I definitely suggest checking it out. There were some very large technical challenges for this project, as well as a few we still need to tackle. Still, we are pretty stoked about its (beta) launch. One work of warning - the content can be a little risqué, so I would think twice about opening this site up at work.

For any of you wondering why I have not written a very noteworthy article in a while, this project had a little something to do with that. Hopefully things will be calming down a little from now on and I can get back to my regular schedule.apartment, blog, design, development, flash, flex, programming, site web design

My apologies for the slight downtime - Some Random Dude just migrated to a new and improved server which should make a few things much easier for additional changes and a fairly significant addition to the site. All in all, the migration was basically painless. Thank you Media Temple!

As for the schedule, my wife and I will be preoccupied this upcoming week, so major changes should begin to happen in two weeks. Depending on a couple variables, the process could end up being accelerated. I am still going to attempt to keep at my regular writing pace while making changes/additions to the site - we will see how that plays out.downtime, media temple, server, server migration, site some random dude