One idea I’ve had with this site is to point out sites that friends are working on or working at, either personally or professionally.
Being in the Internet industry I work with a lot of talented and creative people who are also quite proficient in the field of web publishing and technology. It’s one of the things that inspires me to stay in the Bay Area and to stay in this industry.
When I moved to San Francisco the internet was really just taking off (this was 1995). My first job was at Intuit where I worked on the first iteration of their website Intuit.com (and specifically, QuickBooks.com). During this time I also started playing around with my own personal web site – though it was hosted under my Pacific Bell internet account so it’s long-lost.
At that time I worked with Karl, who was also playing around with his own website on the side while also working on Intuit’s web publishing systems. Karl and I also spent a lot of time rock climbing back in those days, and he put together a website to host photos from our rock climbing trips as well as share his thoughts on and experements with gear.
I learned a lot from Karl, and I’m sad that I don’t spend more time with him (or more time rock climbing). He is also one of the first friends that I had that created a website so I’ve decided to start this series of posts with his site. Even though it is long un-maintained, it’s still fun to go back and check out the photos (and how they’re integrated into the layout) as well as how he chose to handle navigation around the site (this was still early on in the days of the web).. So go ahead and take a moment and check out climerware.com. It’s not someplace that you’ll spend a lot of time, but perhaps you’ll learn something just as I did all those years ago.