Author Archives: Brian Alvey

Not the dude — the blog. I could have called this “Too much photo and not enough Matt,” but I do enough of that. Photomatt redesigned. His blog looks great. Next step: convince him to use Blogsmith. Seriously!

Wow. When Jason told me he was leaving AOL, I thought he was just canceling his dial-up account. I figured he would call up AOL and a skilled representative would talk him out of his decision and he would extend his subscription another year and maybe get some free bonus hours. Boy was I wrong: TechCrunch; NY Times; Jason’sContinue reading “More changes at AOL”

I read this review of the Kansas City Chiefs post-Zeldman redesign a while ago when it first came out, but I re-read it today to see all of the comments it got. The blogger slams the Chiefs for replacing a happy, valid, web standards design with one built on Flash and more nested tables than you couldContinue reading “Are you ready for some DOCTYPEs!”

It’s the afternoon and I probably have less to say on the CEO replacement news today than I did yesterday. Maybe that’s because I’ve answered so many people in email and IM. It’s the circle of life. I like Jon Miller and he seemed to like me. I told one person today that I wasn’tContinue reading “Changes at AOL”

Jason wrote a warm post about former AOL CEO Jon Miller, calling him a “quiet samurai” and a mentor. I’ll do something like that myself tomorrow. My cell phone and AIM have been ringing off the hook this evening since NBC’s Randy Falco was named the new CEO of AOL. I need to post something that gives theseContinue reading “AOL CEO AFK, TTFN”

Since the first story out there was that Valleywag one, I’ve gotten a bunch of email asking for the real Blogsmith details. Here goes: When Jason and I decided to create a blog network, I came up with two names: Weblogs, Inc. and Blogsmith. I registered both domains on the same day, June 15, 2003. “Weblogs, Inc.” summedContinue reading “AOL and Blogsmith”

There’s a great recap of Lou Reed’s private Web 2.0 show on SFGate. I’m a big fan of his bass player, Rob Wasserman, having seen him play the “Bob and Rob” shows with The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir in LA and Dallas in the 80s. His Duets and Trios discs were amazing. Lou Reed started out withContinue reading “And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming”

The deepest coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit isn’t by Forbes, it’s by Valleywag. Maybe it’s not the deepest, but it is the most colorful. I heard from several people yesterday afternoon that Valleywag broke the news of AOL buying Blogsmith. I didn’t know if it was a friendly post or a mean one so I didn’tContinue reading “Too much Valley and not enough wag”

If you have DirecTV, you have access to a couple of dozen XM satellite radio stations. My favorite one is Flight 26. They play pretty much everything The Peak plays, but with no DJs or commercials. The rare exception is a promo for something going on live on another XM station. We had a friend over recentlyContinue reading “Flight 26”

I have a four-year unbroken streak of Fall San Francisco trips that was in danger of not making it to year five, but AOL came through with a Web 2.0 Conference ticket for me. In 2002, I did one of my Meet The Makers events in SF. In 2003, I ended up out there doing some consultingContinue reading “San Francisco, here I come”