A web agency weblog

I was recently telling a friend that I liked what Bill Gates was doing, leaving Microsoft to put all his efforts in philanthropy. Forget about the we all hate Microsoft thinking; Gates is, for me, one of the good guys now.

And I’ve just read at Fortune that Warren Buffett, the famous investor and world’s second richest man, will give a big chunk of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is working hard to to fight diseases as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis.

You see? Money if nothing. Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates are proving us that there are better way to spend it than just sport cars and weapons.

I’ve just made available a free download of the advantages of teleworking , part of my book Telework People.

Learn about how working away from the office, at home, a coffee shop or telecenter, can increase your productivity and make your life a healthier and happier one.

Get the free download now. I’m sure you’ll find quite interesting ideas.

Imagine a radio station playing just the songs you like, and giving you the ability to tell when a song doesn’t fit your tastes and not playing it anymore. That is what Pandora does.

Pandora is a web based service that allows you to create your own music stations. Stations that “learn” what kind of music you prefer based on the choices you make. Pandora only needs a web browser with the Flash player plugin installed, that is almost any computer in the world.

Pandora rewards our curiosity, hence the name. It’s a great way of finding new music. No matter if it’s the latest hit by a mainstream artist or an unknown local band from Biloxi, Mississippi.

I signed up to Pandora a couple of months ago and I instantly loved it; thus, when I got a newsletter written by Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora and who started the Music Genome Project in 1999, I decided to ask him for an interview.

Tim replied quickly and we had a talk over the phone yesterday.

Here you have it, Tim Westergren from Pandora, at Ventanazul.

Continua leyendo …

Simon too, so he decided to interview 150 strangers he found in the streets of New York and Copenhagen and create The Thought Project.

He just stopped these men and women in the middle of the street, asked them what they were thinking one second before meeting him and took a picture. He used a microphone to record everything and published exactly what they said.

It’s an amazing idea: knowing what people are thinking just by asking them. Gosh, sometimes I think humans are so special and unique, well at least until they start doing stupid things, like they are so used to.

Well, and what were you thinking one second before reading this?

I thought it would be fun to share this picture of my cousin Ricardo and I during a hard day at the job … well … actually we were playing Starcraft but it looks like we are working, right?

It was taken a couple of years ago and included in one of the mockups for the design of our current site. However some ladies said a photograph of one guy with no shirt in a web agency site could be a little shocking … I don’t know, we always work shirtless anyway! I don’t see how a shirt could influence in a web development project.

I think it’s kinda of artistic, don’t you? I’m the one on the left with the two monitors setup, the same I’m still using to post this.

Feel free to comment and include one picture of you or your team working (linked with an img tag to your server and 350 or less pixels wide please) .

A big hug and all the happiness in the world to Jeffrey Zeldman’s family, their baby was born on 28 September 2004, one day after Beatriz birthday and one before mine.

It would be very hard for me to miss Ava Marie Zeldman’s birthdays

Continuing with the campaigns: AnimaNaturalis, an international community fighting for an ethic treatment to animals, has started one to ban the bullfightings in Lima, Peru.

This is an activity -if you can call this cruelty an activity- that I’ve always hated and, I know it sounds bad but anyway, I feel fine every time one of these guys, so called “toreros", are hurt by one helpless bull that is fighting for its life.

You can find more info here, it is in spanish. You can also go directly and sign the petition to stop the bullfighting. The petition site is written in english.