The Dandelife Blog

More and more these days I see people willing to lifecast in ways that are fun and exciting. This fun and excitement extends to the narrow-cast that’s interested in the you they know and love. On MySpace, you get to shape your identity however you want. You’re almost encouraged to act like someone you’re not. At Dandelife, you’re free to assume another personality - sure. But what fun is it to pretend to have been some place, met somebody or to have owned some thing? Dandelife can be a tool for creating make-believe lives; I have it in mind to fictionalize some stories here as well. But first and foremost the me you all know and love is excited about the possibility of being connected to my past. Anyway, my classmates, my loved ones, my peeps — they all want to read stories with them in them. They’re vain that way.

It’s for that reason that I think as Dandelife matures, more stories from more members and more users-with-stories-about-non-members-but-real-life-people-anyway, as the content about the real world grows, brand and identity auditing will become more important. For many corporations, their brand is the primary asset. For many people, their name is the primary asset. So when you see your name in print - whether it’s you, your friends, or a stranger writing it doesn’t matter. What matters is that what they are saying fulfills the brand promise you have worked so hard for.

Anyway, as a founder of a company that has the ability to engage people with brands, brands with people, and people with people, I just wanted you to know that I’ve done my research and feel that if you’re at all concerned about what people might be saying about you, then you should consider the following services along with regular use of Dandelife.com . . .

(more…)

“An autobiography that leaves out the little things and enumerates only the big ones is no proper picture of the man’s life at all; his life consists of his feelings and his interests, with here and there an incident apparently big or little to hang the feelings on.”

Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1906

This quote has been inspirational to me in this whole process. It not only gives me hope that Twain had it in mind that the little things were worth remembering and sharing in the autumn of one’s life. But the quotation has always been a reminder details are what make stories interesting. I can’t wait to get some good story-tellers here to make this site something of a destination for those who appreciate a good, cathartic experience. Photos, text, video - whatever forms the bios take, one hopes there’s much untapped talent in the recording of our favorite subject: the self.

So last night I had my going away party at RDI. I was one of the founders. When we started we had a shell of an office, no chairs, no nothing. I can remember sitting at a desk in our warehouse at a on aold table that our landlord’s workcrew had left when they finished renoovating the space. The room was so vast and with only me in it. The emptiness was daunting. Two years later we’d move into a new space because we were bursting at the seams with 20 people. We gobbled up a competitor. We got a second story. We’d long since had real furniture, but moving meant I didn’t have to sit by the toilet any more. You make sacrifices such as those when you start a business. And when things start going well, you are more willing to live a little.
Tomorrow is my last day at RDI. I’ll be living on my savings from the past four years to help make Dandelife into the company I know it can be. At the moment you’re making them, the sacrifices don’t seem to matter much; it’s what’s needed. If the moment calls for it, it’s the founders’ jobs to make it happen. The greater privation is to lose your baby altogether. Bring on the poop-whiff. He I go again.

A few weeks back I went to Best Buy to pick up a scanner and fondle one of the new Mac Books. It turns out that Apple limits supply to increase demand while the digital imaging industry limits supply for lack of demand. Turns out that everyone is buying multifunction printer-scanner-faxes these days. There was only one scanner on the shelves. It’s an Epson flatbed that has a built-in transparency unit for making slide-scanning and negative-scanning easy. It works with Macs and PC’s both, so I’m happy. Plus it has this software that auto-scans photos for you. Wonderful. I scanned these 27 photos in about an hour while watching some World Cup propaganda on ABC. Life couldn’t be fuller.