In addition to my best picks post for this my week as editor of Carnival of Canucks, I am awarding a prize, a sort of lifetime achievement medallion. It is not going to a person. It is not for a blog. The winner of the first weekly award of merit [and perhaps the last unless the next editors pick it up and run with it] is this somewhat unassuming building in Charlottetown PEI where 12 or so people work and 8 or so blogs are maintained. It is the home of two small web application and design firms, silverorange Inc. and Reinvented Corp. – or something like that. At the moment the following blogs are being updated on a fairly regular basis:
- Acts of Volition: this blog covers web news, pop culture and attracts an amazing volume of readers – when Steve posted petition on a bit of a whim, he got over a thousand responses. When he points out design issues in some web products, the creators sometimes pipe up. He has also started Acts of Volition Radio. Update: they are even talking about Steve this thursday at the Berkman Bloggers Meet.
- CEO Blues: Dan has been on the longest Outward Bound trip in history which has apparently lasted for months up a glacier in BC. He is currently on Day 19 of 21 and, in finding himself, has found himself stinky and mouse infested. It’s time to come home.
- Delta Tango Bravo: Daniel has a gift for the superlative and likes to write about things that strike his taste – paintings, film, archetecture. His taste is good and his white on black design natty.
- newrecruit.org: Stephen runs an on-line hockey web site, talks about web news and posted the best post about advent of winter I have ever seen – important for any award of merit in Canada.
- Reinvented: run by my fifth cousin-in-law, Peter has a run the site since May 1999 and, while it started as a business web site for business news without only 13 posts in 1999, it has evolved and for years been a blog where a discussion can get started and go off in any direction. Update: and when he gets a head of steam, he can get quite specifically upset. Good post.
- Silverorange Labs: Stuff for web application brainiacs. I don’t get much of it. But that’s me. If you are a web
design brainiac read it. Free code here. Is that like saying “free beer tonight” for the rest of the world? - Reinvented Labs: Ditto but more for the Linux and Mac stuff…I think. Unlike the guys at silverorange, Ruk is pretty much a one man show on the tech end and explains things from start to finish.
- Reinvented World: The Rukster’s truest recent obsession are travel books. He most recently reviews a book about a trip in 1950 across the Atlantic in a modified jeep. Scans of gatefold maps a plenty. If you ever, like Pete, have dreamed of having rich pals called Nigel and Geoffery Hyphenated-Name who invite you to tag along in a queue of Land Rovers crossing Bolivia, this place is for you.
Amazing. One red building in a small town Canada and eight views of the world. Oops, forgot one thing. They ran a conference last fall that attracted Dave Winer out of the blue and which also had a blog, too. Nine. Maybe there are more hidden there that I don’t know about.