http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy Stuff in Baldy's SmugMug life Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:43:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Imagine having a company credit card burning a hole in your pocket, a lot of BIG blank walls crying out for photos, and 300 million to choose from.  :-) I never knew I could love shopping so much. I bought some 72-inch prints, a 5x10 foot print, and we're now making one ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2008/07/18/buried-in-breathtaking-photos/ The last people you'd expect to read a book about diet would be thin, Coke-drinking, bacon and burger-loving young geeks. But The China Study rocked the house, getting half of SmugMug's 25 people and 3-dozen of our dearest friends to completely change what we eat. I didn't dare blog about ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2007/07/17/the-book-that-rocked-smugmug/ The most fun I ever had as a parent was taking Don and a vanload of his friends to The Empire Strikes Back when it opened. They thought we were going to a Disney movie. They thought Don's parents were wimping out on Empire because they couldn't handle it. When the ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2007/06/05/parental-thrill-seeking/ How many photos from business magazines can you remember? Execs fuss over their ties, their hair...and their photos are forgotten in a sea of sameness. Not this one: I heard Jeff Bezos (Amazon's CEO) say, "The only real problem in life is to be ignored." I love this shot of ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2007/04/05/be-different-or-be-damned/ My heroes are entrepreneurs. I went to work for NeXT years ago because Steve Jobs was CEO and I wanted to live what I'd read in the books. What could be more exciting than building Cold Stone (yum!) from scratch? Never did I imagine that our story would end up alongside ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2006/10/17/smugmugs-story-is-chicken-soup-for-the-soul/ Research firms like InfoTrends say the #1 thing that influences consumer choice of photo sharing sites is whether they're free. Makes sense. But a curious thing happened during the last few years: while impressive free sites from great companies like Sony, Canon, Microsoft, Epson, & Adobe lost momentum or closed, ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2006/09/25/the-curious-decline-of-free-photo-sharing/ SmugMug's mantra for our help desk was shamelessly stolen from Mark Twain, who wrote: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." We do our best to astonish our customers by answering help email in minutes. We do it by hiring people who know and love ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2006/09/19/work-at-home-in-your-jammies/ That much-read and hilarious blog of Silicon Valley, Valleywag, somehow put me in a hottie contest against Philip Rosedale, who's very popular and actually maybe a little bit hot. But you should vote for me anyway! If I make it past this round of voting, they're threatening to use a ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2006/08/16/do-you-think-im-hot/ In big-time consumer press, you'd think the big brands with big PR departments would steal the show. But what if the little, family-owned company with only 200,000 paying customers had something completely unique that really mattered? Fortunately, thanks to our customers, we do: themes & customization. Many thanks to families like ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2006/07/16/noticed-by-newsweek/ Once upon a time I founded Fatbrain.com (because great minds think a lot), took it public, and later sold it to Barnes & Noble. It sold books to geeks, along with other stuff geeks needed like Sun and IBM manuals, training CDs, etc. What made Fatbrain as good as it ... http://blogs.smugmug.com/baldy/2006/07/12/competing-with-jeff-bezos/