Is it possible to use the power of the internet to find a person given only a photo of them and their first name? The Find Satoshi Project is trying to do just that, and I think it’s fascinating. Billions of people to sort through, but given enough exposure on the net, I’m sure it’s possible.

Can you help? Go Find Satoshi and tell your friends!

Billionaire Mark Cuban is preaching to my choir with his anti-suit rant.

I’ve only ever owned a single suit, and I only ever wear it to weddings and funerals. Suits are certainly not required or encouraged around SmugMug and never will be.

I’d love to know why so many people think they must wear them. They’re uncomfortable, expensive, difficult to keep clean, bad at temperature regulation, etc etc. Useless, basically.

Discovered over on Thomas Hawk’s blog that my nPost interview had been posted. I know, I know, I did the interview, I should have noticed when it went up, my bad. Thanks Thomas!

I did the interview over the phone a month or two ago, and thought it was a lot of fun. Looks like there are some minor typos in the transcription (or I didn’t speak clearly enough on the phone), but you’ll get the general idea.

I had no idea I ended up with such a great summary sentence (which I re-used for the title of this blog post), but there it is. My secret formula.

If you want a pretty good insight into what makes me tick and SmugMug hum, go check it out.

PCworld.ca had a story about digital photos a few days ago. I was stoked to hear that we were in it. I wasn’t so stoked, however, once I discovered that our involvement was limited to two sentences because we have a “hefty monthly fee” and “lagging print quality,” of all things!

I whipped off a letter to the editor using their form submission thing, and waited for the reply. Since none has been forthcoming, and I’m getting emails about the article, I thought I’d repost the email I sent them here:

—
Hi Paul,

I’m the CEO and Chief Geek at SmugMug, and I couldn’t help noticing that we were unfairly excluded from your review. I’m hoping I can set the record straight.

You mentioned a “hefty monthly fee” and “lagging print quality” specifically, which raised our eyebrows. A SmugMug subscription with unlimited storage is $39.95 per year, or $3.33 per month. Hardly hefty.

As for the print quality, we’re renowned in the industry for having the best prints around, bar none. We certainly won’t win on price, but you get what you pay for. We have tens of thousands of professional photographers who build their businesses on SmugMug. As you can imagine, when you’re shooting a wedding or selling multi-hundred dollar prints of Yosemite, the print quality has to be pristine.

As a result, we conduct blind “taste tests” of various printers (10 at last count, including all of those listed in your review) every year. What’s more, we publish the results for all to see, and they’re widely distributed on the net. Some of our competitors have personally thanked us for publishing the results, since it helped them select their own printing partners. You can see for yourself:

http://www.smugmug.com/prints/digital-prints.mg

We use a top-of-the-line professional lab in Georgia called EZPrints at the moment, since they’ve consistently won the “taste test” for 3 years running, but we’re committed to print quality at all costs. Ask any of our customers, or try a Google search for ‘SmugMug print quality’, or better yet, order some prints and see for yourself.

I hope that sets the record straight, and by all means, holler if you have any other questions about our service. Hopefully we can make it into the next one!

Thanks,

Don
—

So there you have it. I wish were were fairly compared in the article, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

National Geographic and MacWorld seem to like us well enough, though, and we were even in The New York Times today, so I suppose I can’t complain.

Not that I really have to remind you, but if you DO email the editor at PCworld.ca yourself, please be polite. They’re only human, just like the rest of us.

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to a great 2007!