What does the company do?

Offbeat Guides' first product is personalized, on-demand printed Travel Guides. Ever go through the experience of planning a trip using the web? I've always found it pretty painful - finding all the sights, the best places to stay, restaurants, walking tours, public bathrooms, wifi maps, and all that, not to mention finding out what bands are in town, or what interesting local meetings, book signings, museum and gallery openings are out there. I also end up getting maps for my hotels and meetings, too.

When I do end up having the time, I often become like a packrat, finding tidbits on the web, bookmarking, and then printing them on my home computer. Add in a big black clippy to keep all the pages together, and if I'm lucky, it'll hold things tightly so I won't be dropping papers everywhere as I'm running through airports, or searching through papers in taxis. The end result often gets stuck at the bottom of my bag, totally crumpled and ripped.

The problem with everything else out there

Here's the other thing I noticed - when I've got time to do more extended planning, the travel guides that I get at the bookstore are really only about the "big" destinations - you know, the big cities and tourist spots. And I'm paying for lots of information that I really don't need - I end up getting a book that's mostly about the places where I'm NOT going, often hundreds of miles away. Of course, that's all that the current publishers can do - the economics of the book publishing business demands that you focus all your energies on the lowest common denominator - and that you mass-produce the same out-of-date content to every bookstore on the planet that puts you on the shelf. It's also pretty wasteful from an environmental standpoint - all those unnecessary pages means more dead trees.

That's just not right, and in the age of the net, there's got to be a better way. After five years of building a search engine that scoured the "live web" for new, fresh information from authoritative sources, I knew that there was an exciting opportunity to add in a new dimension - location - and maybe build something really neat: A constantly changing, up-to-the-minute set of travel guides that could also be personalized to your preferences; but also something that was easy to build and easy to read.

Oh, did I mention that these would be physical books, not just virtual? Of course, if you want to get the PDF, you can do that too, and print it yourself, or put it on your Kindle, for example. Call me old-fashioned, but I think the technology of paper still has some legs yet: When you do it right, paper is lightweight, extremely low power, flexible, you can even write on it! You can get it wet, no need to reboot it, and it fits easily in a knapsack or back pocket with no fear of breakage. You can also feel perfectly safe riding an elephant in the jungles above Chang Mai, Thailand even if you drop it in a muddy puddle, or if it gets stepped on by a following pachyderm. No 3-year warranty necessary!

Of course, when I head on a trip somewhere, I like to have my computer and mobile phone with me, and I love it if I can get internet access while I'm on my trip, but sometimes that's just impractical or impossible - I don't like leaving my computer or phone on a beach, or wait for a crappy net connection when I'm on the road. Those things are great at the end of the day, when I'm in my hotel room, but they're terrible when I need to look up how to say "Where's the bathroom?" in Italian, or "I'm staying at the Sheraton Hotel" in Thai. For that, we put a bunch of useful information on the back cover of each guide - just for the important facts that take too long to look up, like how much to tip your taxi driver!

Ideally, what I wanted to bring with me is a nicely bound personalized travel guide, that has information about just the destination of my trip, and includes more detailed information - not only the history and the like, but also gives me updated information on exchange rates, local events and festivals, and what's actually going on in the city while I'm there. Who cares if there's a great festival in December if I'm there in June? I wanted to add in information that is relevant to my preferences, too - If I'm traveling with my kids, I want to know what's fun for them in that town, or if I'm on business, I want to know where to get free wifi. And of course, I want to know where to get a great meal; but if I already know where I'm staying I want to be able to pull all of the "where to stay" info out of my guide too! And it would be great to have this guide accessible to me when I'm in front of my computer or phone, as well.

Offbeat Guides was born from that personal itch.

There's a lot of technology on the back-end: You could say that in a way, what we've done is flip the implementation of travel search on its head. We're trying to actually give you more of what you want, and less of the unnecessary or irrelevant stuff. We've scoured the web for the best information about over 30,000 different travel destinations, using a combination of search technology, and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts (our travel content coodinator spent the last 4years at Lonely Planet!) But technology is only useful if you can make it simple - so we spent a lot of time boiling the user experience of building a guide to it's essence: 5 simple steps that everyone should be able to answer easily:

1) What's your name?
2) Where are you going?
3) Where are you coming from?
4) What are your travel dates?
5) (Optional) Where are you staying when you're there?

With that information in hand, you can create a personalized guide. You can go in, customize your table of contents to add or remove sections depending on your interests.

And more is coming soon as we continue to build out the product: For example, you'll soon be able to add your own chapters with any information that you cut-and-paste into the guide, and you'll be able to tell us a bit more about yourself and have the guide tailored for you: If you're travelling with kids, for example, or if you want WiFi maps, or food preferences.

We're currently pulling information from some really great places on the internet - about two dozen sources so far, and more being added every day. We're very cognizant of copyright issues, and try to work first with folks who put their information in the public domain, or use creative commons licenses that encourage commercial use. With some sites, we've worked out commercial relationships to be able to use their data, and we're actively negotiating with lots more who want to make available their writing and data to our customers - and we're looking at creative ways to build an ecosystem where everyone wins. We're also working with some fantastic companies that are solving big pieces of the puzzle, like trip recommendations, flight reservations, and other travel scheduling tools. If you want to work with us, drop us a line!

It's been a thrilling and exciting 6 months, and I'm so proud of the team that has gotten us here - it's been such a blast to be able to work with such smart, motivated, and fun-loving folks!

If you're interested in helping us to deliver a great experience, looking to help a young company produce just the kind of guide you want, and aren't afraid of seeing a few bugs along the way, come to the site, and sign up for the beta! We'll be adding folks to the beta as we continue to fix bugs and increase scalability, and we'll be doing it largely on a first-come, first served basis.

More to come. Onwards and upwards!

Carnevale is in full swing, with costumes, children, and confetti everywhere:

There's even Samurai out there!

More soon, or you can see the entire Carnevale set on flickr...

It rained the whole day, but I already find myself falling in love with the city. I'll be here most of the week, then heading to Udine for the Next Web conference, thanks to an invite from my old friend Paolo Valdemarin. I'll post pictures as I have time...

For those of you just dying for a picture, I'll be adding photos to my Flickr set throughout the week. For some instant gratification, here's some Carnivale revellers heading into San Marco square, one of the biggest squares in Venice:

Technorati Tags: carnivale, italia, italy, venice, venicecarnivale, veniceitaly

Want a fun game to play with your friends when you've got a few minutes to waste? Try out Webhotornot - see how good your eye for sites compares with everyone else's. You might even stumble upon an interesting site that you didn't know about but others have rated highly, too!

How did it come to exist? When I was in Madrid visiting my friend and investor Martin Varsavsky late last year, we had a fun time brainstorming ideas to help find and rate interesting web sites, and we came up with the idea. Who knows, perhaps the ratings might even be useful if people start using the site - sort of a "prediction market" for web sites. Most of all, we just wanted to create a simple site that was fast-loading and fun to use. We both love Hotornot, so we figured we'd do an homage.

Who knows where it'll go, it is a quick hack that Martin's team pulled together quickly with our direction. Go check it out - and if you've got a hot site that you want to add, you can submit the site as well! Martin blogs about it as well.

http://webhotornot.com/

Technorati Tags: ditty, fun, hotornot, matrinvarsavsky, predictionmarket, webhotornot, varsavsky

So, when was the last time YOU did a full backup of your primary computer? How much valuable data would you lose if your disk went chunka-chunka-chunka-whiiiiiiiiine tomorrow?

Go back up your data. it's amazing how little storage costs nowadays, and don't put it off until tomorrow - there's nothing worse than the shiver that runs down your spine when you realize that you just lost all the work you've been doing for the last month/quarter/year...

Technorati Tags: backup, psa, publicserviceannouncement, fullbackup, storage

I like the square crop of the next photo. It is all about expressing a mood - of solitude, of watching the remains of a massive storm, of knowing that the rocks are still there - battered, bruised, but still standing - even 85 mph winds can't knock these guys down, and how small we really are in this world.

I also liked the compostion, the negative space, what it leaves out of the photo:

Technorati Tags: beach, california, photography, photos, sanfrancisco, storm, sunset, winter

Technorati Tags: caucus, iowa, mittromney, podcast, wtf, romney

If someone’s got what you’re looking for, or a clue in that direction, they post a comment. RSS feeds flow from the posts and the comments.

For example, you might ask:

hoosgot an easy-to-use pencil sharpener that has suction cups on the bottom so I can stick it anywhere?

or:

hoosgot a simple camera bag that you can stick a laptop in, and still carry over your shoulder without knocking over pedestrians? Note I’m not looking for a knapsack or a backpack, I want it to act like a messenger bag…

And so on.

It works if you work it: Give back to the web

Of course, you should subscribe to hoosgot, it has RSS feeds (the main feed and the comments feed) so you can watch and participate - for Hoosgot only works if you comment on the questions posed. Happen to know where someone can find the information they seek? Interested in collaborating with them on creating that invention described when the person invoked hoosgot or the lazyweb? Leave a comment on the entry, and give back to the web that has given us so much.

The @hoosgot Twitter User

Along with hoosgot.com, you can also subscribe to updates by following the @hoosgot user on twitter. When you invoke hoosgot or the lazyweb, don't be surprised when you get a reply from @hoosgot! Tell your friends. Twitter away.

Hoosgot's Roots

Hoosgot humbly traces its roots to the wonderful lazyweb which unfortunately shut down in 2006. It was a glorious experiment in what the web could produce - co-creation on a global scale. Many many thanks to Ben Hammersley and team for setting it up, and running the original site.

Why did I do this?

I love the lazyweb. You know, the idea that if you had a need, a wish, an interesting "what-if" thought, you could make a suggestion on your blog, your community on Seesmic or Twitter, and every now and then, the gods of the interwebs would answer your prayers thrown out to the ether. It bummed me out that a central place for these requests was nowhere to be found, and all these great ideas (and pleas!) were being lost in the ether.

You gotta love Holiday Weekends

Friday night (the 28th) The lazyweb popped back into my mind. I missed it. I started asking myself the question, "Why hasn't anyone reconstituted the lazyweb?, What if we could rebuild the lazyweb for the 2008 web? What if we could take advantage of all the cool tools that have arrived in the last 5 years? Would it work?" Rather than wait around, I realized I could just build it, and maybe folks like me would use it. At about 5am on Saturday morning, the first prototype was up. I made some major changes, including twitter support Saturday night. And launch is today, on Sunday morning! Ain't working on the web fun?:-)

Many Thanks to the Lazyweb

On December 31, 2002, lazyweb.org was purchased by Pete Birkenshaw, and the first public post was on January 1, 2003. Parenthetically, it is an interesting coincidence that the first conversations about the Lazyweb were probably happening when the earth was right about in the same spatial plane as it was when I was coding it, only separated by 5 years of temporal difference. It ran for over 3 years before finally succumbing to trackback and comment spam, when Ben Hammersley shuttered it, with a simple message "The LazyWeb is now closed." The last post was made on April 25th, 2006. I wanted to bring it back.

What about spam?

I'm not sure. It's possible that hoosgot will suffer the same fate as lazyweb.org. After 5 years of running Technorati, which was constantly bombarded with spam (and not always getting things right), spam is definitely a real issue, especially if people like the service and use it a lot. We had to think through and build a bunch of services that didn't exist before - but some of those systems are now out there and available for regular folks to use, in tools like Wordpress. I've also installed a number of backend spam fighting tools and systems, which means that sometimes it'll miss a legitimate post or tweet. That doesn't mean you're a spammer, it just means I'm not a very good programmer. Drop me a line at david AT sifry DOT com and let me know. Chances are I'll figure out what's up. Sometimes I might be too busy to respond. Hoosgot is a labor of love, so I appreciate your patience. We're going to take this adventure together.

Acknowledgements

To start, many thanks to the folks behind the original Lazyweb site. Here's who they credited:

Who's Behind This? Primarily, you are. Since its launch you've given the LazyWeb over 100 ideas, and the LazyWeb only works when people give ideas and help each other to make the web a greater place. But, if we have to name names, Matt Jones had the original idea (and designed the logo), this site was built and is run by Ben Hammersley following a LazyWeb request from Clay Shirky. The domain name is owned and donated by Pete Birkenshaw. Wicked-cool Movable Type jiggerypokery is by David Raynes. The search box is magnificently awesome work by Maciej Ceglowski.

Many thanks, folks.

Doc Searls came up with the name Hoosgot, and Technorati and Tweet Scan help with the heavy lifting. Matt Mullenweg leads Wordpress, which much of this site is built upon. You guys rock! Many thanks as well to Liz Westover and Eric Willis.

What if my hoosgot doesn't show up?

There could be a few reasons for this. One is that we missed your twitter from the public timeline. First off, make sure that your twitter stream is public, not protected. Or if you are using your blog, make sure it pings Technorati. Give it about 15 minutes, check again, and if things still don't work, resend your tweet. Alternatively, go claim your blog (or twitter account) on Technorati - that'll make sure it gets indexed. If that still doesn't work, drop me a line (see below)...

Looking for bugs reports and feedback

Got feedback? Put "hoosgot" in the body of a blog post or a tweet, and chances are I'll see it. Email works as well, drop me a line at david AT sifry DOT com. If all else fails, you can call or SMS me at +14154122342.

Technorati Tags: announcement, blog, hoosgot, lazyweb, twitter

Some clips:

Technorati Tags: blur, candles, color, dof, fragrant, photo, photograph, photography, memory

Technorati Tags: everyday, flower, flowerpot, photo, photography, flowers

Technorati Tags: bird, birds, monterey, photo, photograph, california, shorebirds

I figured I'd pull together the advice I gave my friends, and then give you some equipment recommendations - the gear I'm recommending, at a cost of under $1000, will give you everything you need to get those great portraits and night shots that you've been wanting. This is a complete set of gear that I would feel 100% comfortable bringing with me on a trip to a new city or on an important shoot, and still get excellent shots. But first, a bit on what you need to make good photographs, in priority order:

What makes a great photograph

1) The light. You can get a great photograph with a Kodak Instamatic if the light is beautiful.

2) The subject. Having a beautiful or interesting subject that you are photographing makes an enormous difference.

3) The composition. Putting the right subject in the right light in an interesting composition can absolutely make a photograph.

4) The lens. A great lens can give you what you need to keep everything sharp, even in low light. I'm a big fan of prime lenses. A prime lens is the opposite of a zoom lens, which is what most people know from those point-and-shoot cameras. With a prime lens, the focal length (the zoom factor) is fixed - so you "zoom" by moving your feet closer to or further away from the subject. :-) Some folks love zoom lenses, and I believe that they have their place - but as I'll explain later, I think that for the novice photographer, they can often be a crutch. Read on.

5) The body. Of course, a good camera body helps, especially using one that has good low light performance, full frame sensor, or AF performance (like the Canon 5D, which is my current workhorse DSLR) but this is actually the least important part of the decision, imho, and is most often the biggest mistake that new camera buyers make - they buy an expensive body and skimp on the lenses, and then they wonder why their photographs haven't improved. I advise going for the most inexpensive body in the manufacturer's line that has full manual controls, and getting great lenses with the money left over.

6) The number of megapixels (a measure of the resolution of the image) in the image. Kudos to my friend Tim Bray for reminding me of this. There's a belief that Megapixels matter, after all, they are usually the first thing you see when you look at a camera spec sheet in a store, and that more must always be better. Look, practically any digital camera made after 2005 - even that point-and-shoot you currently carry around - has more than enough resolution to get a nice print at 8x10, which is the largest that most people print. Trust me though, that more is not necessarily better, or that in today's age, it really even makes a difference. Don't believe the hype. Lots more go into this, including sensor size, sensor sensitivity, bits-per-pixel, and a whole lot of other highly technical stuff that most folks just don't have to worry about. Trust me on this one, one of my best-selling photographs was taken with a 3 Megapixel camera in 2001. I still love looking at it.

What's funny is that most people who are deciding on what to buy think the priorities are exactly the opposite. They think that by getting the most megapixels or by buying the camera that the pros use, they'll get great pictures. Don't believe this. The camera companies are just trying to brainwash you into buying more camera than you need, and you'll end up puzzled as to why your photographs end up looking, well, mediocre.

My recommendations

First, the camera system. In my opinion, both Nikon and Canon make excellent cameras and lenses. So do Sony, Pentax, and Olympus, although their gear is sometimes a bit harder to find. If you've already got film cameras of one type, I'd definitely try to stay within that system in order to use your older lenses. However, if you're starting out from scratch, my recommendation is Canon. They have been the leaders in affordable digital SLR technologies for at least the last 5 years, and show no letup in pushing the state-of-the-art. That's not to say that their system is perfect - but I think that a beginner will get the most bang for his buck starting with a Canon system, and progressing upwards both in lenses and bodies as you grow as a photographer. I'm sure I'll attract the wrath of Nikon fanatics, but that's the way I see it. Of course, do yourself a favor and go and try out the different bodies and lenses and pick one that makes you feel good, but hey, it's my blog post, and you asked for my recommendation.

The gear to buy:

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (a.k.a. 350D) 8.0 Megapixel, SLR, Digital Camera (Currently $394.95 at B&H Photo)

Some people might recommend getting the Kit, which includes a 18-55mm EF-S lens, currently $459.95 at B&H Photo. I don't recommend this, even though it is only $65 more. The lens is pretty crappy, and even though it is not very expensive, I think that it will be used as a crutch by most people who are used to using zooms all the time. I know that this is a somewhat radical statement, but I believe that most people have been completely spoiled by zoom lenses. In my experience, a zoom lens can end up killing an enormous amount of creativity in your photographs as you'll be tempted to just zoom in or out rather than thinking about the best position or composition. It is also a slow lens, which means that its minimum aperture (lens opening) varies between f3.5-f5.6. This means that you'll be pretty unhappy when the lighting is low, or when you want to separate your subject from the background, as in a soft portrait.

The body of the Digital Rebel XT is lightweight and compact. It has a pretty large LCD screen on back for reviewing photos once you've taken them, and you can shoot in RAW mode, which preserves all the details of your shots. It's not the most ergonomic of cameras, but it gives you enough control when in Av or TV mode (aperture priority or shutter priority mode) to have a LOT of control over your shots, in a relatively straightforward way. And I'm going to tell you to get out of all those gadgety modes like the "sports mode" or the "portrait mode" and learn how to use Av and Tv on the camera. Trust me, the time you spend on learning the basics of exposure, f-stops, and shutter speed will serve you over and over and over again. And the Digital Rebel XT won't get in your way there. It even has a built-in flash that you can use for fill lighting (but I'd never use it in the dark, unless you really want to make your shots look mediocre).

Canon 50mm f1.4 USM Autofocus Lens (Currently $309.95 at B&H Photo, with a $20 instant rebate = $289.95)

This is one absolutely fantastic lens. It is a lens that many pros I know still use, and because it is a relatively simple lens, it is inexpensive and has a number of other benefits, like a very close focusing distance. For 35mm film cameras and for digital cameras with full-frame sensors (like the Canon 5D), this is often called a "normal" lens, as it produces about the same perspective on the sensor as what your eye sees. However, the Digital Rebel XT (along with most entry-level cameras) has a smaller sensor - which means that there's an effective magnification of about 1.6x that occurs when you put any lens onto the camera. So, that makes this inexpensive 50mm lens into about a 90mm f1.4 lens - which is a wonderful portrait lens. The photo on the right is a picture of my dad that I took with this lens and an older camera (the EOS 10D) which has the same properties as the Rebel XT. Note the sharpness of the parts that are in focus, while the background (the beach scene) is out of focus. That photo was taken at f2.2, which shows you what you get from a high-quality prime lens, like the 50mm f1.4 USM lens.

The photo on the left was also taken with the same lens. Note the beautiful color rendition in the lotus flower, the leaves, and even down into the dark water - This is one of my personal favorite photographs, and it was taken with a kit that cost under $1000. As you develop your eye, you'll be able to get shots like this as well.

Hoya 58mm Introductory Filter Kit (Currently $54.95 at B&H Photo)

I am a big believer in putting a high-quality UV filter on every one of my lenses as soon as I get them. I've dropped my cameras and lenses lots of times, and I've broken a lot of filters, but I've never broken or seriously scratched a lens. There are some lenses, like extreme wide angle lenses, where you can't do this, but those are the exception to the rule, and those are usually very expensive or special-purpose lenses. Some people will object to putting another piece of glass in front of the lens surface, but in my experience, if you keep replacing the filter when it gets too dirty or scratched beyond repair, you still have a pristine lens underneath.

In addition, this filter kit includes a circular polarizer, which is a great accessory to have with any camera. You can use this to make blue skies look darker, enhance or remove reflections or glare on water and other translucent surfaces. You can even use this filter in some advanced flash applications when you get more adventurous with your flash. Some circular polarizers cost $60 by themselves, so you're really getting two filters along with a nice filter pouch, for $54.95 - it's quite a bargain. Oh, and they throw in a "warming filter" which is basically useless. Don't worry about this, you can feel comfortable never using that filter, you're still getting a great deal with the UV filter and the circular polarizer.

SanDisk 4GB Extreme IV CF Card (Currently $91.95 at B&H Photo)

One of the things I learned when I started shooting digital in 2000, was to take lots of pictures - the beauty of digital is that there's essentially no cost to just keeping the motor drive on, and shooting lots and lots of pictures when you're in a good situation - chances are that you'll end up coming up with something that you like. You'll catch a unique expression, you'll get some interesting blur you didn't think about, or you'll catch something unique and spontaneous when you take this attitude. In order to do this reliably, though, you need a big memory card, and you want to make sure that the card can record files quickly so you can capture more pictures in quick succession. In my experience, the SanDisk Extreme IV cards are very very fast - and they have been coming down in price as well! To get a fast 4GB card, which should hold about 250-300 RAW pictures, for under $100 is an absolute steal. This card, which I bought about a year ago, was about $250 then, which shows how technology keeps improving and prices keep dropping. Take advantage!

You could get the 8GB version of this card, but my suggestion would be to get two of these cards if you wanted to splurge for an extra $100 or so - that way you'll have a backup, and you won't feel so bad when you lose one of these cards. :-)

SanDisk Extreme USB 2.0 Card Reader (Currently $19.95 at B&H Photo)

You'll need a decent CF card reader to transfer the pictures off of the camera to your computer. Most cameras come with a USB 2.0 interface, but I don't suggest using it - it is generally a slow interface and also wastes the camera's batter while you are downloading pictures. Better to carry around a small USB 2.0 card reader like this one in order to transfer the files - you just pop out the CF card, put it into the reader, and let your computer's software do the rest. Some folks make claims that there are faster CF readers out there, like Firewire readers, but in my experience, the reader is irrelevant, it is all about the speed of your CF card, as long as the reader (and your computer) is USB 2.0 compliant. Most new PCs and Macs are.

Conclusions

So, how did we do? Well, if you add it all up, your total spend will be $849.75. Add shipping, and you're going to spend about $900 for this entire kit - which is a fantastic starter kit into the world of DSLR photography.

Want more?

To fill out this set, you might want to get a good camera bag so that you can easily fit all your gear into a safe, rain-resistant bag. This is a matter of personal preference, and my suggestion would be to go to the biggest camera store you can find with your kit and try out all the different bags, until you find one you like. Then go buy the bag at the store - you should really help your local camera store. If you live in San Francisco, I recommend Calumet, they have a friendly knowledgeable staff, and they've got a good selection of cameras, lenses and bags. As for my choices, I'm a personal fan of the Domke bags, I might get the F-3X super compact bag for this kit. Alternatively Tamrac's Velocity 6x might be a good choice as well. They're well made, and are easy on your back.

You'll probably want to start filling out your selection of lenses as well. I highly recommend adding a few other lenses, which are excellent, affordable lenses: The 24mm f2.8 lens for street and wide-angle shots, the 35mm f2.0 lens for a more traditional "normal" lens on this camera, and maybe even the 100mm f2.8 Macro lens for extreme closeups.

Last, if you are new to the concepts or exposure: f-stop, shotter speed, and ISO, you should learn a bit about them. I like the Amphoto book Understanding Exposure, which has been through a whole bunch of editions, starting back in pre-digital days. Well worth the $16.47 it is currently selling at on Amazon.

No matter what you choose, don't forget to go out there with your new camera and take lots of pictures!

Technorati Tags: photography, photography, camera, photography, buyersguide, digital, dslr, holidaybuyerguide, purchase, slr

When we arrived (the Scobles and I took the same train), a group of speakers and bloggers were milling around in the lobby, including Loic Le Meur and his wife Geraldine (who is putting on the conference), along with Jeff Clavier, Dave Winer, and others. I got lots of fun photos from our dinner, and below are a few of my favorites:

Technorati Tags: brooks, clavier, dinner, france, geraldine, lemeur, leweb307, loic, milan, paolo, paris, photography, portraits, party, scoble, winer