A stream of thoughtsciousness
My name is Donovan Watts. I am the Founder of Getting Sites Built, a web design agency.. we plan, design and build websites. Donovan's thoughtStream is my weblog. For kicks, I hoop. 
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Give2Asia. One of my clients. A sister organization to The Asia Foundation. It's funny, I started working for Give2Asia a few years ago and now I only work for The Asia foundation. I predict that I may work for neither pretty soon. So good is our attempt at automating the site maintenance process for our clients. I'm not kidding. We put ourselves out of business. After a redesign, I won't hear form a client for months because they don't need my anymore. I take that as a compliment. 
just loaded basecamp on my iphone. not sure what took so long. looks pretty good, as do all pages on iphone. however, gotta do lots of pinching. i wonder if ther is a basecamp for iphone view?
ontology.com. i bid adieu! long live cantonbecker.com!
damn, the net connection cut out on me right when amber and sirnod were about to play. argh!
awesome. dj amber and sir nod are going to tag team right now on radio integrated.
i pay $9/month for Backpack by 37 signals.
i don't personally build sites anymore, btw. i'm founder, main sales person, and main point of contact for all projects at getting sites built. my team creates the wonders we produce, with my guidance. i keep in constant contact with my client and the team and prod everyone to use basecamp to keep it a team effort. i have just about zero time to actually do any coding anymore. i've got far too much to do as project manager. thankfully, i've got my web tools to help me in my position.
i built my first site in 1997. been building them consistently since. i'm still fascinated with the process and result. it's getting more exciting in some ways as now, a decade into it, i feel like i'm finally starting to get it intuitively. always a learning process of course, but some things about the web design process are becoming so ingrained in my brain, that they feel second nature.
i keep two browsers open at all times. at least. safari is for basecamp, my calendar and any links i feel like surfing. firefox contains development sites, staging sites and anything else that tends to just work better in firefox. i also have netnewswire open at all times. sure, nnw is my rss reader but it's also a browser.
i couldn't live without my basecamp. basecamp by 37 signals changed the way i work. that's the source of my business. everything else grows from basecamp. every project gets a place on basecamp. i've also got projects called 'Getting Sites Built - My Eyes Only' which I am the only user allowed to see. I keep track of confidential business related info there that none of my contractors see. I have a project called 'GSB Contractor's Corner' which I encourage my contractors to use as a place to share notes and ideas. I often post links to new technologies and such that might benefit the team. And I have a project called 'GSB Finances' that only me and my amazing Bookkeeper, Angelica, have access to. We hardly ever email each other. Rather, we communicate on Basecamp as it's tons more efficient that way. We also utilize other web services like Strongspace to store invoices, client deliverables, financial statements, etc. Of course FreshBooks runs the invoicing part of my business and I'm always looking out for more online services that can help make my business a lean, mean virtual machine.
work by the project, not by the hour.
what's it been? a week or two? i still love my iPhone. i think i love it more now that i've been using it for real. it's amazing. the sound quality is silly good with the earbuds in place. the display blows me away. the intuitive controls make me sad for all the time i spent using a windows mobile interface. there is no comparison whatsoever between an iphone and a windows mobile phone. they are entirely different experiences.
The Grid - Saturday Morning Empires by Loscil
amber is broadcasting on radio integrated in nineteen minutes. sir nod later in the evening. yes!
If I could ban email and *force* everyone on my team as well as my client to use Basecamp for communication, then I think all of my projets would go more smoothly. Email is tempting to use and I get caught up using it for threads that are much more suitable on Basecamp for everyone's eyes, but it turns out to be temporary happiness often. Tempted to email something related to the project? Post it to Basecamp instead. Trust me. We want to capture all communication on Basecamp. We all check in to Basecamp. We're all on the same team. We are all striving for the same solution. Let's be extremely selective about when something should be sent via email and when it should be posted to Basecamp.
Business = Communication. Mine at least. That's basically the most important thing for my business to function properly.
i have to prep for the move. always something to do.
requested a golden ticket from joyent which will upgrade my hosting experience quite a bit.
finally, a good use of my getting sites built wordpress.com site. prologue. my own private twitter.
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