Two Cents and a Thousand Words

This is it - the launch of Semsym. Semsym follows in the rich traditions of M@ineSites and Lighthouse Media Solutions but adds a new and more directed focus. Semmsym is a collection of sites that allow me to experiment with development in a bunch of different ways.

The first such site is called ufeed. ufeed is, quite simply, a single page that combines your blog posts, your del.icio.us links, and your flickr photos. And it’s free. To see how it works, check out my feed.

I’ve got lots of ideas, and I’m really excited. Go and check out Semsym today!

For all the Web developers here: ever had one of those times that you just need a quick tool, but don’t know where to find it?

My solution: head to semtools. You could call semtools a preview of the kind of things Semsym will offer; you can also call it a random collection of stuff. Call it whatever you want, but spread the word.

The launch collection includes a MD5 encoder, timestamp decoder, current timestamp and IP finders, and a cool color grid that I finally got to drop somewhere. These tools probably won’t mean much to you if you’re not a Web developer, but you might just want to play around with them anyway to see what happens.

Please e-mail me via the link at tools.semsym.com if you have any comments or suggestions for new tools.

Last night I launched justinrussell.com/writing - my writing center. I’ve talked about creating one for a long time (remember the “writing” choice in the top banner of the last justinrussell.com layout?), and I finally got around to making it this weekend.

The Writing Center will be the place for me to explore topics in more depth than would be suitable for the blog. My blog will slowly be turning into more of a personal journal; the Writing Center picks out the more “formal” writing and puts it all in one place. I really think it has a lot of potential.

Once you’re at the site, you can read pieces, cite them, print them, e-mail them, post them to del.icio.us… and the administration is really easy to use (I mean it this time). There are even drafts and stats and all of that. I think I’ll be using it a lot purely based on its ease of use.

Go and explore. There’s no RSS feed yet, but it’s coming. For now, I’ll be posting here whenever I put a new piece up there. In the future… well… something different will happen.