Barking Up the Right Tree

Barking Up the Right Tree: "I’m just back from The Future of Web Apps, an inspirational conference in San Francisco about the technology that’s the backbone of what many refer to as Web 2.0 — shorthand for community rich, user-driven, and, one hopes, more economically grounded than the last boom (Flickr is a great, oft-cited example). For folks like us trying to create a new kind of magazine — one that’s community driven yet still guided by professional editors — it was pure manna. A personal highlight was seeing my old friend Ted Rheingold deliver a presentation on building passion-centric communities, like the one he founded, Dogster.com (which was followed by Catster.com), as well as places like Deviant Art, Craftster and Cats That Look Like Hitler (always a crowd pleaser). People who know me know that I believe in my friends. When their projects are smart, fun and heartfelt there’s no chance you can get me to shut up about them. This means, for one, I wear my Dogster shirt all the time. As such, people are pron"