Austin’s Greatest Myth: The Tech Industry

“i do have some money to produce the project, but probably nowhere near the amount to cover the creative and labor that will most likely go into it. which is exactly why i’m looking for a small team to invest as much in the project as we most likely will do.”
- Some guy in Austin pitching a project involving several blogs
Here is a prime example of what’s wrong with everything web-related in Austin. In the short time I’ve been involved in the industry here, I’ve seen rampant greed, get-rich-quick schemes, idiotic ideas, awful code, shoddy (and sometimes illegal) business practices, and I’ve run into more than one person who was run out of Silicon Valley for being an asshole. And then there’s this guy, Oblivious Guy, who wants the world delivered to his virtual doorstep for the cost of a cappuccino.
Amazonian Sidebar
During the development of Crafter By Night’s new layout, I was asked if the process of creating affiliate links to Amazon’s products could be simplified with a little Wordpress widget magic. Specifically, Miriam wanted to add products to the sidebar of her site without having to download a product image, upload it to her blog, copy-and-paste the HTML, update the image path in the HTML, and save it all in a text widget. The result of my tinkering is this plugin, which I call the Amazonian Sidebar, and it’s available today as a free download.







