Last week I wrote about the 80/20 rule and the Design Blogosphere and although I think generally the rule is quickly disappearing, on an individual level it still exists. So I thought it would be nice to see what your top 20 design sites are for news, information, content or whatever. Actually lets just do 5 since 20 can get out of hand fast and most of them would be 9rules Members. Heck the top 5 might all be 9rules Members.

My list:

1. 456 Berea Street. Roger is a machine.
2. Stylegala. I don’t look for inspiration so the reviews serve me no purpose. It’s the portal news feature that I crave.
3. Mark Boulton. Does any other individual pump out this many quality articles in a year? Five simple steps to designing grid systems – Part 5 is just the latest of this must read site.
4. Design Observer. Very, very heavy with regards to design content, but it brings a professionalism to the craft that has been diluted by many in the blogosphere.
5. Asterisk. Because he paid me to put his site here.

And to put into words my thoughts on this subject enter Cameron Moll.

Though the idea of a *personalized* 80/20 — from the perspective of the reader — is likely still relevant, regardless of my original list. I personally don’t have enough time in the day to stay current with hundreds of sites. I still look to a few dozen to keep me current on trends and news. And that was the original intent in penning the list.

Who are the top 20 today? I’m not positive a global list along those lines is even all that important now, but I’m certain each of us as readers still has our own 80/20 list…

Originally posted on September 26, 2005 @ 10:58 am

I know it’s going to be hard to beat yesterday’s post, but I will certainly try.

Whenever you enter the website game there is usually at least one person telling you that the only way you can make quick money is through gambling, prescription drugs or porn. That’s why you get so many of those nice comment spams on your sites. Quick money stopped being intriguing a long time ago because it didn’t take long for me to understand you really have to work for your money (no shit right?).

Then I came across Fleshbot (NSFW) and was intrigued to find that an owner of other blogs (Nick Denton) and respected businessman (to some and not others) would start a site about porn. In a way, Fleshbot took the high road when discussing porn by adding humor and taking away the sleazy feeling some get from it. I was intrigued.

For the longest time I told people I was going to start a porn blog (adult blog, sex blog, babe blog, whatever) and most of the time people’s responses were along the lines of wondering why I hadn’t started one already. Long story short, on June 1 I launched Horizontal Dance (NSFW) to see what I could do in the forbidden industry.

Horizontal Dance is a mix of sexlog and babelog. I didn’t want to simply go the Fleshbot route of talking about porn and whatever else, I also wanted to post pictures of women that I liked because well, I like women. No, I do not take any of the pictures, I simply link to other galleries.

So how is it going? I’m not rich, but that was never the goal. I am certainly having fun with it and that was definitely my primary goal. Could it be better? Of course it could and I am sure it will improve as time goes by and I get a better feel of how the arena where my grandmother is going to tell my mother and kick my ass works. Is it part of 9rules? Of course not and it never will be. Are any 9rules team members involved? Nope, and I would never ask them to be either.

When I wrote an entry last week on Work Boxers I talked about what I am learning from porn, but I didn’t link to the site. In the comments Mr. Anonymous (you have to love when people show the courage to use their real names…) did some research (wasn’t very hard) and found the site I was referring to. So instead of causing a lot of commotion I decided to talk about it on my most open site (hell I could’ve just deleted the comment I guess).

In any case if that’s your thing I hope you enjoy it, if it isn’t stick with the 9rules Network, much better content anyways. If you want to write for it then just let me know. Might be the first group blog in that niche (no Fleshbot doesn’t count).

Originally posted on July 21, 2005 @ 9:01 am