This will mean nothing to the non-geeks, but last week Dave Winer** introduced a product that he's been hinting about for months: FlickrFan, a Mac-only application that turns your screensaver into a silent Flickrstream slideshow.
I keep Dave on my Google Reader, but didn't read much over the weekend because I was so stacked up with other stuff. So the first word I got about this came via Andy Rhinehart, who -- en route to losing to me yesterday in fantasy football -- retorted that, well, at least HE got a mention on Scripting News.
Well, here's the cool part: the mention was about Dave's visit to Spartanburg on Feb. 15 2005, the date that marked my moment of entry into my modern, geek-centric phase of life. Andy let me come up and hang around with him and Dave, which led to me writing two newspaper stories about blogging and podcasting, which led to my first conversations with Ed Cone and Dave Slusher and others. Those conversations changed my understanding of this medium, made me dissatisfied with my then-blog, and inspired me to create a new kind of blog... which led to the launching of Xark in June 2005.
But from Dave Winer's perspective, that day also led to the creation of FlickrFan:
I've been hanging out with Dan Conover from The Charleston Post and Courier today. He has a blog, of course. He explains the Charleston point of view as "this car craze looks like it's here to stay" and "Charleston is where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet to form the Atlantic Ocean."
Andy Rhinehart has this incredible screen saver containing the latest AP photos coming into the newspaper. He just points Windws at a shared folder on the LAN and it picks the pictures at random. It's absolutely captivating. I think it would make a great product. Andy and Dan both started on the same day at The Mountaineer in Waynesville, NC.
Andy played Virgil to my Dante in 2005, for which I'll always be grateful. But he also has four Manly Football League championship titles to my measly one, and for that I'll always be jealous. He''s just smarter than me, dammit.
**The photo of Dave on his bio page was taken by yours truly. And I beat Andy 33-25 to claim the MFL's Irrelevant Bowl title on Sunday. Heh heh heh. Go me.
*** From Dante's Divine Comedy: "The poem is written in the first person, and tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting during the Easter Triduum in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory..."
So, in a roundabout way, I'm responsible for all of this foolishness.
Yikes.
Posted by: Andy | Monday, January 07, 2008 at 18:52