Top 10 Reasons to Comment on Blogs

1. If there is a "Comment" section, the author is always checking it
2. Analytics and page view statistics are boring to read
3. Comments (0) just looks depressing
4. Blog posts always take more time than they seem to have taken
5. How could you pass up a chance to be anonymous and brutally honest
6. Your few words may be the ones to inspire the next 10 posts.
7. Reward a blog for not containing Ads and Banners by commenting
8. Commenting builds community and encourages the spread of good content
9. Commenting is a public business card if you include your url
10. Comment onto others as you would have them comment onto you.

Lets spread the love and comment on everything.



While we're on the subject... There is a site that actually tracks all of your comments. Check it out: BackType.com

They don't catch them all, but you can submit blogs to their crawler.
Here is my page: http://backtype.com/austincurtis

Goodbye Friendster

Alright, so I've had a Friendster account for like 6 years. I haven't used it in 5, but every once in a while I'd log in and see what was up. You know you don't got to a site often when every time you log in, you find a completely redesigned site! hehe.

So, I logged in yesterday. I checked my friends avatars - none of them have changed since 2003, then I logged out. Soon after, I mysteriously began getting a ton of messages from spammy porn bots. You can tell right from the message title "hey check out my site" that its a bogus profile and message. The fact that there is 6 replicas of the message from 6 different 'users' doesn't help it blend it in either.

My conclusion: Friendster has got to be notifying these spammers somehow when users log in. As soon as they see that your account is somewhat active they start bombing you! Is this what Friendster is resulting to now for funds? Probably. The poor guy should have sold the site when he had a chance. Wahn Wahn Wahn.

End of this story is: I canceled my account. It was a hard decision easier than switching to Gmail.

More experimenting with timelapse and image sequencing

Adventurous Picnic in the Woods + Photo Sequence from austin curtis on Vimeo.

This is another experiment with photo sequencing set to a great song called Crosses by Jose Gonzales. What did I learn with this one? It's okay to take your time when sequencing non action - blurry camera pans get old. Good times! My main inspiration for this style is Garret Curtis' sequence work from a music video called "Friends" by The Franks - check it out!



Going Home + Sequenced Photos from austin curtis on Vimeo.

My typical bike ride home.

Music: Ain't Right by Diverse (f. RJD2 & Lyrics BorN)

Coincidence or Rip?

About a year ago I designed this through Facebook's Graffiti app:


I recently saw this online:


I mean , grant it - it's not the exact same - but come on! that's pretty close.