Simon Tessier (Pixel Gasoline) updates. Remember him from the 35-sexiest websites pt. 1? yep, that's almost two years ago now :)

New Ezra. Big update at Jonathan Moore's portfolio.

Video: What a horrible time to be blind, indeed! Wait until he gets to the bit about the flickr compilations.

I Chat, therefore I Am. Is profound the right word?

The Portfolio is fresh.

Video: Bad Mixtaping leads to cruel and unusual punishment. Really made me laugh.

Pearls Before Breakfast

I'm living in the worst place on earth, apparently. The video in question. Man, we've got some wicked good P.R. here in Windsor.

How the world really shapes up

Seriously, the guy must've been waiting his whole life for this.

Video: Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us

Asimov's What is intelligence, anyway?

The Psychedelic Furs - We Love You

The Rosewood Thieves - Los Angeles

Plastic Bertrand - Ca Plane Pour Moi

Neil Young - Harvest Moon

Thom Gill - Gifts mix 4

Thom Gill - ButchHeaven-Mix10 (Final)

Cat Stevens - Wild World

Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot

Pavement - Folk Jam

Pavement - Spit on a Stranger

Mischievous Meg

Christian Montoya

Fadtastic

Bless You Boys

Mixtaping.com

Edgebox.ca

Colly Logic

Post Secret

Fantasy Web Development
November 19, 2005: 2:10 PM



Until this year, I had never really been into fantasy sports, but when a coworker explained the concepts and invited me into his league, I fell right into it. I'm doing well in my fantasy football league, and into my third week of play in my fantasy basketball league, comissioned by none other than Sir Anthony Pierce, where I'm taking on mister b.allbright this week.

It got me to thinking about what is appealing about the fantasy sports themselves: I'm not a huge basketball fan. I wouldn't consider football an area where I have explicit knowledge. So what is it then? A healthy feeling of competition? It's probably the case that I just like the idea of building a team and seeing how well they perform. But then, if sports aren't my bag, then what?

And today it hit me.

Fantasy Web Development. I want a league where people draft their favourite Fantasy Web Professionals and whatnot, and make organized teams.

Team Structure

So as to have a fair balance in a variety of web fields, Your team must consist of 10 members (Individuals, not groups, the exception being the Web Dev Firm), as follows:

- 2 Standards/CSS Developers
- 2 Bloggers
- 1 Accessibility Professional
- 1 XML/AJAX/Ruby/Emerging Technology Developer
- 1 Flash/New Media Developer
- 1 Showcase Site
- 1 Web Dev Firm
- 1 Open Category (Individual). Utility Player.


Scoring Structure: Developers/Professionals:

- Del.icio.us features your site with more than 500 bookmarks: +10 points
- Del.icio.us features your site with between 100 and 499 bookmarks: +5 points
- You have been on the front page of Digg: +10 points
- First book authored: +10 points
- Each Subsequent book authored: +5 points
- You have a beard: +2 points
- Your beard is this awesome: +8 points
- You are British: +3 points
- You are Canadian: +5 points
- Your site validates: +3 points
- Your site is accessible: +3 points
- You have been a keynote speaker at a major web-related event: +10 points
- You have attended a major web-related event: +2 points
- You got piss drunk at SXSW: +3 points
- You are a member of 9rules: +5 points
- You write for a major publication (ie: Fad.Tastic, A List Apart, etc): +5 points
- You've come out with a widely-used web application in the last year: +5 points

Bloggers:

- You are in the Technorati top 100: +10 points
- You are a Blogebrity A-Lister: +15 points
- You are a Blogebrity B-Lister: +12 points
- You are a Blogebrity C-Lister: +10 points
- You post once a day or more: 10 points
- You post once every other day or more: 5 points
- You post less than once a week: -3 points
- You're blogrolled by more people than you blogroll to: +2 points
- You're from Los Angeles: +5 points
- You're from NYC: +4 points
- For every post on your front page with 10 or more comments: +2 points
- There is a Wikipedia entry for you: +5 points
- You have RSS/Atom setup for feed readers: +2 points
- You are hosted by your blog provider, such as blogspot or livejournal: -2 points

Web Dev Firm:

- Your site is one of the 35 Sexiest: +10 points
- Your clients are multinational: +10 points
- Your clients are national: +5 points
- Your clients are the conveniance store and the bowling alley down the street from your parents' house: -3 points
- For each member of your staff with a beard: +1 point

Showcase Site:

- Your showcase has more than 500 del.icio.us bookmarks: +10 points
- Your showcase has been on the front page of Digg: +10 points
- Your showcase is listed in the Web Developer's Handbook: +10 points

Cliche Deductions

- The term "Web 2.0" appears on your front page more than once: -3 points
- Your name has the suffix "pundit": -3 points
- You write Microsoft as M$: -2 points
- You use the word "Colophon" instead of "about" or "information": -2 points
- Your site doesn't work in some browsers (ie: IE. You love the play on words) but you make no effort to help visitors get working browsers: -5 points
- You have said "CSS is better than flash because...": -3 points
- You have said "Flash is better than CSS because...": -3 points


So, that's the gist of the scoring structure. Now, the only thing left for me to do is make my very own Fantasy Web Developer Dream Team. We'll call em'...

Renaud's Renegades:

Standards Developers:

- Jeffrey Zeldman: 215 points. NYC Developer/Blogger/Guru, Founder of A List Apart, has a beard (close enough), has been social bookmarked successfully, accessible/valid site, frequent keynote speaker. Zeldman is the real moneymaker for my fantasy team.

- Shaun Inman: 160 points. Web Developer/Blogger, creator of Mint, best navigation system in town, has a beard, and has hugely addictive designologues.

Bloggers:

- Tony Pierce's Busblog: 203 points. Works for buzznet, A-List Blogebrity, LA Resident, Buzznet Employee, Friend of Matthew Good, author of two excellent books both relating to his blog. Updates at least once daily.

- The Superficial: 145 points. High on the technorati list, posts more than daily, says all the mean things that we all want to say about celebrities.

Accessibility Professional:
- Joe Clark: 120 points. And who else? Joe CLark is the authority on web accesibility. Canadian, accessibility author, guru of the genre.

Emerging Technology Developer:
- Ajaxian: 100 points. Bound to be Hugely influential on the future landscape of the web, covers a number of emerging technlogies, focused on AJAX, Ruby on Rails, etc.

Flash/New Media Developer:
- Soleil Noir: 105 points. Fantastically attractive work, and as close to accessible flash as we're bound to see anytime soon.

Showcase Site:
- Stylegala: 30 points (Perfect score!). Excellent use of standards, and a very aesthetically pleasing layout to boot. Helpful forums (even more helpful if you guys could help me figure out my problem).

Web Dev Firm:
- Fantasy Interactive: 25 points. Incredible work, I wish I would've been familiar with these guys when I made the 35-sexiest-sites list. Let's just consider them the official #36.

Open Category:
- And All That Malarkey: 110 points. Humorous, aesthetically pleasing, British.

So, that's my fantasy team. What's yours?

Thanks for the comments: Don, Fil.


« Previous Post | Next Post »

I don't know . this sounds great but i think the circle of people in this community is too small. you have already named off the 'big'/'famous' players already...

I don't think that any other team would get a fair shake only because if you aren't the people you just named that EVERYONE knows you are at huge disadvantage.

I say that , but I will try to come up with a team of folks myself. maybe help put some wel deserving folks 'on the radar'
david (url)
On Nov. 20th at 1:27PM

My beard is that awesome, it really is.
James Mathias (url)
On Nov. 20th at 4:48PM

How many points do I get for making a blog that incorporates stills from the video for "Hello" by Lionel Richie?

I'm going to assume a million, and take this contest for all it's worth. In your faces, bitches.
hayley (url)
On Nov. 20th at 6:37PM

- You are hosted by your blog provider, such as blogspot or livejournal: -2 points
- You write Microsoft as M$: -2 points

Gah, my life is over. . . Although. . .

- You have a beard: +2 points

Sweeeeeeeet. If this idea of yours takes off, I'll buy stock.
Fil (url)
On Nov. 20th at 8:20PM

This sounds an awful lot like Pitchfork's fantasy indie rock haha.
beth (url)
On Nov. 21st at 8:32AM

This sounds like you may have out-nerded me to unforseen levels.
Chris (url)
On Nov. 21st at 11:40AM

I used to love playing Fantasy Football via the newspaper when I was younger; this is the coolest (geekiest) thing I've seen for a while.

What would be interesting and turn it into a real, proper game (warning: may be taking it all too far…) would be assigning a value to each player and assemble your team under a budget.

When assembling the highest scoring set of players there's obviously an optimal set of superstars.
If you add a spending limit, it rewards picking cheaper players with high potential and adds some uncertainty.

Of course, keeping track of the scores week-in week out would be tedious beyond words… I dread to think how long it took you to assemble your one-off dream team as it is!

Nice job.
Ben Ward (url)
On Nov. 21st at 3:40PM

Thanks, Ben! It would be hilarious and awesome if this were turned into a real thing. I'm more than happy to make the UI for such a site if someone were to be able to backend it.
Phil Renaud (url)
On Nov. 21st at 4:00PM

By 'someone' to backend it, he certainly doesn't mean me. As I am clearly one of the slowest programmers in existence.
Sean (url)
On Nov. 22nd at 1:37AM

And what about the web dev bloggers? :)
Dave Child (url)
On Nov. 22nd at 1:50AM

Dave: Combine the points, I should think!

Or maybe, combine the points, divide by 2. That might be better.
Phil Renaud (url)
On Nov. 22nd at 4:30AM

I agree with David. There aren't going to be many teams given the cliquiness of the design blogosphere.
Kim Siever (url)
On Nov. 22nd at 8:00AM

Not that I in any way wish to challenge the awesomeness of The Zeldman, but how does he rack up 215 points? Clearly I've missed something about how the scoring system works, but I'm not sure what...

Eric Meyer (url)
On Nov. 27th at 9:49PM

In most fantasy sports when the league goes to pick their teams it's done so at in a snake type order. Meaning, you don't get to pick your entire team at once.

Say you have 10 teams in the league, a random draft order is presented. Then you have the 12 spots you must fill on your team. Each team picks from a pool of the categories they need to fill.
So then if I have the first pick I can pick any ONE person/company whatever but then t moves onto the second draftee. Then when it gets to the end of the drafters (the 10th person in the league) it goes backwards to the #1 drafter. So, it goes 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1,
1-2-3....and so on
Ross (url)
On Dec. 2nd at 7:48AM


Anon (url)
On Dec. 6th at 10:39PM


Anon (url)
On Dec. 8th at 12:53AM


Anon (url)
On Dec. 9th at 1:17AM


Anon (url)
On Dec. 10th at 1:33AM

So how many points does somebody get if they *run* 9rules ;)
Mike Rundle (url)
On Dec. 10th at 6:00PM

I count only 54 points.
Joe Clark (url)
On Dec. 11th at 1:14PM

The scoring is unfair =(
Viktor (url)
On Dec. 14th at 8:11AM


Anon (url)
On Dec. 18th at 3:36AM


Anon (url)
On Dec. 19th at 3:30AM





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