I finished this a while back but never found the time to post it here.  The Malakula Medical Relief Trust does some great work — it’s hard to comprehend that people that live so close to New Zealand don’t have clean water.  Paul, the driving force behind the trust is an amazing person who simply gives so much of his time and money in order to to provide these villages with water.  Not only that, he is also an excellent person to sit down and have a few Coronas and a chat with, he has the most amazing stories to tell! I’m really glad that he was put in touch with me to do this website — I truly feel lucky to know him as he’s so inpsiring and such a great person, and also hope to travel to Vanuatu and help out where I can.

If you have the time and inclination, please visit the website and see if you can help out in any way.  You don’t need to donate money (although I’m sure that is always appreciated! And all money donated is directly used to purchase materials needed for building the water tanks), you may be able to help out in another way, such as donating materials or by going to Vanuatu with Paul and helping him build the water tanks.

As an aside, I create websites and do design work for non-profits that I believe in at a heavily discounted rate, so if you are part of an organisation that needs a website or design work done but think you can’t afford it, feel free to get in touch with me to see if it’s something I’m interested in.

Here are her Food Chain toys! Photo taken from Moco Loco.

But now things have changed.

I’ve been following the progress of Magento and did a few test installations so I could play around with it while it was in beta. A couple of weeks ago they released version 1 which is pretty exciting. They even have a tool for migrating from an osCommerce based store which I believe will be heavily used as more and more people make the transition. It will be interesting to see how many developers they have contributing modules and whether or not the user base matches or even exceeds that of osCommerce. Magento is a significantly larger install, but it is becoming normal for many open source web packages to be around the 30mb mark, and believe me, it is worth it!

I have yet to create a live store using Magento, but do have one in the works and will be sure to announce it here when it goes live.

What was your inspiration behind starting Aviary?
We had a problem: Allowing users to sell their Worth1000 images was very inefficient because it attracted some angry copyright holders whose rights had been infringed and we had no way to verify what content was actually uploaded legally. Finally technology’s advances allowed us a way to perform that regulation in the form of a platform that tracks works from start to finish. There was nothing like it online and artists who don’t yet know they are artists ( i.e. people with non-artistic day jobs and hidden potential) need some sort of powerful free tool set to discover themselves. And so we conceived of Aviary.

How would you determine if your site is successful? What kind of usage are you aiming for, and how do you intend to generate this?
We already have a user based of almost half a million registered members at Worth1000, so we are confident we’ll have many users right from launch interested in using the service.

Where do you see Aviary heading in the future?
Open framework, so people can build their own tools into Aviary. Plugins for other third party desktop applications, so users are free to use whichever tool they like to create (not just ours), while still gaining the benefit of Aviary’s content platform. More power and a smaller gap between desktop applications and online applications as technology catches up.

Do you see Aviary as having socio-cultural impact? If so, how?
I hope it will make it feasible that businesses won’t feel they automatically need to charge for people to use their tools when they are used for fun. For example, most uses of Adobe Photoshop are probably non-commercial, yet the software (even the light version) is still prohibitively expensive. If we as the software industry can all provide ways for people to use our tools and services in financial partnership with us (instead of a client relationship with us), everyone wins.

Google is already doing this with each company they acquire (Urchin, Writely, Feedburner) and are providing an advertising marketplace where they ultimately make their money back.

What are your thoughts on the internet generating new communities?
That’s a whole different interview, but I have published some thoughts on the value of communities on my personal blog.

Are there now new notions of community in the digital age?
Well, I don’t think community is something that can be broadly defined anymore, if that’s what you’re looking for. 15 years ago community was interpreted along general terms: family, neighbors, school and religious organizations. Now it can mean anything and everything, no matter how niche.

Is Aviary beneficial to society? If so, how?
Yes, because it means free on-demand tools to create and refine content in different mediums? Before Aviary creation was mostly linear. Now it will be more tree-like (if you would visualize artwork created in it). The end result will be more refined, reusable and affordable content for the world.

Is everyday life being transformed through the use of sites such as yours? Are we moving closer to reaching the potential of the internet?
We have just reached the tipping point where streaming computing has become possible and communal thinking has become accepted. We’re not even close to reaching the zenith of the Internet’s usefulness.

Do you think there are problems associated with levels of regulation in uploaded / user generated material on the internet?
Certainly and that is precisely why we created Aviary. We need a framework that people can use to verify that content is unique and problem free.

Do you consider your site a web 2.0 site?
Everyone’s definition is different. I wouldn’t consider ours just a “site”. I’d consider it a web 2.0 “suite”. :-)

How would you define a web 2.0 website?
I can’t define it, but I can offer a parable: It’s an online garden: An entity that expands and becomes more rich and independently chaotic as time goes on.

I’ve finished my design degree, passing with Honours, so all of those years of working nearly every waking hour and not getting nearly enough sleep paid off. I’m still working an insane amount, but get nearly eight hours sleep a night and sometimes even have a social life!

I’m still working at james&august, we have just released our TENTH range, so check it out if it’s your kind of thing. I must have around five or six of the Rib Shelf Bra singlets, and wore them so often over summer that my tan line is of them! I’m now also working with Zeb and Vicky as Robots Will Rule (they will, you know). We are a multidisciplinary design studio, and have a few projects on at the moment — some websites, a branding & website usability project and some more self-directed type stuff. It’s all quite exciting, and no doubt we will keep people informed once our site is online.

Still writing about music at Slow Songs For Fast Hearts, and now also writing about food at I Heart Food! Have been DJing quite a bit lately, with my friend Ruby — we DJ under the name Tag Team Robitix (seeing a theme in my life, yet?). I also designed a jewellery range (photos by the talented Fiona Quinn at Voltage Photo), and have four other self-directed projects on the go, although they’re pretty much all on hold while I’m busy with james&august, Robots Will Rule, the Hothouse, etc.

I’ve made a ridiculous amount of websites in the last year, enough that I think they need their own post… The most recent was for Natasha at Xfacta Coaching in Sydney — make sure you have a look!

Recently I’ve also launched the new online store for james & august — I used osCommerce which was really fun; and have also started a new blog with my friend Melissa from Cherrybomb Comics. It’s all about music and it’s called Slow Songs for Fast Hearts. The design of the site isn’t anywhere near being finished, it’s just a matter of finding some spare time to work on it. Melissa and I are also planning on starting our own radio station. We’re still researching into the equipment we need to buy, figuring out where we will broadcast from etc. but I’m sure that we are actually going to do it!

And speaking of blogs in need of the design being finished, hopefully I will get around to fixing this at some point. I think once we have finalised the Delicious Mint branding, and have made a new website (yes, once again!), I’ll then apply the new branding and web design to this blog. Hopefully.

I have some other ideas that I am currently working on, when things start happening with those no doubt I will post about them on here. But for now they can stay secret!

Although it’s not just about Helvetica. It’s about typefaces and design! A documentary about typefaces and design! This makes me way too happy.

It does remind me of those typeface t-shirts. I might make some that say “Comic Sans is the best front ever.”  Okay, that was sarcasm.

This is on the Delorean website for real. Who has a credit card I can use? (Link!)