Author: Dan Dickinson

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The Inevitable Once-A-Year Blog Housekeeping Post

The number of people who care about the technical details of any blog tends to be in the single digits. It is in everyone’s interest that I keep this succinct:

* New layout: took [Mid-Century](http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/themes/mid-century.html), converted it to the beloved PVW color set, chopped up the sidebar a bit so it wasn’t so widget-y. The whole site should be easier to read, although I’m sure there’s a bunch of images being chopped due to
* Better organization: nuked old un-used category structure. Created new, somewhat whimsical category structure, which is more about structure than content. Visit the site and explore. Not everything has been re-categorized yet – it will take quite a while.
* Added yearly archives. Monthly archives would end up being too long of a list.
* Related entries by tag search now enabled for all tagged entries.
* RSS feed is now redirecting (permanently) to the Atom feed. Those of you on the legacy RSS feed may get a feed burp; apologies.

Thanks to Zach Szukala for lending his eyes.

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Zappos and Amazon, Sitting In A Tree

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, announcing the acquisition of Zappos by Amazon:

Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say “Amazon acquires Zappos” or “Zappos sells to Amazon”. While those headlines are technically correct, they don’t really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree…”)

We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos — continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture, and our business. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are switching out our current shareholders and board of directors for a new one, even though the technical legal structure may be different.

We think that now is the right time to join forces with Amazon because there is a huge opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths and move even faster towards our long term vision. For Zappos, our vision remains the same: delivering happiness to customers, employees, and vendors. We just want to get there faster.

As a frequent customer of both, I am cautiously optimistic.

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Things I Learned While Eating Poutine With Pat Kiernan

Poutine with Pat Kiernan at Pomme Frites

Friday evening , I got to meet NYC’s favorite morning news anchor, Pat Kiernan, over poutine. If you’re looking for some sort of a reason why, follow these links in order. Longtime readers may remember my professed love from 2004, which did not go unnoticed. The group of six – three “winners”, two Gothamist staff, and Pat – spent two hours talking about practically everything. A condensed list of things worth mentioning:

* Poutine is a “delicacy” of Eastern Canada; Pat, being from Calgary and Edmonton prior to moving to NYC, has no particular attachment to the dish.
* Pat began working for TimeWarner at Pathfinder, which may have been one of the first major dotcoms to implode in the mid-90s. Pat’s primary project on the site – the Fortune Business Report – was brought to NY1, where it still regularly airs.
* Because Pat’s Papers hadn’t quite launched yet when I posted about it, I appear to have given Pat’s Papers its first inbound link, which caused it to finally appear in Google’s search results.
* The sleep schedule of someone who has to be in to work at 4AM can only be described as a meticulous science.
* I actually like poutine. I always find chili overpowering on fries, but a splash of gravy works pretty well. The cheese curds also give you a little more control over the cheese/potato ratio than standard cheese fries. That said, the bottom of the cup does get kind of congealed.

Possibly the world's first 'poutine toast'.

Gothamist has more.

(Photos in this post mostly taken by Tien Mao.)