Kyle Neath chimes in on how to design great URLs.

URLs are universal. They work in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, cURL, wget, your iPhone, Android and even written down on sticky notes. They are the one universal syntax of the web. Don’t take that for granted.

URLs are for humans. Design them for humans.

A URL is an agreement to serve something from a predictable location for as long as possible. Once your first visitor hits a URL you’ve implicitly entered into an agreement that if they bookmark the page or hit refresh, they’ll see the same thing.

Don’t change your URLs after they’ve been publicly launched. If you absolutely must change your URLs, add redirects — it’s not that scary.

Spot on.

It’s that time of year again where we reflect on the past 12 months and make predictions about the next 12. All future, all past. It’s as if The Now doesn’t exist. Like there’s no present at. (That’s a whole post or probably book for someone else to write or to have written already.) So, here it is, me getting all reflecty and predicty.

Reflection

This was my list of resolutions, before I heard about Amy Hoy’s Year of Hustle jam.

2010 (The Year of Personal Jet-packs) Resolutions

Let’s call them Goals, because you’re on your way once you set your goals.

• Build a dam wiki… or enlist someone else to
• Get an activity stream aggregator / publisher working
• Publish 6 issues of a new online magazine
• Publish at least one of the five books
• Publish that one dude’s book
• Read at least one book / month
• Blog more
• Build a wild edibles map app… or enlist someone else to
• Don’t work for free
• Get a house
• Get a job
• Get out of debt
• Get rid of my stagnant projects
• Get to TODO ZERO at least once
• Make blogging less cumbersome
• Never burn another CD or DVD
• Redesign blog
• Scale down shirts inventory
• Stay put, don’t travel so much

And this was my Year of Hustle goals.

2010: My Year of Hustle

Inspired by @amyhoy’s 2009 year of hustle, I’m doing my own.

• 6 issues of Razzle Dazzle
• Build dam wiki
• Sell 30 TRA shirts / month
• Write & publish books
• Build public harvest (became foodsquatting.com)
• Get a house
• Get a job
• Pay off student loans

To recap, I didn’t: build a dam wiki, write/publish any books or read many books for that matter. I didn’t publish 6 issues of Razzle Dazzle, only one. I didn’t build anything more that a prototype of an Activity Stream aggregator. We didn’t sell many shirts, but we did hand over the company to some friends for them to run.

All of that is to say, I didn’t do the really big projects. But I did manage to cross some shit off the lists.

The biggest one, I got the fuck out of debt. I can’t begin to express how amazing this felt / feels. Unless you’ve ever had massive debt, you’ll probably never really know. This also means for the first time in my life, I’m actually able to save money which is interesting and a little bit weird. I was able to GTFO of debt was a result of 3 things: I met a girl, I stayed in town, I got The Job. In that order.

Stacey and I both wrote our versions of how we met. We found a totally rad pool house to live in. Eventually, I the job where I met a bunch of really bright talented people and I got better at what I do. I stayed focused on getting out of debt and was able to to do it in mid-October.

I did publish one issue of Razzle Dazzle called Origin Story. I was happy with it, but wrangling content from other people (especially for free) is like herding long-tail cats in a room full of rocking chairs. I’ve since handed off the editor/curator reigns to my friend Sarah Godlove to handle issue 2 (Finding Our Voice) which is coming along swimmingly. Future issues will have a rotating cast of editors/curators as well.

January was going to be book writing month with some homies, but alas that fell through because of scheduling conflicts. I mentally closed the doors on a handful of projects that were still on my backlog, but aren’t important to me anymore or aren’t ever gonna happen. That felt good to jettison some weight.

I also managed to not only redesign my blog, but totally rebuild it behind the scenes too! It’s no longer running on WordPress.com (who I still think is totally awesome and I’m glad they exist), because I wanted to do some things they don’t offer and to have more control over it. Right now, my site contains both my long form articles and my notes. It also has a few products. The plan is to have all of my content in one place (more on that below).

So, while I didn’t hit all of my goals, I did do a bunch of awesome stuff and laid the foundation for twenty oh eleven really well.

Prediction

It’s almost 2011. We still don’t have jetpacks, time machines or hover-boards/cars. Although, we do have an always connected (to the entirety of the world’s knowledge) computer in our pocket. That’s not nothing. I won’t be hovering, jetpacking or tearing through the space-time continuum, but I will be doing a thing or two.

Big Things

• Write/publish civilization primer book
• Publish 3 issues of Razzle Dazzle
• Get Homesteading App to the point where it can power my site (2 days / week)
• Launch ███████████.tv
• Work toward a car free life
• Save enough money to buy land (in 2012)

Body things

• Figure out my allergies
• Fix my dry throat problem
• Fix broke ass finger
• Investigate weird random chest pains
• Get flexible again
• Work on breathing capacity (breadth and depth)
• Lose my office working weight (~10 pounds)
• Help Civ lose weight (~8 pounds)

Little Things

• Try out a standing desk
• Get a better computer chair
• Master Cleanse once
• Try 100 Things Challenge

Nerd things

• Scan and donate Zine Distro zines
• Find new owner/maintainer for Zine Distro
• Scan negatives
• Upload remaining video to Vimeo
• Replace old low-resolution photos on Flickr with high-resolution copies
• Find new maintainer for theveganstraightedge.com
• Find new owner for dateedge.com
• Snowflake Blast
• Finish up thegreatamericanaroadtrip.com
• iOS app for foodsquatting.com
• Enlist someone to make the dam wiki

I’m probably biting off more than I can chew. I tend to do that. But as of right now, those are my goals for 2011, The Year of the Time Machine™.