Daring Fireball mentioned this recently:

“Given how successful The Deck has been, and how much better I believe The Deck’s basic model to be versus “regular” web advertising, I’ve long wondered why there weren’t any other Deck-like ad networks. Now there is one: Fusion Ads. Good ideas deserve to spread; I hope this blossoms.”

As I hinted at a few days ago (thanks everyone for the feedback), I’ve been contemplating blog advertising. Obviously, I made a decision.

I’m happy to join up with Fusion Ads. I’m happy that the network includes sites I was already reading. I’m happy it only displays a single, tasteful ad per page with minimal text (which still took me quite awhile to decide how to incorporate into a blog layout that’s never had a sidebar). I’m happy the advertisers are products I’d probably use anyway. In general, I’m happy.

I’ve never really had much of a plan for blogging. It’s something I enjoy, and so I keep doing it. I’ve met some wonderful people through it. I’ve learned a bunch of stuff. I hope that partnering up with Fusion Ads will give me a little more time to devote to making the conversations here better. And I hope some of my happy keeps making it through the internet to you. Thanks for reading/visiting and just generally loving the internet with me. Onward and upward.

In no particular order, I am thankful for:

my wife, music, ExpressionEngine, Hulu, my family in SC and TX, my job/church/community, my team, my pocket knife, any steak marinade involving Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, Lee McDerment, Apple products, Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ, the friends I spend almost every Wednesday night with, the California Gilmores (mainly because they made Molly), Jesus, teaching about Jesus, the (just maybe) perfect bag, the (soon-to-be) Longbrakes, the Sartorialist, being able to make things that don’t involve computers, LOST, Yewknee, Western Digital Passport tiny harddrives, Basecamp, Camper shoes, Noah Stokes, Chipotle, Akzidenz Grotesk, chopping wood and building fires, my wedding photos, magazines I subscribe to for both content and layout, not dying that one Thanksgiving, being outside, Twitter, Fringe (only insofar as it reminds me of Boston), Chick-Fil-A, Wikipedia, our cute little mid-century modern duplex, our duplex neighbor who has always been quiet — until today’s appropriately-timed blasting of Christmas music, a 50mm ƒ/1.4 camera lens, Smart Wool socks, The Corner Bagel Shop’s Godfather steak sandwich, M.A. Turner, the various Danish modern chairs we’ve acquired (fairly cheaply), Netflix, Phaidon books, glass bottle Coca-Cola Classic, the intersection of the vast internet and my vast tastes that results in sites like Sea of Shoes and VVORK being daily reads, the internet (in general), iChat/gChat/Skype, the knowledge that I will spend Black Friday on the couch watching movies, what little usable Polaroid film that’s still left in the world, Daytum, BT’s This Binary Universe, grid layout for graphic design, and you.

1. “I have no belief in the virtue or durability of official philosophies, and when it comes to state religions, I have always thought that, though they may perhaps sometimes momentarily serve the interests of political power, they are always sooner or later fatal for the church.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

2. “Language. It’s all about Language. You want me help you with your marketing, you have to be willing to talk to me about Language.” — Hugh MacLeod

3. “If you have momentum and you don’t know why—you are one stupid decision away from killing it.” — Andy Stanley

4. “He raised a half a billion online…I don’t believe that Obama would have ever been able to become president in the era before the Internet. And I don’t believe the implications of that have yet to fully sink in.” — Andrew Sullivan

5. “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” — Joseph Priestly

While stopping to get a healthy sausage biscuit at a local fast food place on the way to work yesterday, I noticed some construction guys working on the roof of (yet another) new fast food place next door. These guys were obviously students of the WorkSmarterNotHarder school of thought, passing metal roof panels from the ground to the 2nd story roof using a pair of vice grips tied to a rope. No ladder, no scaffold, no up and down, no huge crew. Just two guys using simple tools in straight-forward, creative ways.

At NewSpring, we’re working on a couple of large-ish web projects right now; one of them is specifically stretching our team into areas of experimentation and non-knowledge. For a particular aspect of the live streaming video components, we’ve been told everything from “$80k to set-up the infrastructure” to “that’ll be ballpark $1.2mil.” Ouch. But as we’ve been gathering info from various (really, really) nice people, it turns out we can do most of what we want to do with open source and relatively-inexpensive hardware/software.

By doing this we save money and time, which makes us more nimble and able to change directions quickly. We opt for straight-forward accessible tools, not out-of-reach technology. We use a small team to pull off big ideas by leveraging existing knowledge, technology and friends. Sometimes I feel like our whole web strategy is built with vice grips and square knots, but I’m ok with that.

I submit to you that there is nothing on the internet with more cute-per-second than this video.

So, I’ve been doing this blog thing for close to five years. Some of you have been with me that whole span of time, some of you popped in last week. I like all of you and I’m super thankful that we get to have some interesting conversations from time to time.

Blog advertising has always been one of those things I look at a bit skeptically, essentially thinking it brings another voice into that conversation, one that is rarely contextual. How do you feel about these new-ish targeted ad networks (like The Deck or the recently-launched Fusion Ads)? Less noise? Same thing?