I really like Sophie Blackall's illustrations of missed connections ads from Craiglist and other sites. The style reminds me a bit of Maira Kalman.
If this were on Tumblr, she'd already have a book deal.
Update: About that book thing:
Ms. Blackall's whimsical drawings have also caught the attention of publishers: She says she's currently negotiating a deal to create a book of her illustrations, which would likely land on shelves sometime in the next year to 18 months.
From a long piece by Gary Wolf in Wired about Craigslist and Craig Newmark, a glimpse of the tiny firm's internal working structure:
The long-running tech-industry war between engineers and marketers has been ended at craigslist by the simple expedient of having no marketers. Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at craigslist. There is no business development, no human resources, no sales. As a result, there are no meetings. The staff communicates by email and IM. This is a nice environment for employees of a certain temperament. "Not that we're a Shangri-La or anything," Buckmaster says, "but no technical people have ever left the company of their own accord."
I also enjoyed this line: "the public is a motherfucker".
A man dressed as a road maintenance worker robbed an armored car in Washington State. As part of his getaway plan, he hired some people via Seattle craigslist to also dress up as road maintenance workers and mill around where the armored car was located.
"I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys, named Mike, said to the NBC station. As it turns out, they were simply placed there to confuse cops who were looking for a guy wearing a virtually identical outfit.
The thief then escaped down a river on an inner tube. (thx, greg)
Andy on some recent baiting of people looking for sex on Craigslist. "In a staggering move, he then published every single response, unedited and uncensored, with all photos and personal information to [the web]."
Interview with Jim Buckmaster, who gives us an update on what Craiglist is up to. "If I look across the Internet at the big Internet companies, there's a large proportion of their staff that are devoted in various ways to trying to maximize revenue. Those employees I don't think are delivering much bang for the buck to the end user."
Anil on the conservatism of liberalism (by way of explaining why Craigslist is taking away everyone else's classifieds business). "A complete unwillingness to be critical, an almost astoundingly low set of criteria for acceptance -- these aren't the traits that encourage a community or a culture to improve."
Wanna go work for Thomas Keller? Per Se is using Craigslist to fill some server openings in the front of the house.
NYC Craigslist computer services offered: "Will read and comment (semi-intelligently) on your blog for $2". There's a five comment minimum with future comments for free (!!) if your site is entertaining enough. (via lia (rhymes!)) Update: doh, the page has expired. It was pretty funny though, sorry you missed it.
A craigslist missed connection for any of the hot women who were in the audience for Edward Tufte's lecture. Not too picky, this guy, he'll take any beautiful woman who was there. Quick, someone snap him up before he makes another sparklines pun.
