I love my Moleskine. I use it daily to keep track of lots of randomness that I seldom refer to again, but are nonetheless things I want to pluck from my brain and save.

If you don’t know what Moleskine notebooks are, they’re those little black books (now available in multiple styles and sizes, because Americans like choices) that you’ll see artists, writers, tech geeks and other crafty folk carrying around to coffee shops. Or, more likely, you’ll see folks like me using them – not so famous or interesting artists, writers or tech geeks. Dare I say, wannabes.

As hailed in the brochure included with the thing when you buy it – tucked away in the neat little pocket in back (a pocket that’s perfect for storing your used Europass ticket stubs or other proofs of your worldly travels) – Hemingway and other artsy types sat scribbling in them at every cafe in post-WWI Europe, recording the great works of our generation while still unknown and untouched by fame. Exactly what modern-day Moleskiners want to do – when they have time between trips to Target and Starbucks.

I thought that my treasured Moleskine and my chosen profession of interwebs interlocutor were relatively unconnectable, exactly the way I liked it. Our world is so filled with technology advancing every pursuit at breakneck speed that a bit of real-world interaction keeps you grounded (old cars, bikes, fly-fishing, Moleskines are the ying to my techno-yang).

But alas, Moleskine (the company, not my notebook) is asking me to go beyond paper. It’s clear that Moleskine is no longer a tiny, niche product; but rather, it’s a big brand with venture capital behind them and a “circle R” behind every usage of the name. Those marketers have recruited a social media posse to reach out and take its community online, creating all kinds of “synergies” and “positive brand experiences” for Moleskine lovers.

I usually dig these efforts – because that’s what I do. But this one seems at odds with the brand, ironically asking users to you join the community so that they can upload and share scans of cool things recorded in their private Moleskines. It’s also a bit narcissistic to take all this time to journal away in your book, with the intention of posting it publicly. That may just tap into the dirty little truth that the unstated intention of the modern Moleskinista is to create something that just might give them fame when their scribblings are found years from now – whereas current readers might just see them as…well, doodles.

Would Hemingway do this? Of course not. But then again, he probably wouldn’t have a Facebook or a computer for that matter.

In any case, give it a shot. Share your Moleskine scribbles by creating a “MyMoleskine” account.

The GoComics Gadget on iGoogle passed the 500,000 subscriber mark today, passing CNET.com and entering the elite 25 most-subscribed to Gadgets on Google. Next in our sights? Google Reader (528k) and FOXNews.com (541k)

Get it for yourself (requires iGoogle account).

The GoComics Gadgets placed on my iGoogle home page.

I’m very proud of this new distributed version of the GoComics.com web site. I set a goal in 2007 that we would build our “off site” audience by actually giving users a content-rich experience that can still build our on-site traffic and revenue. By working with the team at iGoogle, we were able to make a public release that has received an awesome welcome by the iGoogle community (as you can see by the subscriber totals).

The Gadget takes advantage of the new “canvas” view (similar to a Facebook app view) to show a large content window.  We let users customize the gadget with their choice of comics that can be viewed at full size within the canvas view. Peppered within the gadget are windows into the community on GoComics.com – comments, tags and favorite rankings. A major change in Google’s approach is that they’ve opened the canvas view to allow publishers to insert their own third-party ads, creating direct revenue opportunities that had never existed on iGoogle.

Here's the GoComics Gadget in iGoogle's canvas view.

The folks at Google have been very excited about using our gadget as a showcase for their new canvas view and they’ve delivered some great promotion. Our new gadget for iGoogle was announced on google’s official blog yesterday as part of the new igoogle relaunch (see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/whats-new-with-igoogle.html) – you’ll even see a screenshot of our gadget. We have top billing on iGoogle and its editor’s picks section. Since launch we have subscribed about 200,000 users on igoogle. I’m hoping for 500k subscribers by the end of the month.

Its been a long time coming, but we finally had the public release of the new GoComics.com. Thanks to Mark at LocusFocus for all of his help. Michael Holloway, Doug Sparling and Eric Hurst were the core of the uclick Rails team who spent some long hours getting us to launch.

To see the site in action, go to GoComics.com and start exploring.

The new site tries to go beyond the old-school comics sites and to take advantage of some of the social tendencies that are natural within a comic’s fan community. This is the initial release and more good stuff is on the way, so stay tuned.

The first thing you’ll notice about the new site is that many of features that were only available to paid subscribers are now available to anyone who registers. Any registered user can:
* Tag comics with relevant keywords
* Share comics with friends
* Make a Comment on any comic
* Mark comics as Favorites
* Create Comics Pages by subscribing to your favorite titles
* Create free online Collections; keep them to yourself or make them Shared Collections and spread the love to the rest of the GoComics community
* Connect with other fans – View shared collections and member profiles and click Follow to keep up-to-date on their activity

Once you’ve created and account and signed in you’ll be taken to your Dashboard, which is like your own personal headquarters on GoComics.com. You’ll find all of your Comics Pages, Collections and Tags saved there. You’ll also find sections devoted to your followers and those you’re following, as well as a Comics Action Feed with updates from GoComics and other users.

Toon Picker: If you’re not familiar with all of the comics on our site (or if you’re just feeling adventurous) give the Toon Picker a try. The Toon Picker automatically generates a Comics Page for you based on comic categories you select, then you get to read and rate them. When you’re done, you’ve got a great new custom comics page on your dashboard, and you can come back and read the updated version everyday.

The initial launch went smoothly, without server downtime or service interruptions. Initial reaction has been positive – with the exception of some folks who just don’t like new things!

We converted our paid comics service from MyComicsPage.com to Gocomics Pro today. If you have an account, login to enjoy all of the new functionality. Need an account? Let me know.

This release is a major improvement thanks to the hundreds of subscribers who gave us feedback during the 5 month beta release. We did our best to integrate the most popular suggestions and even more are on the way.

Integrating the feedback into the release schedule was possible because of a larger change in our development platform and methodology. Our small development team (2 full time, 1 contract) decided early on that we could gain more functionality in less time by switching platforms from a perl-based system to Ruby on Rails. We also adopted a modified agile development methodology and stressed weekly iterative releases more than we ever have in the past. The result is that we were able to get user feedback quickly and change the product functionality as needed.

Our next major release will integrate the paid-user experience with the free-user experience, giving the non-paid users and increase in community and shareable features. Stay tuned!