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Dugg, undugg - a few minutes of fame and flame

Posted by Dave Rosen July 5, 2006

Andy Warhol was right when he said everyone has 15 seconds of fame.

After being featured on Techcrunch, XHTMLized has naturally received some spotlight.

We made it to the Digg homepage for a few minutes but then pulled down as multiple people reported it as “lame” and “spam”.

I think the main reason for this is we’ve been pegged as some sort of sweat-shop. This couldn’t be further from the truth so I’d like to explain more about how XHTMLized works, as I posted on TechCrunch.

Please read more to find out about XHTMLized.

Web design involves a growing myriad of talents – information design, graphic arts, marketing, and copy-writing to name just a few. That’s a lot on a typical web designers plate. It’s hard to give each area your 100%. By having XHTMLized, web-designers have an option of not having to worry about markup. One less thing for their plate, meaning they can spend more time on other aspects of the site that they enjoy. Just like how building a house requires a whole lot of individual tradesmen, building professional websites ideally requires individuals with different talents.

XHTMLized customer base is designers, programmers and developers. We have very, very few direct business clients wanting a page XHTMLized for themselves. Frankly, I’ve never meet anyone outside the web industry would knows what XHTML or CSS is – although my Nan tries hard. So XHTMLized isn’t competing against freelancers at all. Far from it. Most of our customers are freelancers themselves. So we’re not taking work away but providing a resource which makes some people’s job as a designer a lot more enjoyable.

XHTMLized is the furthest thing from a sweatshop I can think of. To me, if your locked into going to an office 9 to 5, then your working in a sweatshop yourself. Serious. No matter how much you are getting paid – $5 a month or $5 million a year. Your giving up your time. Money can come and go, but you never get time back. As an ex Macromedia evangelist, I’ve travelled extensively. I’ve lived and worked in the US, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, China and of course my homeland Australia. And I have to say from all the people I have meet, the people are the happiest, are the people who control their own time. Be that the reggie bus drivers from Samoa or the guy writing poems for couples in the park. Having time to think about and enjoy your life is what matters most.

If there is a designer who is a gun at photoshop but works on a mac and doesn’t have a PC to do proper browser testing, why should they be left out in being able to deliver a companies site? Without this sort of service jobs like that may only be in the grasp of web design outfits with full-time CSS XHTML employees. Employees stuck in the office working 9 to 5….

We’re small. Currently there are 12 of us doing the XHTMLizations – some are just newly on board to meet the new demands. Majority are in the US – Trey, Matt, Lane, Tine, Jeff and Dustin. Stan, Joseph, Ilya, Dmitry and David dotted throughout Europe. Glorie and Aja in Asia. I’m in Australia where the company is based.

At XHTMLized things are totally flexible. A steady stream of projects flows through. Each project has a budget and timeframe. We XHTMLizers then pick and choose which projects we want to work on. XHTMLizers work when they want. They work as much as they want. They work from wherever they want. They take as many holidays as they want.

How many people in the world are free to just go fishing in the middle of the day and not have to worry about money coming in? Not many. We have this freedom.

Everyone who does the XHTMLizations specializes and has a passion for XHTML and CSS. With years of experience, the process to convert a design is damn fast. I totally agree that it would be difficult to live on US$150 a week. However most projects can be XHTMLized in a couple of hours. It’s easy to convert 2 a day which makes a very good weekly salary. With the pricing each project is quoted. So $150 is the base but this increase with more complicated or time consuming designs. Naturally a cut goes to XHTMLized – marketing, admin, tax further development.

Perhaps the best thing is the majority of XHTMLizers might only put in 20 or so hours a week – then have the rest of their life to do what they want – be it surf, study or spend time with the people you love. That’s the dream, and it’s the furthest possible thing from a sweat-shop I can imagine.

Another huge advantage is the community we have going. It’s very cool working with people from all over the world. It gives a much bigger perspective on life. I’ve freelanced solo before – it’s great. But it can be lonely and reclusive if your not careful. It’s great collaborating and sharing your life with others. Some of my best friends are the XHTMLized team. It’s a goal to have a big meet-up one day. A XHTMLized camping trip at some scenic part of the globe.

That’s why XHTMLized get 100s of applications a month from freelancers wanting to join (big thanks to everyone who have sent in their portfolios – we’re constantly amazed at the talent out there!).

Thanks for all your comments and thanks for checking out our service. I hope this post has answered your queries and provided more of an insight into what XHTMLized is about, who we are and how we work.

Even bigger thanks to all of you who have sent in quote requests due to the mighty Techcrunch spotlight. We can’t wait to work with you to make sure machines dig your designs. Thanks for your patience, as we get around to you all personally.

I’m going to try to submit this to Digg to gain a greater feedback of why XHTMLized was pulled.