"Heather and Derek should start pngmag."

[libertango]

That's probably the funniest geek-boy comment from this thread at Metafilter.

Derek Powazek and Heather Powazek Champ co-founded JPG magazine. They've been forced out of the company. You can read Derek's version, or Heather's.

I was connected to Derek in an attenuated way when I used to talk to urlgirl much more than I do today. I've always found it sad that Maggy Donea, Derek, Lance Arthur, and Alex Massie (as she then was) never have gotten the public recognition they should for pioneering many of the concepts of today's web design.

That Derek should have to go through the added indignity of the "founder gets booted by insecure egomaniac who rationalizes their decisions on the basis of money, but really just wants to boss people around regardless of impact to the bottom line" plotline -- cf. Carl Karcher, or Steve Jobs, and many others -- just makes a bad situation worse.

I wish Derek and Heather all the best.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Ah, Maggy was in my short story writing group for awhile! How the Internet is small. And I remember those days when they were the four pioneers and everyone was either hugely admiring or hugely jealous, or both.

[urlgirl.livejournal.com]

What a bizarre story! I had no idea, thanks for mentioning it. You haven't fully participated in the Net Economy until you've been fleeced by your business partner. But even so, I honestly thought Derek had amassed enough goodwill and experience to be buffetted from this kind of crap. I guess not. I guess everyone has to learn that lesson eventually.

Story

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd thought you'd be interested. Notice also that the four of you get a passing mention in this comment by Emily King in the MeFi thread (writing as "po").

In the background

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

As I've said before, I'm the Zelig of the internet. :)

Re: Story

[urlgirl.livejournal.com]

Heh. I don't want to know. I'm going to get some soup now, instead.