⃪ Home Last updated: 3/24/2024

Graveyard of side projects

(There's a reason I wrote the Github Ghost Towns series 🙃)

Spyglasses 🌱

• Actively working on this
• AI-powered research tool
• Excuse for messing around with Qwik.js, FastAPI and integrating AI functionality into a product

Refine 💰⚰️

• Died: 2022
• A drop-in component for complicated user-generated queries
• Acquired by ClickFunnels

Fullstack Panic Podcast ⚰️

• Died: 2021
• How to manage a career while dealing with the incredible rate of change in technology
• The first season was a success!
• Recorded a second season and one of my vendors lost all of my recordings and I screwed up my backups. I was too depressed about it to keep going so I gave up on the concept.

Angular Escape Plan 💵💀

• Died: 2016
• Angular course built on custom courseware
• Great initial sales — Angular 2 effectively deprecated all of the content

Charlie.js 🎉 🧟‍♂️

• In zombie mode, never updated but probably still works
• JS library to let you sync changes in a website to a video

Sketching with CSS 🤑 🪦

• Born: 2014, Died: 2024
• A book for web designers to learn rapid prototyping with code
• Paid my bills and was the foundation for Planning for Aliens Inc.
• Spawned ideas and "side projects" for years that didn't die on the vine and grew my business

Nymbus ⚰️

• Died: 2013
• A movement to have pseudonymous, portable identities for authentication

Big Brother 👻

• Died: 2011
• An exploration of browser fingerprinting
• Spawned an email exchange with Jeff Atwood which we put on Stack Overflow

Monocles 😵

• Died: 2010
• A proxy server for readable articles

Tiny Tasky 💀

• Died: 2010
• Email-based todo list

Lookout 🪦

• Died: 2009
• Filtered Google alerts for PR agencies

Postosaurus 💀

• Died: 2009
• Email-based project management

Allicator 👻

• Died: 2008
• SaaS for non-profit development directors
• Highlighted by Eric Ries for my use of Lean Startup methodology
• Ran the Lean Startup meetup in Chicago

Fiddle 🪦

• Died: 2007
• Wireless mesh networks for rural communities
• Mesh Sandbox blog and Hello World podcast (started recording episodes before the word podcast was created!)

Projects I spiked but never shipped 🪦⚰️🪦🪦💀⚰️🪦

Steeple, Dustbin, Brain, Prybar, Page Builder, Moar Signups, Magelord, Client Timeline App