When I was twenty-two, I met a girl. We dated for a brief while, and although the relationship came to an end rather quickly, something did stick. She was a vegetarian, and in order to impress her, I stopped eating meat. In retrospect, however, I realize that my real reason for doing so had more to [...]
As of today, there are 1,516 topics on MakeFive. I expect that within a year, that number will be ten times as high. The fact is that lists are just addictive. They aren’t like my long rambles–you actually have to force yourself to “edit” in creating one. Some of the big users on MakeFive like [...]
Bill Green and the fellows from Plaid dropped by the smashLAB office last summer on their annual road-trip. It was really fun to meet the fellows, and I’m amazed by how fun they made our office seem, given how incredibly boring we are. Thanks guys!
A few years ago I wrote a post called “9 to 5 = average“. It was largely inspired by a couple of people who we had been working with. In some respects it was a bolder post than I intended and in retrospect, I probably should have toned it down a notch. I have to [...]
Back in 2000, when we started smashLAB, we had a regular assortment of nutty folks who’d come to us with some scheme for a web-based business. Often they weren’t even users of the web, but figured they had the next “Yahoo” (which was successful at the time, remember) floating around in their noggins. They’d then [...]
Of all the places we’ve been featured, this one we had never expected. The strange part is that they needed all of this content with us moving around and working. We weren’t really working on anything collectively at that moment, so we pulled-up old projects and “pretended” to discuss them, recounting our original discussions from [...]
When Amea and I first met, she’d often come by my apartment at around eight or nine o’clock, after which, we’d head out for dinner, wine or coffee. Eventually those evenings became longer, as we’d watch a movie, make-out or something; nevertheless, we rarely started our nights much earlier, as a result of smashLAB. On [...]
In a few weeks, I’ll be speaking with Marc Alt and Brian Dougherty at Science World, for a GDC event called Practivism. I’m always flattered to be invited to such events; I’m equally uncomfortable by the prospect. Part of this stems from the fact that I’m trying to be more sustainable, but far from successful in [...]
A couple of months ago I emailed Paul Graham to note how much I enjoy his essays. (I also made note of MakeFive, asking him to check it out.) He responded shortly thereafter, noting that we should really consider applying to Y Combinator. Since then we’ve been emailing back and forth brief messages, and Eric [...]
I can’t quite let the cat out of the bag yet, but here’s what I can tell you. We’ve been working on a new project. One never knows how such a thing is embraced by the community, but I’m of the mind that this one could be a hit. (That being said, I hope for [...]
I'm Eric Karjaluoto a designer and entrepreneur. My friend Eric Shelkie and I run an interactive agency called smashLAB and we make neat things like MakeFive, shiftCMS. If you'd like to know more, read my bio.
I'm married to Amea and we have an amazing kid named Oscar. I talk to my Mom and Dad almost every day.
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Eric Karjaluoto
c/o smashLAB
405 - 318 Homer Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6B 2V2
Tel: 604-683-2250