I just spent 2 hours locked in a room with about a dozen creative business owners. We talked about business issues that are common to design firms and web agencies. We’re planning to meet once a month and see what happens.

Quite a number of the people were just starting out on their own (2-4 years) and others were veterans (20+ years in the biz). I couldn’t believe how many of them wanted to take their company to the next level. For many of them, this meant striking out and hiring employees, getting an office, and so forth. It’s the thing to do.

It’s a great idea. Talking to business owners who do the same thing you do is great for stress relief. There are issues like payroll, hiring and firing, sales, marketing, project schedules and project management, freelancers vs hiring, and tons of other stuff to talk about. Talking to other business owners helps with perspective.

Some random stuff, links to some cool apps, and more:

This Flash intro on the HP web site is really cool.
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Neat little program called DropCopy (for OSX).
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We recently installed Xeobook a PHP Guestbook (free) on a server for our client. Highly recommended and incredibly flexible. If you need a guestbook, this is it.
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Fish.
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Has anyone used JAlbum? It looks pretty cool, I’m considering installing it and creating an album to show all of my photos. That’d sure be a trip.
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Google just bought Keyhole, a company that uses satelite photos in mapping. They just cut the price by $40, too.
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Jeff noted that there will be a lunar eclipse tonight. NASA has something to say about this, too. How to photograph a lunar eclipse.