Latest entries

The search is now working properly again. A line of code had been duplicated some time ago, preventing the search box from showing up when you clicked Search.

Spam has been a really big problem for quite some time now. Harry and I have been working hard to remove unwanted submissions, but it just hasn’t been enough to counter the tirelessness of the spammers.

So, why haven’t I done more to prevent this? Well, it’s partly because I haven’t had much time to work on the site, but it’s also because I didn’t want to add captchas to the site. Nor did I want to rely on an external service like Akismet.

Last night a new anti-spam system was installed. It’s an experiment that will need some tweaking, but I’m hopeful. I will remove old spam comments as we go along.

Please send me an email if I’ve removed a desk in error, or if you’re experiencing any problems.

There are typically 2–4 spam-photos posted every day. I’ve been having trouble keeping up with that as I’m on a different timezone than most of you and—even worse—if I’m away for a day or two the desks-section looks like a Hotmail-inbox.

This situation has forced us to call on the big guns. Spam beware, I’d like to introduce to you, the moderation-squad: Harry Richmond!

A look inside the office of the giant search engine Yandex (via Hacker News).

See the article here.

The issue that was preventing you from deleting photos and desks has now been resolved. A big thanks to our members for helping us out with the issue.

The same problem was preventing us from deleting spam-desks at our typical rate. We should, as of today, be able to keep up with the dreg again.

In case you haven’t noticed: I’ve put Friday Features on hold until more material has been uploaded.

I was chasing photos considering featuring desks just for the sake of having something to write about. I didn’t want to do that, so I’m taking a short break.

Friday Features

My Setup

Multiple monitor setup with loads of ambient light. Uploaded by Victor Z.

T221 Experimentation

That’s a lot of screen real estate. 36,864,000 pixels in total, to be precise. Each monitor has a native resolution of 3840×2400 and the product family goes by the unofficial nickname “Big Bertha”. Thank you, Elliott Cable.

Homespace 1.1

It’s certainly worth following the progress of Cat’s workspace. The new backlighting works great with the curtains, creating a very snug atmosphere.

Have a great weekend!

Friday Features

The Lights

There’s a lot of hardware on this desk uploaded by Stephen Jennings.

Work Desk ..

Another sweet desk in the name of music and colors-in-the-dark. This adaptation was uploaded by Mark Ninan.

Livingroom Desk – Round 1 – His & Hers

I guess this desk qualifies into this weeks theme—if the gesture of the hand on the desk is interpreted in a Zappa-ish kind of way. Excellent desk uploaded by Mathew Sorge

Averages

There are 3114 registered users on Deskography. Of whom:

• 964 have uploaded at least one photo.
• 625 have posted at least one comment.
• 520 have liked at least one desk.
• 1875 have neither uploaded a photo nor liked a desk or posted a comment.

These “active” users are pretty active though:

• Average number of likes per user: 1.004
• Average number of comments per user: 0.897 (distributed as 2.119 comments per desk)
• Average number of photos per user: 0.784
• Average number of desks per user: 0.432

We can push these numbers up, right? :)

Ah, and we’re moving to a new office in central Stockholm today! New photos soon. Promise!

Have a great weekend!

I came across this article over at ars technica that takes you on a tour through the Blizzard headquarters.

(image from original article)

Lots of cool art, a secret room, a game-library (with a full-time librarian!), cool gadgets and great facilities.

See the article here.

Quick one this week as I have a beer to catch!

Friday Features

Home Setup

A great looking desk uploaded by Vincent D’Oria! The panelled wall in the background goes really well with the aluminum case of the iMac.

Home Office

A very tidy home office uploaded by Drew Tempelmeyer.

My desk in my room

A busy desk in a busy room. Looks very inviting. Thank you, Sara for sharing!

Most Popular Choice of Name for a Desk

Lots of home offices!

1. Home Office (34 occurrences).
2. My home desk (27 occurrences).
3. Default desk (26 occurrences).
4. My Desk (24 occurrences).
5. My home office desk (18 occurrences).
6. My Home Office (16 occurrences).
7. My home office (14 occurrences).
8. Home desk (14 occurrences).
9. Home office (14 occurrences).
10. My office desk (13 occurrences).

Have a great weekend!

There are computer mods and there are computer mods. I stumbled upon a very cool Steampunk mod that falls into the latter category.

(image from original article)

It’s not something I would like in my office, but it’s still pretty damn cool. Original article on CNET.

You can find other, similar mods on The Steampunk Workshop.

… and all of a sudden it’s Friday again. Didn’t see it coming.

Friday Features

Yummygum Office

The Yummygum (via Vince) office gets the Clean Office Award®. Great attention to detail—they even made the cable-exit-holes in their desks resemble their logo mark!

Home Office

This beautiful photo was uploaded to our little site by Alexandr Schwarz. It’s a good looking desk captured in a great photo.

My Current Desktop

Again with the backlighting.. cannot resist the urge to feature backlit monitors.. Take a peek at Tim E’s desk and tell me that you don’t need an IKEA Dioder Light. Seriously.

Most Popular Guilds on Deskography

A quick overview of the different guilds our members belong to (note that what can be considered a guild varies depending on where you come from):

1. Web Developer (279 profiles).
2. Student (168 profiles).
3. Web Designer (116 profiles).
4. Mr (108 profiles).
5. Designer (62 profiles).
6. Graphic Designer (53 profiles).
7. Ms (53 profiles).
8. Developer (33 profiles).
9. hi (28 profiles).
10. Nurse (27 profiles).

(followed by: Lawyer; Software Developer; Manager; Programmer; Engineer; Creative Director, “SEO”; Photographer; Writer, Art Director; Entrepreneur; Web Designer and Developer; Geek and 1633 other titles)

As always: have a great weekend!

Hi again! Last Friday was a holiday and I left my computer at home to spend a long (long as in spanning multiple days; not boring!) weekend on the country with my wife-to-be.

Enough about that.

Friday Features

The New Home Office

Jason Schuller’s home office features a lot of windows and an amazing view. This is my cup of tea—truly a place where I would be productive.

New Massive Office

Lyle Hebel gives us a glance into the Massive Studios office. Light furniture contrasting dark walls and ceilings along with contemporary in-doors windows and rustic decorations gives a very balanced appearance. Do not miss any of their photos!

2.13.10

A very cozy work space uploaded by Kyle Rose. It’s a little bit cramped, but Kyle’s choice of hardware makes up for that.

Friday Stats—the Most Viewed

Ever wondered which desks get the most views? The most liked? Featured? We’re about to find out!

1. Txuma Campos’ desk has had 11,489 unique visits
2. Stefan Didak’s desk has had 10,589 unique visits
3. Drew Wright’s desk has had 9,143 unique visits
4. Mike Svensson’s desk has had 7,846 unique visits
5. Mitch Haile’s desk has had 7,314 unique visits
6. Maik Fahldieck’s desk has had 6,527 unique visits
7. Mitch Haile has another desk with 5,773 unique visits
8. Mathias R’s desk has had 5,581 unique visits
9. David L’s desk has had 5,519 unique visits
10. Dimo Trifonov’s desk has had 5,301 unique visits

Have a great weekend!

I came across this incredibly cool site a while ago. They interview famous developers and designers about their work environments. You get to read about their hardware and software setup and a few paragraphs on what their dream setup would be like.

It’s definitely worth checking out.

usesthis

Think whitboards are as clumsy as they are expensive? You might want to take a look at WhiteyBoard. It’s a instant whiteboard that you attach to something vertical—no screws required!

Free shipping, but I don’t know if they ship outside of the US.

WhiteyBoard

Friday Features

And Beyond…

Great contrast between the stickers and the sleek lines of the Apple hardware. An outdoors photo gives great sense of freedom. I hope Rob Hopkins works outside at times and that the photo was not just for show!

My home office desk

Tim Davies uploaded a few photos of his desk. It features sleek hardware, great colors and it’s just the right amount of tidy.

My Office 1.1

I’m totally in love with this office uploaded by Christoph Spiegl. The angle of the roof combined with the desk that stretches the entire width of the room gives a very cozy feeling. He does a great job picking up the accent color and lighting up the room (albeit a few of his photos just might have taken a trip or two through PhotoShop).

Friday Stats—the Appreciators

This week we give you the members who are not afraid to show their appreciation for the fine art of desk-photo-uploading.

1. Gustaf Sjöberg (215 likes).
2. Stefan Kohler (92 likes).
3. Deon Lawson (82 likes).
4. Abel Payne (55 likes).
5. Johan Dahlberg (55 likes).
6. brett wessels (45 likes).
7. Patrick Tenold (44 likes).
8. Ivo Didov (40 likes).
9. Tom Barber (36 likes).
10. Landon Haligowski (35 likes).

I beat Stefan Kohler!

Have a great weekend!

Friday Features

Computer Room

Great looking photo studio by Daniel Martins. I especially like the lens-like table shared by both workstations.

My study

Very “cute” desk uploaded by Bunny Golightly. I’m also vert fond of the typewriter. I hope it’s not just for show!

The Desk

An artsy-looking desk submitted by Rob Hopkins. Make sure to browse through all of the photos related to this desk as there are a lot of sweet little details that make the work environment.

Friday Stats—the Uploaders

Last week we gave you the Commented. This week we make room for the Uploaders—the users who have uploaded the largest amount of photos.

1. jose luquin (33 photos).
2. Edgar Godinez (24 photos).
3. Rado Gadoczi (23 photos).
4. Mitch Haile (23 photos).
5. Benjamin Weakley (16 photos).
6. tiger opolly (16 photos).
7. Tom Barber (16 photos).
8. Larry Kubin (16 photos).
9. Erik Carlson (15 photos).
10. Transist Org (14 photos).

Have a great weekend!

The days move faster than I’d like to admit. It feels like last week consisted of nothing more than a few hours. Anyway, here are this friday’s desks and stats!

Friday Features

My custom made desk…

Make sure that you look through all of the photos of Joeri Van den Bosch’s custom made desk. Many smart little compartments to store the things that you just don’t want on your desk.

VARKODE Studio

Fernando Salazar has blessed our site with a photo of his stunning desk. Great backlighting; I’d love to see the night version of this photo.

My desk

Backlit is almost a theme this week: Austin Sersen, self-proclaimed geek, uploaded a very cool photo of his home office. Featured because it’s a totally awesome photo.

Almost featured on a friday

Work Desk.

I just couldn’t not feature Michael McLeod’s desk. If you know your plastic MacBooks and look carefully you’ll see that there is something unusual about his keyboard :)

Friday Stats—the Commented

Last week I divulged the Commenters. This week it’s time for the Commented—the users who have received the largest amount of comments.

1. Michael Hetherington (39 comments).
2. Calvin Fraites (34 comments).
3. Txuma Campos (32 comments).
4. Mitch Haile (31 comments).
5. Mathias R. (28 comments).
6. Andreas Maks (26 comments).
7. Tom Barber (24 comments).
8. Mike Svensson (22 comments).
9. Drew Wright (22 comments).
10. Justin Pennington (22 comments).

I’ve been quiet. Way too quiet. So quiet that it perplexes me that anyone even visits the site. I guess the number of visitors we get each day is a testament to how wonderful you—and the photos you upload—all are.

So what happened? Well, the site was launched and we did nothing to keep you interested. Sure, I visit the several times every day and look at pretty photos, but as the creator I have a responsibility.

I have every intention to change and as a first step towards being a community manager I’m going to feature three desks every Friday and explain why each desk was featured. You can agree or disagree with me. As a bonus I’ll post some—at least to me—interesting facts or stats about the site.

Without further ado, here are this Friday’s featured desks and the motivation behind the decision to feature them.

Friday Features

Textwriting

First out is Alexander S’ desk, Textwriting. I featured this desk because it reeks of activity. I love the contrast between the (right amount of) mess, the sleek lines of the aluminum MacBook and the orange snack. It just speaks to me.

Home Office

Chris Doss has blessed us with this amazing photo of his home office. It looks like such an inviting place to work—clean without being boring. Absolutely love the stone wall!

The Home Workspace

Ok, I’m going to cheat a little here. I didn’t feature John Manoogian III‘s desk today. Had I known a few days ago that I’d be writing this post I wouldn’t have featured it back when I did. Anyway, modern workplace meets Saw makes for a featured desk.

Friday Stats—the Commenters

This week I give you the commenters—the members who have posted the largest amount of comments since the start (Oct 2008).

1. Stefan Kohler (118 comments).
2. Gustaf Sjöberg (78 comments).
3. Deon Lawson (71 comments).
4. Alex Schwartz (49 comments).
5. Tom Barber (47 comments).
6. Michael Hetherington (43 comments).
7. Harry Richmond (43 comments).
8. Raymond Roman (41 comments).
9. Xander N/A (40 comments).
10. Ryan M (35 comments).

I’m embarrassed (but not surprised) that the illustrious Mr Kohler is in the lead. Xander has a weird last name.

I hope you enjoyed this Friday’s post. There are more new features and events coming.

We’ve had an unusual amount of “spam” on the site lately. People have been creating accounts and uploading photos of stuff that’s not remotely related to work environments.

Now, we haven’t been very clear on what the rules for using the site are. I will make time to write some guidelines for uploading photos, making comments and other actions. Until that day I will delete any photo that does not match my subjective view of what is appropriate. I will also delete comments that I deem offensive or otherwise inappropriate.

I hope this is ok with the community. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you feel that I’ve deleted something I shouldn’t have.

Thank you guys for making me aware of these issues.

A pretty sweet six-monitor Linux setup:

http://blog.jasonmorton.com/?p=24

We had a few hours of downtime a few days ago. Sorry about that! We’ll do better—promise!

We apologize for the downtime. A new site was deployed on the server and I forgot to make proper adjustments to Deskography.

Thank you guys for notifying me—a better monitoring tool than anyone could ask for.

Quick update: We’ve re-enabled comments on blog/news entries again.

We’ve added e-mail notifications to most everything on the site: comments on photos; comments on organizations; when people apply to join organizations; when your application to join is approved and more.

The notifications were added to make your experience more enjoyable. We will, however, be adding a preference pane where you can toggle them off if they’re not your cup of tea (do send us an e-mail if it’s urgent though).

We’ve made a few minor tweaks to the site today.

Among the updates you’ll find:
* That you’re able to browse all comments from the frontpage.
* Featured organizations visible on the frontpage (yeah, we featured ourselves .. so sly).

We’ve also started sending out emails to suitable candidates for “featured profiles”. Let us know if there’s anyone in particular you want us to email and ask for a photo—we’re getting pretty good at cold-emailing.

Also, we made a pretty big change to the foundation of the site, there might be hiccups (that we’ll be swift to fix).

We’ve spent the last two days realigning organizations. We loved seeing all your organizations, and the concept of grouping people under an umbrella—adding perspective to work-environments and stuff—is great. But it was rather limited. We adjusted the focus a little: the focus on the photos of members’ desks was decreased and we introduced the ability to upload arbitrary photos. We hope you’ll like that.

We fixed a few bugs and added comments to organizations and their photos while we were at it.

Loads of other stuff in the pipeline. Toss us an email or write a comment if there’s anything in particular you’re looking forward to.

As always—let us know if anything works!

You can now search for desks and people. Let me know if anything works as expected! :)

Hi! I’ve added a simple RSS feed that allows you to track the latest desks. A lot of small glitches were fixed as well.

Thank you all for the most excellent feedback! More updates incoming.

I bet you’ve spent quite some time staring at that grayed-out link in the navigation labeled “Organizations”. Every time you’ve visited the site, just staring at it, waiting for something to happen. I know we have.

Well, suddenly last night, out of nowhere, it came: the link is now the same shade of gray as it’s siblings and something actually happens when you click on it!

The concept is pretty straight forward—register your organization (may it be to create a window to your company, to show your affiliation with a group of like-minded people or any other reason you can come up with) and wait for your members to apply to join.

As usual we’ve done as little as possible. Register your organizations and let us know what direction you want it to take. We’re off to find cool people and to plan widgets, improved browsing and a few tweaks.

Things have been moving rather slowly around here. The updates have been few and far between. There has been even less of an effort to grab the attention of people whose desks you want to see.

The reason behind this is that I have caught a lung-tissue disease that has effectively put me at about 15 % of my regular work capacity. It hurts as Deskography is a project that has been brewing in our minds for well over 5 years (I did a smaller WordPress based solution around 2003). It hurts not giving the site the love it needs. Not giving the steadfast users the site they deserve.

I am, however, slowly getting stronger. Me and Johan (who’s been working double shifts) have slowly been ticking things off of our must-do-list. So it seems like we finally have some time to update the site. We won’t be spitting out lines of code by the hundreds every day, but we are leaving this status quo for sure.

I sincerely hope that you can forgive us for neglecting the site (and therefor you) for such a long time.

First of all: hi there! We’re happily amazed that so many of you have shared all these cool photos of your workplaces. It’s very inspiring and we have so many great ideas growing for our new office.

Anyway, we’ve been updating the site a little the past few days:

• We’ve added this here little news-system/blog where we will post updates of the site and other fun stuff. Keep an eye on that little “Latest News” section on the front page if you wish to stay up-to-date with what’s happening at our desks.
• You can now add multiple websites to your profile. Just go to “Your Desks”, click on “Edit Profile” and add up to six websites that you want people to see when they’re viewing your desks. Some common websites (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger etc) will have a little icon next to them. If you add a site you’re a member of that doesn’t have an icon, let us know and we might create one.
• We’ve received tons of emails from people who wanted some kind of voting system for desks. You have one now—you’ll find it to the right of the photo when looking at a desk. You can now also browse desks by the number of likes they’ve received under “Desks”.

Among lots of smaller updates and bug-fixes. Let us know if stuff doesn’t work.