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yewknee
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An internet waystation.

it me - michael eades

👋 Hi, I'm Michael Eades; a long time Internet dweller, design dabbler, dangerously amateur developer, online social experimenter and frequent curator.

Currently working as VP of Product at Smarter Apps. I also keep the lights on at a boutique record label called yk records, a podcast network called We Own This Town and a t-shirt shop called Nashville Galaxy. Previously, I built things for Vimeo OTT, VHX, KNI and Spongebath Records.

This site is an archive of ephemera I find entertaining; tweets, videos, random links, galleries of images.

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find me elsewhere

 

contact

Reach out via threads or good ole email if you have anything to discuss. I do my best to reply in a timely manner.

for the record: "yewknee" is a nonsensical word with no literal meaning but a unsurprisingly nerdy etymology. It is pronounced, "yoo • knee."

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ongoing projects

yk Records →
started in 2009 as a conduit for music that friends had no plans on releasing. now it's a full fledged boutique label focused on releasing quality music from a variety of styles. you know, like a label does. Here's a sampler on Soundcloud and a different one on Spotify. Options.

We Own This Town →
Originally a Nashville area music blog, this site has grown into a full blown podcast network as of 2018. It's an attempt to bring together creative folks about a variety of interesting topics.

I host this show all about Nashville local music outside the expectations of the city. I'm biased but all the shows are good.

Nashville Galaxy →
An online t-shirt shop featuring beloved and defunct Nashville area businesses. Very niche audience on this one but I tend to think niche is good.

some noteworthy other things

Chris Gaines: The Podcast →
published along with co-host Ashley Spurgeon; a limited series podcast that takes an absurdly researched deep dive into the time that Garth Brooks took on a fictional personality named Chris Gaines.

Garth Brooks Chris Gaines Countdown →
to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the time Garth Brooks took on the fictional personality Chris Gaines and appeared on Saturday Night Live in character, I GIF'ed the entire episode. It's a lot of GIFs; please use them.

Whiskerino →
a social network built around communal beard growing for four months. yes, it was as weird as it sounds but equally fascinating and enjoyable.

Moustache May →
an offshoot of the beard growing contest mentioned above. equal amounts of oddball fun but only a month long.

Summer Mix Series →
before all music was streaming everywhere, Internet music fans would swap zip files of music. it was truly a strange and wonderful time.

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Meet Act 2 Of Arc Browser

If you haven't been keeping up with the latest announcements from The Browser Company and what they're doing with their browser, Arc, I suggest you start tuning in. They are doing their damndest to rethink the paradigm of browsers, search engines, webpages and how you interact with them. It's hard to watch these announcement / explainer videos and not be excited for what they're angling at.

While I am certainly excited by the direction they're headed in, it does make me think about the future of the web in general. I'm not sure I'm able to articulate it yet but we're starting to see a whole lot new experiences that summarize the web, pulling from disparate sources and telling you the highlights of a certain topic or site. If every tool we use simply summarizes information, why would anyone publish anything? Visitors aren't even being taken to the source of the information, they're just being shown summaries.

This is not an indictment of The Browser Company or Arc; everyone is doing this. Google is summarizing, Apple is summarizing, et al. And the web has become littered with ads, popovers and modals that make it very unfriendly. It's a mess and users would benefit from summaries as an experience but it devalues publishing. Not sure what the answer is but some very interesting questions to pose at this time.
Fri. February 2nd, 2024, 8:55am

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