For nearly five years now, I have run macosxhints.com as a hobby and love of the heart. But as the site has grown, so too have the demands on my time -- between daily updates, email correspondence with readers, browsing the forums, book projects, magazine articles, and assorted speaking engagements, it has become very difficult to fit everything into the "free" time between my day job and my family life (my typical day starts at 4:30am and ends at 10:30pm). Though I didn't start the site with any thoughts of it becoming a full-time job, it was quickly becoming just that. I could sense the dreaded burnout approaching, and the life-balance issue was not going to automatically get any better.
As I love my work on the site and other Mac-related ventures, I had to find a way to avoid the burnout and bring some semblance of balance back to my schedule. To me, the obvious solution was to quit my day job. The question was how to do that. I could try to make a living off the ad revenue on the site, but I'm really not much of an entrepreneur -- I didn't want to have to worry about running macosxhints.com as a business. So instead, I sought out a partner who could take over the business side of the site while I continued to do what I love doing.
As some of you may know, in addition to maintaining the site, I'm also a Contributing Editor for Macworld magazine. I've been writing regularly for them for quite a while now -- my first article appeared in the April, 2002 issue, and I've had a monthly column since November of 2003. During this time, I've come to know the staff at Macworld (technically, it's Mac Publishing, LLC) quite well, and they're a great group of people who believe in the Mac and their role in providing useful information to Mac users. A few months ago, I approached Rick LePage, Mac Publishing's President, with a proposal that I felt benefited both parties greatly. After some discussion to work out the details, we reached an agreement leading to this announcement:
Effective today, I have taken a full-time position with Macworld as a Senior Editor. As part of this relationship, Mac Publishing, LLC, is the new owner of the macosxhints.com domain and copyright. While some of you may be thinking "Sigh, there goes another great resource down the tubes," I'm convinced that's not the case here -- this new arrangement will benefit, not hurt, the macosxhints.com community. "How so?," you're probably thinking. To answer that question, and many others, I have written a detailed Q&A page. I'll save the long explanations for that page, but here's the main reason this new arrangement won't mean the end of a great resource:
- My involvement with macosxhints.com will increase, not decrease: This is not one of those situations where a site founder's role diminishes, or they vanish entirely, after the site joins a larger organization. My main job with Macworld is to keep doing what I've been doing: test hints, post hints, work on site upgrades, implement new site features, and write articles and columns for the magazine. The difference is that I now get to do all of this five days a week, instead of jamming it all into two days plus spare time here and there. For the first time in nearly five years, I have only one job, and I'm thrilled that I'll be able to focus 100% of my attention on hints and the Mac community.
To prove my point that things will continue here as usual, the daily mish mash of new hints will be coming to you today at the usual time -- around 7:30am Pacific.
Update: First, there is a batch of 11 hints online now, and I'll be working on some more later this morning (wow, it's great to be able to say that!). Second, Macworld's Editorial Director Jason Snell, has written a nicely detailed explanation of what this means to me, to Macworld, and most importantly, to the Mac OS X Hints community...
-rob.

