Kindle
Exactly two years ago today, I emailed Kevin Sites to ask if he'd ever considered doing a blog. My friend John Parres had been forwarding me copies of Kevin's incredible first-person accounts of life as a front line war reporter for CNN, which he'd been sending to friends and family. They were evocative and eloquent, they told stories none of us were hearing through conventional news sources, and they belonged on a blog where more people could read them. A blogosphere barn-raising began -- geek pals including John Parres, David Ulevitch of everydns.net (who's been generously hosting the blog for *free* since day one), Noah Glass of Audblog, Evan Williams (then of Blogger), David Weekly of CCCP, and others joined forces to build the blog, which was up in a few short days. Kevin Sites maintained his new online journal through exceedingly difficult conditions and personal challenges; he chronicled what he saw and experienced at kevinsites.net, and he changed how we saw the war -- and how we viewed news about the war. Our respect for the man and his work has only grown since then, so it gave us all great pleasure to see Kevin win Wired Magazine's award for Blogger of The Year at the Rave Awards earlier this week. Congratulations, Kevin. A rough road, and a well deserved honor. Link to SF Chronicle story, Link to AP. A very special thanks also to Anil Dash, who served an invaluable role on Kevin's blog project during a particularly tough time.