Ah yes, the trilogy is complete: my third launch in Launch Madness concludes the flurry (for the moment) of WordPress sites I've set up for various folks. This one is promoting AlterNet's new book, Water Consciousness: How We All Have to Change to Protect Our Most Critical Resource. Edited by AlterNet's own supremely awesome Tara Lohan, it's an incredible set of articles, analysis, ideas… you name it, it's here. Some of the artwork's just stunning, too, and working with such a great piece makes it easy for designers like yours truly to implement a complementary website. Hurray!

I did mention that it's launch madness 'round these parts, yes? Over the weekend, I launched Gotham Acme, a personal music blog for a Democratic consultant. It's reeeeeally pretty and lovely, and I'm quite proud of it. Record turnaround on this one, too — just under two weeks from concept to launch.

It's Launch Madness here at DZ HQ, and this particular project is an issue near and dear to my heart. I can't really say it better than the organizers, so, from http://thisiswhatwomenwant.com:

Tired of being talked about this election season? Done with being represented by skewed polls and stereotypes?

This is your chance to cut through the spin and tell the media, the candidates and the world exactly what you want this election season, both right here online and live in cities across the country this Fall.

Oh. Freakin'. Yeah. There were a lot of interesting technical challenges for the project: how to get Wordpress to take anonymous submissions, how to make the site as managable and geek-free by the end users as possible, and so much more. Can't wait to rip this election season up!

That's right, y'all, I am becoming the webgrrl to the stars. I had the honor to work with Thomas Frank and his publisher, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt USA, on the redesign of his site, and I'm happy to say that it went live this evening. Have a gander at http://tcfrank.com/.

Hey y'all! I'm here at Personal Democracy Forum I've got a Nokia N95 (thanks, Micah!) and I'm gonna be running around all day talking to folks for GRITtv. Watch live!

(If I'm not on live, then it'll just show a white screen… look at older clips here)

Lots of things have been happening and hence the absence of actual updates here, haha. Sorry about that. Where to begin?

• Over at Hightower Lowdown, we've launched a new weekly video series featuring America's #1 Populist. What more could you ask for? 2 minutes of Jim talking to you every single week! You can also watch it on YouTube, or subscribe to the show in iTunes.
• And for AlterNet.org, we relaunched the front page to be snazzier and brighter. Design was done by Design About Town, engineering by the ever-smarty Shawn and project management and OCD tweaking by me. Whee!
• I redesigned and launched the website for best-selling author Amy Bloom, who has been an absolute riot to work with. I haven't read her newest, but Come To Me was highly recommended to me by Bitch Magazine co-founder and feminista-extraordinare, Lisa Jervis. And it rocked.
• Lots of photosets from the last couple months.
• Um, I upgraded to Leopard last night, and so far so good. One thing that I called tech support about because I couldn't find an answer anywhere else: yes, Time Machine will wipe your external drive the first time you use it, but then you can continue putting other things on it after. It doesn't have to be a dedicated Time Machine drive, whew.

That's pretty much it. Holidays are a-comin' and I'll be up in Bingotown for a while, hanging out with the fam, and then back in NYC for New Year's. Hope all's well in the land of not-my-apartment!

Remember the funniest press release of all time? The final performance was Thursday night, and I've got a bunch of pictures and videos from it… watch as John and Dogbowl discuss Nancy Pelosi, perform some hits, talk about the other musician John Hall (who just got elected to Congress), as well as read from his forthcoming book, "Daily Negations." (Watch the videos here, after the jump.)

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