Go With The 'Flow: The Story Of Comoflow
Dateline: 02/18/98 - Weekly feature from your Guide to Personal Web Pages.
You could call it the anti-award award. For just over a year, a blue banner with the word "comoflow" has been appearing on many of the best personal sites.
What is it? At a glance, it appears to be an award of some kind - a badge of recognition. Click on the banner and you arrive at www.comoflow.com, a site boasting a directory deep with interesting links to a cross-section of the best personal homepages (more than 500 in all).
Many of the site descriptions are oblique, haiku-like even (Example: "Cover your ears and then move your hands slowly" for the diary The Mighty Kymm). They charm, while also suggesting they don't take themselves too seriously. An idiosyncratic sensibility is clearly at work.
The "About" page on the comoflow site is cryptic. Comoflow's stated goal is to provide a "launchpad/guide to the most worthy real content on the Web" - but who is behind it? No names are provided.
Many of the homepagers who proudly display the comoflow graphic (while eschewing the award badges of other services and link collections, Mining Company included) don't know. The air of mystery seemingly contributes to the attraction. "I haven't a clue as to who como is, and I like it that way," asserts Steve Brownlee (bwitch.com), who recently found herself added to the comoflow ranks (her site description: "The pre wake-up call sliding show"). The non-commercial nature of comoflow also adds to its appeal.
The author revealed
I've known who is behind comoflow for some time - it is one person who himself maintains an interesting homepage. He recently agreed to speak for the first time about why he created comoflow and what he hopes to achieve.Meet Julian Palmer.
Question: Tell me about the genesis of comoflow - including the name.
Palmer: I thought of the idea for comoflow in late '96, when I realised that there was all this good stuff on the Web that nobody really knew how to get to. There was no central place I could start from in which to surf the Web, no "center" as it were...
It took me about three months of Web surfing virtually every day to find the sites. I used special techniques to find out of the way sites or sites in countries other than America. (I am Australian and live in Australia by the way.) Some of the sites I found were known only to the author and a few of the author's friends. And then the people that mattered found those sites through comoflow...
The name means what it means: I think como means "what" in Spanish, and something similar in Italian.
I made the design deliberately low key and minimalist. This minimalism is communicating that the point of comoflow is not comoflow, but the sites themselves. The actual text links themselves look a little chunky these days, but are still somehow endearing.
Tell me more about the site descriptions.
The description is meant to get to the heart of the site in whatever words it takes, so it's like a sort of poetry... a certain stylistic voice. People don't need 500 word reviews to tell them whether a site is good or bad. They just want to go to where they are going. All the sites included in comoflow are "good," or as como says, "worthy." Como doesn't really use adjectives like "brilliant" "outstanding" or "great." It's a sort of Aen thing of going beyond like and dislike and just accepting things the way they are, and making an assessment of their essential qualities. This is what haiku poetry tries to do I guess.
"Como" is a sort of an arbitrary entity who operates comoflow, it doesn't really have much to do with the public persona of "Julian Palmer." Como is a name for the energy or will that wishes this to be done and I am the one who operates como, like a puppet. It is all actually quite cosmic...
Comoflow operates on many different levels... it is supposed to have an effect, make a difference to your psyche and the way you understand the Web, communication, expression...
The descriptions are meant to be a little provocative, you have to think a bit to understand them. It's meant to extend your mind about the way you think about websites, and in a wider sense, communication and language itself.
Another aspect is that it places a worth and value to personal websites of many different kinds. So I sometimes read in sites when looking for links to comoflow something like this, "I was included in this website today. It's something like an award. I never thought I'd get an award." It gives sites a value that is not usually given out by the "cool" companies.
And it allows people who are building web ites to find their peers as it were. And people of like mind to find each other generally. So it's using the Web in its truest sense, a Web of connectedness and communication.
Has anyone ever objected to the way you have described his or her site?
A few people question the descriptions and I just send them back more haiku! Some of the descriptions do not sit particularly well with people, but I think there is a certain truth in them which people recognise. Some of the descriptions are written deliberately to provoke the site's builder about what he or she is doing.
Have you ever considered that comoflow might have commercial possibilities?
I think it's nice to have something of this nature that doesn't try to promote or sell anything to you, even itself.
I always wanted comoflow to be clean and free of any commercial imperatives or restrictions, and there was no way I was going to do that within the current models of Internet commerce. And its purpose wasn't to provide me with income. It is an act of giving. I see it like a good karma wheel spinning in all directions.
Most people don't understand that when you give to the world, the world will give back to you, in so many different ways... in ways that are incomprehensible.
Comoflow's air of mystery seems intrinsic to its appeal.
I think it has made it more intriguing for people. [Mostly it inspires them] to just accept it for what it is. I'm quite amused when I get an email saying "and thanks to all the folks at comoflow"!
Sum up what you look for in a site.
I look for people/organisations/groups who are presenting a clear expression of what they are saying, and if the angle is unique/provocative/interesting/fresh, I use the site. I "reject" most sites because they cover the same ground that has been covered before, and even though it may be implemented really well, there is no spark. So I basically look for spark.
What is the future for comoflow?
Comoflow has been a tremendous success on many levels. It has allowed many things to happen that perhaps would not have happened otherwise. And I think it has influenced people in many, many different ways.
I will keep updating comoflow for the time being, though perhaps it would be better if someone else could maintain the site sometime in the foreseeable future.
