Personal Websites - are they relevant anymore?

Back in the late 90s, all the cool kids had their own [firstname][lastname].com claimed. You hosted your all-important blog up there (remember blogging?), hosted pictures in photo albums up there, maybe even a "what I'm listening to right now" widget. I had a daily RSS blog roll, to be sure I saw the updates from all my cool kid friends' websites. Nowadays, all of that is done with twitter, facebook, flickr and your favorite online radio streaming site.

Which begs the question: What's the point in owning [yourname].com anymore? I noticed my buddy Jeremy Norberg has a whole lot of nothing on his site. On the other hand, Jeff Croft does occassionally blog from his personal site, and keeps portfolio type items updated for his speaking engagements, etc.

In any case, I renewed jimengland.com for another five years, so that realtor that had jimengland.net (who probably wanted jimengland.com) can suck it. It looks like he's out of business these days anyhow (his page is no longer found.) And just for giggles, here are a few of the many redesigns and logos over the years for my useless personal website. Enjoy the latest design! Weeee!

2003 Design

Another 2003 Design

2005 - the logo scrolled in using Flash

Retro logo with the deep-shit subtitle

The never-implemented "brown redesign"