stumbling onto gather.com and building boats

Feeling a wee tad nostalgic this morning so looking up some old friends on the internet. An idle pastime, a huge time-waster, procrastination assist. But what I like about it are the surprises available from the ramble - like a walk in the woods. Charting familiar terrain you can stumble on new paths.

Like this morning I bumped into gather.com courtesy of the author, singer, NYT science writer, Andy Revkin (who I swear, packs more into a day than anyone else I've ever met...). Never having heard of gather.com before, I found a Boston.com article that describes it as,

A new Boston website aims to bring order to the tens of millions of weblogs proliferating online and provide one-stop shopping for overwhelmed Internet surfers. In the process, it could put some cash in the pockets of Internet scribes pecking away in obscurity.

The site, Gather.com, positions itself as a kind of eBay for online writers and their readers -- a gathering spot for musings and discussions on everything from wine and computers to fitness and spirituality. And, with a business model that could shake up the writing profession, executives from Gather Inc. are recruiting bloggers by offering them a share of the company's advertising revenue.

Or from Businessweek.com:

Gather.com: Social Networking Grows Up

The year-old site is trying to create an online space for the NPR crowd. But do they have time—amid kids and careers—to hang out online?

But then I also found this, from the Hudson Fisheries Trust, which is an amazing project!!! Building Bridges, Building Boats was just getting started as we left the Cold Spring/Garrison area. Otherwise I would have signed my kids up in a minute. What a fantastic learning opportunity!