Before you read any further, click here and send an email. Nothing too personal, just a quick hello or a statement you'd like to share with a lot of people, nothing you wouldn't want public. Tell people to read Smug at Smug.com if you can't think of anything to say.

Great. Now, click here.

Neat, huh?

Ah, you didn't send an email and you want to know what you're missing? Well, as tempting as it is not to tell you, Metababy is the brainchild of Greg Knauss, a web developer and writer in the country of California, who likes to noodle. He's set up a collaborative web site where all it takes to publish is sending an email to metababy@metababy.com and within moments your mail is live and kicking on the web. If you send html files, those get published as such, but plain text works just as well, and shows up as preformatted text.

So, why didn't I want to tell you what you were doing? Well, in my ideal fantasy world, where nothing is anything like life as we know it (with the noted exception of Liz Phair's first record which is exactly the same) the site would expand through the medium that created it. Basically, to drop the art speak for a second, that people would use email to tell people to email metababy@metababy.com to publish their letters that way. Complete recursion. The internet has been really dull lately though, so I've been squirming around with glee in my seat with this one and I can't keep my mouth shut.

If you haven't sent mail to my new best friend metababy yet, give it a shot, and if you don't like what's up there when you go, send something better. No special skills required, no password, no HTML is necessary and like all web sites, Metababy is clothing optional. A breath of fresh air on the web, Metababy is the party game everyone can play, and each page is a snapshot of every guest. Immortalize yourself now.

leslie@smug.com

back to the junk drawer