Jack Bellis's Page

I work in the computer field and bought two domain names back in about '96---oh, my gosh---related to swapping: officeswap.com and puzzleswap.com, motivated only with the thought that both are great things to take advantage of the web for swapping.

I actually envisioned PuzzleSwap to be for physical puzzles like Rubiks' Cube, metal Tavern Puzzles, and so on. But 'organic growth' has shown that it's got a following for jigsaw puzzles. I pay $20 per year for Ning's recently-enforced minimum payment plan. In exchange for being so cheap, I have to approve membership requests manually, so it can take a day or so when I check email.

OfficeSwap was hoped to be "JobSwap" but someone already bought that. The idea is to swap jobs with someone who lives where you work and works where you live... so you both travel less. Currently at Zoho.com but really needs custom coding so you can just enter your location and job. The folks who have jobswap.com probably never built the functionality they envisioned, let the URL lapse, and it got overtaken by the scumware folks.

I have a few brick-and-mortar things I've created over the years, including a top book on repetitive strain injury, and some sculptures (Pete Rose and a chess set). I use all of the curious content I create on the web to do a little advertising for those items. If PuzzleSwap gets much larger I might some consider putting Google ads on on it, but I'm too busy or lazy for that right now.

That's the story. Have fun!