I came across two great remembrance posts this afternoon, from Om and from Kottke, about the loss of their friend Dean Allen.

I never met him but I was always a fan of his work, from textism to Textpattern to favrd. When he first announced TextDrive back in 2004, I put up the $200 (a lot for that time in life) and signed up to support him and get a lifetime account out of it. We talk a lot these days about crowdfunding and bootstrapping your work via your first thousand true fans – TextDrive was the first time I’d ever encountered that concept on the web. It was a refreshing and beautiful thing.

I’m always amazed that one person can leave so much behind on the internet – and to keep trying new things, just for the sake of trying things, and to move the web forward because that’s the only way it ever does.

It seems a thousand others thought so today as well.