Those of you who've been reading for a little while are familiar with Project Cameo. I started it in October of 1998 and, after an 18 month hiatus, I began phase II, sending out 20 more cameras, just about three weeks ago.

A couple weeks ago a reader, Ian, with his own weblog, traded a few emails with me about the Cameo project, talking about overcoming international postage problems and the like, and then he writes me back, telling me he's adapting the project for his own use, and he'll be sending out a bunch of cameras in Australia and all over the world. He then writes it up on his site.

On one hand, I feel a sense of ownership over the idea, and I'm defensive that someone else is taking my idea. I thought of it, I worked on it, it's just coming together and someone sees it and wants to do one just like it because it's cool.

Of course, on the other hand, this is exactly how the web works, and if it didn't, we wouldn't have weblogs and so many cool things, many of which have fostered their own communities and bettered the web immensely. In that light, I'm just a greedy pig.

Then of course there's a third site, Photo Trust, which just started up a few days ago. I have no idea if this person heard about mine directly, via word of mouth, or is just a case of great minds.

I'm not writing here to lambast anyone or to squash any creativity. I'm writing this entry, as the title says, to ask for you to lend me your perspective. I wrote a letter to both folks, quasi-expressing my feelings, and mentioned hopes of banding together, keeping the projects distinctly seperate, but recognising their unity as a new kind of web project, and thus could help gain attention to our efforts.

I'm still working on why I'm so stressed about this, but I really would love to hear your thoughts. Send your comments to me at hello@fury.com and I'll summarize the opinions here, for better or worse.

Thanks for helping out.

-Kevin