A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the early years of Carbonmade on my blog. It’s an interesting read if you want to know more about our company. It’s the history of Carbonmade from its start in early 2006 up to our reaching 100,000 registered users in March 2009 and how we got there. Fun tidbits include: we began as a design firm, Carbonmade was built for Dave to manage his portfolio, and lots more.

Microsoft featured Carbonmade last week in a case study alongside Dell, Hardrock Café, and Elite Models. Hooray! It's a neat read for anyone who wants to know a little more about our history. For instance, did you know that Carbonmade was originally created as a simple tool for Dave to update his online portfolio? Another interesting tidbit is that before Carbonmade, we were a small web consulting company doing web development work for Scribd, MerchNOW, Epitaph Records, and others. Here's a snippet:

“Carbonmade provides creative people with the ability to showcase and manage their work. It uses a modern, lightweight user interface and works across all browsers. Carbonmade was built as a side project by Jason Nelson and Dave Gorum. The idea came about when Dave, frustrated by manually updating his portfolio, proposed building a simple tool to handle the drudgery. The app was so handy that friends and colleagues began asking to use it. Answering their call, Jason and Dave built the app into a standalone product, and in a year’s time Carbonmade was a thriving business.”

We've received a handful of short reviews in September and I wanted to highlight two of them. First, AOL's DownloadSquad called us "stupid easy," which is a very to-the-point way of describing Carbonmade's simplicity, but flattering nonetheless! Second, French website arnaud-k wrote (in French): "L'aspect minimaliste des sites générés permettent de bien mettre en avant les oeuvres présentées dans les portfolios" which roughly translates to "The minimalist sites generated help highlight the works presented in the portfolio." This is exactly what we're aiming for: to be stupid easy to use and to highlight your work and keep things clutter free. We hope you agree.

Keane Angle –- Carbonmade user and creator of Appify -– put together a walkthrough of Carbonmade on Monday. Not only is the walkthrough well presented, but his story of Carbonmade coming to the rescue on a last minute job interview of his in New York is an exciting read. Little did Keane know that the lil' ol' web app he had recommended to his girlfriend a few months earlier would help him out of a jam. We appreciate Keane's score of 9.5 out 10, but are even happier that we were able to help land him a job.

Mario of BMTutorials had a handfull of nice things to say about Carbonmade. Our favorite bit was this:

"Don't have time to design a portoflio but you have a job interview in a few hours?! Well don't fear Carbonmade is here."

This quite nearly the main reason we began building Carbonmade. A quick portfolio, no muss, no fuss, and absolutely pain-free. You can check out the rest of the write-up here.

Thanks Mario!

Brian Benzinger over at Solution Watch put Carbonmade through its paces and was pleased with what he found. Thanks for noticing Brian!