[thesethings]

I've been following @yongfook for about a year. I don't think there's any formal connection between him and 37 Signals, though he seems to be an enthusiastic, open student of business/design/UX, frequently linking to and sharing thoughts about things he finds interesting, including 37 Signals stuff (and Ogilvy and art and food...).

I agree that the shopping experience is extremely close to that of 37 signals, but given that the thing he's selling (URL shortener + analytics + campaign/goal monitor) is unrelated to any current 37 Signals products, it doesn't feel "too close" or disingenuous to me.

Also, he's the primary developer of the open source activity stream/ blogging tool Sweetcron, so there's another reason I give him the benefit of the doubt. He seems to have a healthy respect for the creative process.

[pstinnett]

Those reasons are exactly why I wanted to inquire about him being connected with 37s as opposed to "calling him out" for being a "copy-cat". I've seen his work on Sweetcron (which is really cool) and Peashoot looks like it would be very useful as well.

[thesethings]

Yeah, I didn't think you were calling him out or being confrontational. It was fair question to ask.