Year-end Update

I know, I haven't posted all week. Sorry about that. It's been crazy around here, trying to close up as many deals as possible before the end of the year, planning a road trip and, to top it off, I feel a bit of a cold coming on.

Planning the road trip has been far from the least exciting part of the week. I'll be taking an Acela Express train from NY Penn Station to Union Station in Washington D.C. Family from West Virgina will be there to pick me up. Do a little tour of the city, have lunch and then head west. Our first stop is Nashville, TN. Along the way, from D.C. to Nashville, we'll have the pleasure of the smoky mountains. After Nashville, it's Austin for several days.

We're staying at the Driskill Hotel in Austin which, frankly, looks beautiful (and has room rates to match). They say that the Driskill is the most haunted hotel in Texas. I'll be looking for the little boy with the bouncing red ball on the grand staircase.

We'll spend Christmas day in Austin and a few days after Christmas before heading back and hitting up Memphis. We didn't really mean it to, but this has turned somewhat into a tour of America's great music cities. Too bad we won't have time for New Orleans.

Anyway, I'll try to post up pictures along the way, but if I don't (this is my vacation, after all), I'll hit you all up in the New Year.

New on The Site: Voki and AdBrite

Some new things on the site... in the sidebar, under the Content module up top, I've added a Voki. It's a little creepy and I'm not sure exactly what it's for, but I had fun making it. He sort of looks like me, but not really. Click play to hear a little recorded welcome I did last night. I stumbled on the word "subscribe," considered re-recording and decided that it gives the thing at least a little humanity. So I can't speak straight - I'll survive.

I also added an AdBrite skyscraper unit in the sidebar, down the page a little ways. I replaced an AdSense unit. I don't ever intend to make money off this site, but I am interested in advertising technologies and the differences between each provider. It's mostly my way to evaluating and exploring the options.

Let me know what you guys think.

Final Thoughts on Johnny27

I first wrote about Johnny27 a few days ago. My beta account has come to an end and I'd like to offer up my final thoughts.

First, I'll rehash that I think it's a great idea and a good service. I found it to be entertaining and, sometimes, helpful. If you're on the road and have a question that requires more than a simple query in Google, it's worth it.

At $2 a pop, though, I question how much use the service will actually get. It's hard for me to justify, in a world full of free information, paying for answers to my questions. It's just not something I'm used to. I would pay $10 or $15 per month, however, for unlimited use.

The fact is, at $2 per question, I probably won't use Johnny27 often or at all. And when I don't often use a service I tend to forget about it all together. At $10 per month they may not be making $2 per question off me (it would probably pan out to about $1), but in my book $10 is better than $0. Of course, I don't know what their operating costs look like.

There were a few times when I was given a URL. For example, I asked if the Blu-Ray DVD player in the PS3 was comparable in quality to a stand-alone Blu-Ray player. They said yes and to check out www.product4me.com to do other product comparisons. Cool site. I hope Johnny27 got paid for that endorsement. If they didn't, they're missing an opportunity.

An unbiased answer should always come first, but what's wrong with some paid endorsement? Q: "Where can I find the best creme brule in the city?" A: "Le Cirque made the creme brule famous, try that. Check out our sponsor, MenuPages.com, for other good eats."

Movable Type Problems

Lots of problems installing Movable Type (over the last two days!). Anyway, I've given up for now. Maybe it's something I need to tackle as a weekend project. Eh, whatever. I'm back for now. Sorry for the downtime. It was pointless.

Changes to This Blog

Just a heads up - the blog will be up and down today as I make some changes. I'm thinking about switching over to Movable Type and will be experimenting with that. Stay tuned.

"Hot or Not" For Websites

Interesting concept... CommandShift3 has launched featuring "Hot or Not"-like voting for web site designs. It pairs two web site screenshots and they go head-to-head to determine the winner. You vote for the one you like best.

Fatal flaw: Hot or Not succeded because if you voted someone hot and they also voted you hot, you could then pay Hot or Not to get you in touch with that person. In all fairness, I don't think that CommandShift3 is meant to be a viable business, but rather a fun thing that came from a Jelly co-working session.

Use Last.fm With The iPhone

Finally! I've figured out how to use Last.fm in conjunction with the iPhone. MobileScrobbler.

I wrote back in September about how disappointed I was that the Last.fm application didn't pick up songs played on my iPhone, like it does for the iPod. Well now, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, crank up Installer and download MobileScrobbler. Just sign into your Last.fm account, turn on Edge scrobbling and you're all set up.

High-give to you, MobileScrobbler!

Johnny27 Answers All of My Questions

I volunteered to beta test a new text message-based concept called Johnny27 late last week. I've been using it all weekend and I have to say, I'm hooked. Basically you text a question to 272727, a real person researches your question, they text you an answer back and $1.99 is tacked onto your cell phone bill.

I've got a 10 day free trial as a beta tester, so I'm able to avoid the $2/question for the time being. The idea behind the beta is to not only load test the service, but also try to ask compelling questions that'll stump their employees. Do you have any questions you'd like to me try out on them?

I found the service to be great for drunken debates at the bar, but where I really found value was when I tried to buy my girlfriend a specific gift on Amazon, found out it wouldn't ship until Jan and found myself up a creek with no gift. No worries, I asked Johnny27 where I could find said item in stock and they pulled through!

A few notes / complaints: I wish questions were answered a little more quickly. I understand that because it's a person and some research is involved that there won't be immediate results. But, frankly, I'm used to extremely fast turnarounds when it comes to texting.

Second, I'd love to see a flat-fee version of the service. Once my beta period is up I'll be using the service much less often simply because I'm not good at judging how many times, during a month, I've been hit up for $2. Every time I have a question, I'll be stuck worrying about how many times I've used the service already. And, frankly, I'll end up using it less or not at all.

Farewell to In Rainbows

I received an e-mail from w.a.s.t.e., the company that distributed Radiohead's In Rainbows, this morning:So downloads will end on 10 December and the box set has become a limited edition sort of thing. No restocking once they're out. No word on how many actually remain.

This'll be my last post concerning In Rainbows. It was fun. It was interesting. It's a pretty damn good album. Cheers guys.

We Are Web 2.0

I wanted to share a video with you that was brought to my attention by Dean Collins on the NY Tech Meetup e-mail list:



Apparently it's been around for a while, but I haven't seen it until just now. It's very interesting and compelling. Dean, on the original e-mail, mentions:

I'm trying to think of ways I can use this as a tool and play it before pitching clients on 'difficult decisions' to try and get them to identify that moving forward can be powerful rather than just 'continuing the norm'.

Spot on. I think it's a great idea.

List of the Best New York-Based Companies to Work For

Nate was kind enough to give me my very own BricaBox - The Best NY-Based Companies to Work For. So, please, feel free to add away. Where do you think the best place to work is? It can be based on anything - money, atmosphere, people, etc.

You do need to be a member of BricaBox to contribute, so let me know if you need an invite.

Thank You Facebook!

Facebook has faced a lot of bad press recently over their Beacon project, but now that an apology has been issued on that, and opt-out features added, things are starting to turn around. Namely, when you receive a message on Facebook you'll now get the content of that message in the e-mail alert.

This is great, great news that will make a lot of heavy Facebook users very happy. It's so annoying to receive an e-mail alert about a new message without any actual information about the message.

Everyone knows this has been a hotly debated and requested feature, so were they saving it for a time when they needed some love from the community? Probably not, but I'm still a happy camper.

Via TechCrunch

How Do You Choose a Meetup Group?

There are a lot of Meetup groups in New York City. 2,028 "within 5 miles of New York" to be exact (there are a total of 36,967 worldwide). I'm a member of:

• Mashable Meetups
• New York Online Advertising and Marketing Group
• New York Web 2.0 Social Networking Tech Meetup
• NY P2P 2.0 Meetup Group
• NY Tech Meetup
• NY Video 2.0
• The Advertising Club of NY Meetup
• The Bay Ridge Friends Meetup Group

I was looking through the list of other Meetups that I might be interested in and it was, frankly, overwhelming. You can narrow the list down by geography (which makes sense because these are in-person Meetups) and then by topic. I navigated to: USA>New York>New York>Work & Career and was presented with a massive list of titles.

I was a little lost and, in the end, didn't end up joining any other Meetups. It got me thinking... It would be very cool if you could tell Meetup where your LinkedIn or Facebook profile lives and have it automatically scan for topics that you're interested in. Then, it would return a list of contextually relevant Meetup groups. It could even take a look at your friend's profiles to find out what types of people you tend to associate yourself with.

I'd also like to see further integration with photo/video sharing sites. Why should I go to CenterNetworks (not to knock Allen) to see a recap of the last NY Tech Meetup? I'd like to see it on the actual Meetup page.

I won't even begin on the improvements that could be made to the e-mail discussions.

I've got lots of ideas for you, Meetup. *wink**wink*

Dashboard Post

This is a blog post directly from a dashboard widget on my MacBook. Exciting for you? No. For me? Totally.

Do you want cheese with that? "Totally."

Nevermind.