Archive for May, 2008

If you are not familiar with  SEOmoz and their Web 2.0 awards you should check them out.  Jane contacted me a couple of months ago and asked if I would be interested in judging the competition and I signed up right away.  

My reason for wanting to participate can be summed as I generally think there is a lot of poor “web 2.0″ sites out there and this gave me a chance to look at some of the better sites and at some of the best of the best.  Some of these sites I use regularly, but the award judging gave me a chance to look at them with a beginners mind.

Here are my favorites from the list:

	Upcoming I use this all the time to find events.  It is simple to use and the social aspects are tightly integrated. Put your next event there and it will get noticed.
	Mango I started studying Mandarin last year and Mango was a really fun way to begin outside of classroom training.  It integrates the best of the styles of language training that you find on audio with some of the techniques I have seen in classrooms.  Good Stuff.
	Biblio.com The site itself is kind of boring, I won’t lie, but I have a thing for old out of print design books.   This site is a bibliophile’s best friend.
	Urban Spoon I love all things food and this site is one that is in my browser when I am looking for something new or am in a major metro and looking for where the locals eat.
	Twitter I have a love/hate relationship with twitter.  I love that it keeps me connected with so many industry friends and has allowed me to build on relationships that were languishing due to distance.  I hate that the site is so flaky.  I also hate the bots that follow me.
	Colorblender Having worked with creatives for so much of my career, I understand the value in a good color swatch book.  Color blender makes all that possible on the web.

So check out the awards page and I guarantee you will find a site or two that could make your life easier or better.  And a big thanks to Jane Copland and the SEOmoz team for thinking so highly of my opinion.

A little background on the awards (as told by SEOmoz): After scouring the web for Web 2.0 sites both new and old, SEOmoz created their “short list” of sites. The judges are some of the web’s best bloggers, entrepreneurs and business who people vote on winners, narrowing the field to 174 place-getters and Honorable Mentions.

SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards

More business haiku, from Matthew Mercer.     Sorry no lovely pictures today.

Unreasonable:
amount of power placed in
hands of customers.

One in a hundred
callers complain about me,
but THAT’s still too much

After handouts are
given, they are read aloud
so we _understand_

When the fit hits the
shan, we will all be ready
because of handouts

Restrained glances make
bearing the idiocy
something we can do

Looking at the bun
on the woman’s head, I can
see her years from now

When in a career
you see all around you what
your future looks like

I hide the hand on
which I count syllables when
I’m in a meeting

When I do more than
I’m paid for, it doesn’t make
up for when I don’t

The man on his way
can’t help but laugh- heartedly-
at the silliness..

I am sharing the work of my good friend and poet  Matthew Mercer.   He wrote the following business Haiku.  They made me smile so I figured I would share.   If you find you enjoy this and would like to read others check out MG Siegler’s tech haiku page.  I will post more of Matthew’s work later this week.

The meetings every
Tuesday morning kept us all
plodding through the week

I kept my tie tight
to remain conscious of my
otherwise strained breath

Listening to birds
shirping in the morning was
waking in the board room

When we discuss why
the red tape was still sticky
we realized nothing

Paperwork over
our heads buried us without
just compensation

Early arrivals
each tweet on their own branches
around the table

Meetings give us all
another thirty minutes when
we all do nothing

My co-worker took
off his ring and seemed to think
about his life now

With handouts, you too
will be able to waste more
time and paper too!

Words like asterisk
and ombudsman trouble the
tongue in board meetings

Doctors would like to
believe medicine is what
keeps us together

Board meeting haiku
are written in black ink so
they are official

Shredding discussed at
board meetings have nothing to
do with rock guitars

Meetings sometimes make
me think I have no idea
what is going on

The one response to
the handout about teamwork
was the rolling eyes

The talk about the
Sunshine Club that morning was
the gloomiest thing

The rigidity
of scheduled lunch hours is of
direst importance

The forms you fill out
are there for your protection
and your benefit

“When we let people
bend these arbitrary rules
we’re NOT helping them!”

We introduced Joy
at the meeting this morning.
He seemed REAL happy.

“Well, that will be fine.
We need to let Joy have a
real chance to go first.”

Existentialist
I am when automatic
flushers don’t see me.

These were reprinted with permission of the author.

Had a great dinner last night with Live Search PR team and a few really great folks from the industry.  I won’t name names to protect the innocent and the guilty, but the oilman was there.  So K-Mac, who took the photo below said to me “Jeremiah,  I got you on the list for the show”  and I of course naively said what show.  I didn’t know about any shows. 

The cool thing was is that we had set up a special performance from Dave Mathews at the Showbox for industry folks.   I got to go in and watch the show which was really fantastic.   I am sure we were not as good of an audience and the Dalai Lama, but Dave was really cool and made lots of jokes about the space and interacted with the crowd in a cool way.  It is not everyday you get to watch a guy like Dave so close.

Anyway, just thought I would share one of the little pleasures I had this week.  

And go see more photos of the evening at K-macs site.

My Life Fotos: Dave Mathews - At the Showbox

Yes, that is Bill Gates playing table tennis.  While I am sure I was in the twilight zone, this was a really nice gesture to energize the troops. 

Very nice Bill!

UPDATE: something happened on my server and this post disappeared for a while.