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Very nice to see Technorati working on bettering their blog search/indexing by allowing the owners a bit more control. I logged in to Technorati this morning to find that I am now able to tag each of my claimed blogs with up to 20 fitting keywords. Based on what I enter, when someone does a Blog Search on Technorati for any of the 20 keywords entered, that blog will show up somewhere in the search results. Of course, it isn’t perfect, and it looks like Technorati has a bit more to do to gain back the trust of some of the people they have let down as of late. Apparently, they are working on correcting some of the problems that have spawned a lot of complaints recently. The blog search and new control panel are likely a part of that.
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Yup, the Edwards family has finally made the move to Seattle. Monica, Alijah, and I got here this past Sunday and are stacked with tons of boxes to unpack. Olympia was a nice town, but after just four days of being here in Seattle, I already feel at home. Of course, with the personal move also comes the business move. Gear Live Media is now officially a Seattle-based company. I am jumping in head-first, and am already planning a conference (or, un-conference) for those in the Seattle area. It is time to let people know that Seattle is at the technology forefront in America, and I hope to generate a nice buzz around it. The first Seattle Mind Camp will be taking place before the end of 2005. Stay tuned.
I just got done signing up for the 2005 Seattle AIDS Walk - if you are able to donate to this cause, please click here. I have done two other AIDS Walks in the past, both in New York City. This will be the first one since the death of my mother, Anne Edwards. The fight against AIDS is something that is always on my mind, be it at the back or forefront, it looms there. The reason for this is that AIDS took the life of my mother away back when I was a teenager. Thinking back to when she died, it is still hard to believe how quick the end was. She lived with HIV and AIDS for a little over ten years. She would get sick sometimes, and didn’t have a ton of energy, but usually she was fine and could function nicely. When she got really sick, she would go to the hospital for a few days, and then come back. That is what I fully expected the last time she went in. Instead of going home, though, she was placed in a hospice. At the young age of 16, I still didn’t have a full grasp on the situation. I had never heard of a hospice before, but upon visiting her there, it just looked like a more upscale hospital where you got a bit more attention.
The fact was, though, that everyone seemed to know that time was running out for her but me. Looking back, the way other family members talked to me during that time, it was like they thought I knew what was going on. Extra sensitive, making sure I was okay. Again, I just thought that within a few days, she would be back to “normal”, at home where I would visit her each day after school. What saddens me most is that I never knew that the last time I visited her would be the last time I would see her, otherwise it would have gone quite a bit differently.
Click to continue reading AIDS Walk Seattle 2005: In Memory of Anne Edwards
Jason Calacanis Throws Down The Gauntlet - Get Us A Useful Top Blog List
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories:
I gotta hand it to Jason - he has pretty much ensured that someone will develop a scalable list of blogs and their bloggers which will allow people to view which are the most popular based on a number of different factors. I say good for him! I, too, have grown tired of theTechnorati 100, which at a glance seem antiquated because it uses cumulative results rather than staying current. Heck, even Apple realized that this was a mistake, opting to show its Top 100podcast list as the Top 100 for that day, because they get it. The blogosphere changes insanely frequently, that’s just how it is. If you can build the list, you will earn either $10,000 in cash, or $50,000 in Weblogs, Inc. advertising. Not bad at all.
Just signed up for this conference in Portland, OR, thanks to a mention on Chris Pirillo’s blog. It’s called Podcast Hotel, and it should be a lot of fun. The Jupiter Hotel, its venue, looks stylish and sleek as well:
The Podcast Hotel - Sept 6-8, 2005 in Portland, OR - is part conference, part think tank, part happening, and part product showcase. The three-day, two-night event, to be held at Portland’s hippest new hotel - The Jupiter, is designed to attract the individuals and companies racing to embrace podcasting in particular and the mass amateurization of content creation in general.
The Podcast Hotel will feature an innovative, fun, and varied array of programs designed to educate attendees, expose them to new tools and technologies, and allow them to interact with each other to encourage collaboration and experimentation.
Who will be there: podcasting’s leading practitioners and observers as well as avid hobbyists, curious technophiles, budding content entrepreneurs, and those from established media looking to get a grasp of the technology and culture at the heart of podcasting.
A local news affiliate here in Seattle just did a new piece on podcasting - as always, the media never gets these things quite right, opting to do minimal research before airing the piece. Here is a summary:
Anyone with an MP3 player can download a file and go, and that has radio networks scared. They showed Earth Core, diggnation, mommycast, Catholic Insider, and a couple of other podcasts. Steve Rubel of MicroPersuasion talked a bit about podcasting, and they went so far as to call him a podcast “expert” - but he doesn’t even have one! They showed shots of digg quite a few time, leading viewers to believe that all listings on digg are different podcasts. If you are unfamiliar with the site, digg does have a podcast called “diggnation”, but their website is a tech news resource. At the end of the piece, the anchor said that listeners may need to start paying to listen to their favorite podcasts, and that Podscope.com is the Google for podcasts.
They should have just let Steve Rubel talk for the duration of the segment. The anchors were horrible. With any research, they would have known that they have quite a few successful podcasters right here in the city of Seattle!
I am cursing myself because I forgot the digital camera. We took Alijah to his first baseball game yesterday, and he seemed to have the time of his life, despite rarely even looking down at the action. He was just so thrilled to be a part of the excitement of the crowd cheering, clapping, starting the wave, etc. The music and atmosphere totally got to him. He was laughing, clapping, dancing…without even knowing why. He was also wanting to hold up a miniature Mariners poster. It was so cute, and would have been great to capture digitally. We will have to take him back.
Virtually every online merchant has an affiliate program these days. Even with a big shift in spending towards pay-per-click advertising, affiliate marketing has remained strong and is expected to grow by 30% over the next year (according to a Piper Jafrey analyst).
Offering your affiliates typical text/banner ads to promote your products is becoming less and less effective. An increasingly popular method of boosting affiliate performance has been the use of data feeds. Data feeds are basically data exports of a merchant’s inventory which affiliates use to create virtual store fronts.
Typically merchants offer data feeds as CSV or XML files which affiliates then have to either write code to build a web site from or use an off the shelf PHP, CGI or ASP script. A new trend has been the use of data feed services such as FeedShare.com which allows affiliates to quickly and easily add a virtual store front to their web site with as little as one line of JavaScript.
If you sell products online and run or are looking to run an affiliate program, offering your affiliates a data feed is a must. To make it easy for your affiliates to use and update your data feed, look into using a data feed service like FeedShare.
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| Venturus
Flowers and messages left at London terrorist bomb site
Originally uploaded by jaimelondonboy.
Here is a great photo of flowers and messages left at the London terrorist bombing site - or one of them I should say. It’s just a sad thing to be reminded that these things can happen at any time, in any place. Even sadder though, is the fact that it happens on a daily basis in lesser known places in the world, and it isn’t that big a deal to the media. Only when it takes place in somewhere like America or Europe is it a big media spectacle. If it was South Africa, Palestine, or Israel it is just seen as normal. My thoughts and prayers go out to those who were affected by this tragedy.
Updating My “Must Meet” List: Pirillo, Calacanis, Scoble Crossed Off
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories:
So, a couple of months ago I posted an entry where I listed a bunch of people that I was interested in meeting. Between E3 in May, the Seattle Weblogger Meetup Group, and Gnomedex, I was able to cross quite a few off my list. Here is the revised version:
Already Met:
- Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome - Met at Gnomedex. Wish I had more time to spend hanging out, but obviously this was your busy weekend of the year!
- Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc. - Met at Gnomedex - I caught Jason in the hallway, and was able to chat with him for a few. The next day, I spoke with him about blogging legality. This is another guy that I respect a whole lot, and wish I could have spent more time talking to.
- Robert Scoble of Microsoft - Met at post-Gnomedex breakfast - A real down to earth, funny geek. Hope I can hang ou with you more in the near future.
- Joel Johnson of Gizmodo - Met at E3 - Refused to take no for an answer when told there was no food in the press room. Joel is a cool cat.
- Philip Torrone - Met at Seattle Blogger Meetup - Is there anything that you can’t do with technology?
Still Want to Meet:
- Henry Copeland of Blogads
- Luigi Lugmayr of I4U
- David Shappelle
- Marc Canter
- Steve Rubel of MicroPersuasion
- Adam Curry
- Dave Winer
- Alan Jeric
- Steven Holmes of OfferCentric
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