Who knows Vancouver, British Columbia?

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Originally uploaded by evo_terra

I'm headed to Vancover the from July 9th - July 13th. This will be our third summer in this fair city, as my son plays hockey and takes a week-long intensive goalie clinic each year. So while he's busting his hump on the ice from 8 - 5 every day, my Lovely Wife and I have our days free to explore the city.

Here's where you can help.

I'm looking for suggestions of places to go and things to do while we are in town. We usually just traipse around Chinatown, drive up to the mountains and generally prowl. While that's fun and all, I'd like this year to be a bit more planned.

I've created a new Google Calendar just for the trip. If you know the area and have a suggestion of where we go, please send me an email (my first name at the Podiobooks.com domain) and I'll make you an editor of the calendar. I'd allow just anyone to add stuff, but it doesn't look like Google Calendar will let me do that.

I'm looking for a full agenda here, people. Tell me where the cool place to have lunch is, and book it on a day. Is there a cool festival we need to attend? Let's get it on the calendar. We're pretty adventurous people, so let's see what you crazy Canadians can come up with.

The Fountain of Ideas™ needs your help

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Originally uploaded by evo_terra

I've got an idea I've been noodling with for a while. Since I jumped on the Pownce bandwagon today, it's on my mind more than ever. And in order to make this new idea a reality, I need some help. Who wants in?

I think this requires two people: a developer and a designer. First, the developer. The right person for this project should be familiar working with the APIs to various Web 2.0 sites and applications. Not just retrieving and displaying data, but also sending calls to the various web services. We'll be doing work on our own servers, and I'd like to stay as open source as possible. LAMP, Rails... don't really care. Scalability is a big deal on this project, so the final product will need to smoke.

Honestly, there's a lot less work for a designer (I think). Though we may decide to add some personalization stuff. That may keep someone busy. If push comes to shove, we borrow someone's time. Heavy CSS, with a clean and clutter-free design is what I'm looking for. You should be able to quickly crank out layouts (without a lot of input from me) that are not only cool, but easy to implement and modify.

As is my normal routine, I see this project as a free service. It could be sponsored with ads, I suppose. But making money off of this isn't my primary objective. The idea is to build a tool that I think the social media/networking community is really in need of, and then see where that takes us.

And in the interest of full disclosure: I'll put up the front money for this, which I honestly don't think will be that much. I'm looking for someone(s) who can take this idea, morph it into something workable and then work with me to bring it to reality.

If you are interested (and yeah, I'm serious about this), email me at my first name at the Podiobooks.com domain. I'd like to get started by the end of July and have a working prototype up quickly.

When small companies act big

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Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Since when was it out of fashion to be small? I, for one, enjoy the niche side of life and find it much more liberating to have, you know, actual conversations with clients and customers, rather than treating them like a number. Granted, I don't expect this sort of treatment from a company like General Motors.

But small companies should not look at this impersonal service as the hallmark of being large. Rather, it's an unfortunate side effect of being too large to personally get to know and manage your clients and/or prospects. Trust me, if they could do it, GM and other large organizations would kill or die to have a quality one-to-one relationship. But because it's so cost prohibitive for them, they have to fake it.

Some small companies, when trying to portray themselves as a large company, adopt this same posture. It's unfortunate, and just makes them look desperate for attention. Plus, it pisses me off and changes the way I think about the organization.

So stop with the chest puffing and give some personal touch. Especially in such a small market as podcasting, OK? You know who you are.

Less for Geeks to Fu over

Though we've created our own term for it, podfading isn't the exclusive property of podcasters. Books go unwritten, albums remain unfinished, construction projects abruptly end and companies close down divisions. "The End" is as natural as change, birth and renewal. The truth that all good things come to an end has yet to be proven wrong.

When Mur's announcement hit today, I can't say that I was surprised. She started out with a single and occasional show, met some jerk who demanded more from her (guilty) and proceeded to take on new projects with an abandon reserved for the clinically insane. I'm comfortable saying these things because I've walked a megabyte in her shoes.

Priorities change. Needs are fulfilled in other ways. Itches have innovative ways of getting scratched. Often times, this causes some things to come to a natural end. You may not be OK with that. And that's OK, too. We produce. You listen. Either party may cancel the contract at anytime. The world goes on.

I'll miss Geek Fu Action Grip, but I know there are plenty of places where I can still hear (and watch) Mur in action:

• Lessons from a Geek Fu Master (podiobook)


• Heaven - Season One (podiobook)


• Heaven- Season Two: Hell (podiobook)


• Heaven Season Three: Earth (podiobook)


• Voices: New Media Fiction (podiobook)


• I Should Be Writing (audio podcast)


• This Day In Alternate History (video podcast)


• Lulu radio (audio podcast)

Back of Spoiler T-shirt

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Originally uploaded by BobReturns

You know, I have no real expectations on the sorts of things I'll see on Flickr. Having said that, I certainly didn't expect to see this image in my reader tonight.

Dude, seriously. If there's a big picture of me on the front of this shirt, I'm gonna be a little creeped out. Don't get me wrong, I'll be flattered as hell... but also kinda sorta creeped out.

Thanks, Bob, for thinking of me.

Five thing about me

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Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Mark Forman tagged me on this meme. It's my first tagging, so be gentle. Five things about the "real" me, huh? Depends on your definition of real, I suppose. Let's go for the Oprah moments, shall we?

1. I was born and raised in Oklahoma. No, that's not very earth shattering. Let me get warmed up. I left the state when I was 20 years old. No, I have no plans on returning other than to visit family and friends. It's a great big beautiful world out there.
   
2. I was married at 20 years old. No, not because we had to but because we wanted to. I look back now and see how foolish that was. Do you have any idea how great the odds were that Sheila and I beat? That's why I don't play the lottery. Not about to push my luck.
   
3. I broke my left arm at 3 years old jumping off of a recliner. That's a little over two feet. Tip: Don't lock your arms when you land. Since then I've broken my right wrist (skateboarding downhill = bad idea), a couple of toes and cracked my sternum at a concert. It was crowded.
   
4. Had I been born a girl, my mother would have named me Nicole Yvette. When my kid sister was born 14 years later, Mom gave her the middle name of Nicole but had luckily outgrown the Yvette part. No offense to the possible Yvette readers out there.
   
5. The only way I'll eat pancakes is with peanut butter. You may think it's strange, but I'm puzzled how you can eat fried flattened flour water without some taste. And give me real maple syrup. Not that fake sugar stuff. (Note: I rarely eat pancakes. But when I do...)

So there you have it. Or me. And as tradition would have it, I need to tag a few more folks. I choose: Sean Reiser, David Moldawer, Mandy Garr (blog, Mandy?), Arioch Morningstar, and Rich Sigfrit.

What makes some videos "catch"?

As part of an exercise on linking social groups together to develop critical mass, I ask you to ponder the following question offered:

Why does some video content grab viewers by the throat, compel them to watch and then suck their mouse towards the bookmark/email/blog about link?

How do we get us some of that mojo for our productions?

To me, the reason some online videos grab us is no different than why some more traditional video experience (movies & TV) compel us to watch and tell our friends. Online video is inherently more "sharable" than traditional, so it takes much less effort to tell all of your friends.

The second part of the questions asks how content providers can create videos that we, the viewers, want to share. That's a tall order, as everyone's triggers are tripped by different things. Some of the most "viral" of videos I'm not a fan of, and I'm guilty of sharing things with others that cause them to look at me like the RCA dog. In my mind, it remains a uniquely personal experience that is sometimes resonant to the proclivities of many others. I'll staunchly stand by my position that content creators should strive to create the very best content that they like as their primary goal. It's difficult to judge what everyone wants, but you should have a pretty good handle on what you want.

Now for your part in this experiment: As mentioned earlier, this is part of Chris Brogan's 100 Comments experience. While you are welcome to post your comments here, the idea is to post comments on the original feed to get to critical mass with lots of people's networks. I've posted my comments there exactly as I have written above.