Lyn Bender just sent me a cryptic email about some kind of cryptic event Saturday morning. If I can talk Dot in to going to Nia Saturday morning and do the ride share thing we might have a go. It would be nice, Lynn, to have a localtion and maybe a couple of details.

Just got off the skype with rjnagy and he’s still resistant to twitter. Doesn’t he know this is futile?

We had a great wordpress meetup recently at http://conjunctured.com with Any Skelton or skeltoac everywhere.

While I am typing this I am talking to a delightful Spring rep, Josey, from the Phillipines who just set up my pda phone which I’m going to use for a backup for my iphone. She was really, really nice. I wish all support calls were like this!

I’m building a “social network” for Austin, Texas and also working on a green home site. If you want to beta test or have input on the Austin Social Network, go to http://austinlifestyles.com and sign up for the beta. If you’re actually in Austin, Texas we’re going to have some cool events coming up for our beta testers like pizza parties, basketball games, guest speakers, presentations, etc. It’s going to be a hoot!

ptw out

2009 RIDERS

Lance Armstrong
Assan Bazayev
Jani Brajkovic
Alberto Contador
Valeriy Dmitriyev
Alexandr Dyachenko
Jesús Hernández
Chris Horner
Maxim Iglinskiy
Roman Kireyev
Andreas Klöden
Berik Kupeshov
Levi Leipheimer
Steve Morabito
Dmitriy Muravyev
Daniel Navarro
Benjamín Noval
Sérgio Paulinho
Yaroslav Popovych
Bolat Raimbekov
Gregory Rast
Sergey Renev
José Luis Rubiera
Michael Schär
Tomas Vaitkus
Andrey Zeits
Haimar Zubeldia

GENERAL MANAGER

Johan Bruyneel

SPORTS DIRECTORS

Alain Gallopin
Dirk Demol
Viatcheslav Ekimov
Alexandr Shefer
Sean Yates ]]> http://www.touroftexas.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=186 http://www.touroftexas.com/blog/?p=185 http://www.touroftexas.com/blog/?p=185#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:04:28 +0000 touroftexas http://www.touroftexas.com/blog/?p=185 When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo
You’ll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah)
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
[ Find more Lyrics at www.mp3lyrics.org/aK ]
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck, and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

Whoo!

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You’ll notice another widget in the lower right column of this blog, it’s scoutle and I recommend you check it out and add me as your friend so we can compare notes. I found this in Louisvillian Tom Osborne’s profilactic mashup this morning. As far as I can tell, this came out of the Netherlands and it’s designed to be a blog community.

This is where you can find me on Scoutle

I started a blog network for Austin, Texas also. One member so far, me.

To quote Wicked Pretty, who has quite a following on Scoutle, “I particularly like the animated one, Scoutle. You have a little Scout (who you get to name and give a catchphrase) and he “wanders the internet” looking for people to match to your blog…I don’t really understand how it all works, so if you’re the kind . . . “

Is this the next big thing? It could get pretty big from what I’ve seen. If these guys hit it hard and listen to their community they’ve got a great start.

Here’s the description of Scoutle by the creators:

Scoutle is an automated social network for bloggers and functions as an ideal Guide for internet users to find a valuable blog, no matter the language, subject or location.

Scoutle helps you find, promote and connect blogs using an automated rating and matching system. Not only find a blog easily, but also know what a blog is worth and discover similar blogs.
Scoutle searches, matches, validates and values… You only need to find a blog or as a user, make sure your blog is and keeps interesting.

• Being Peter Kim: A List of Social Media Marketing Examples - applying game mechanics to understand participation, thinking about users vs. customers, and deconstructing ego traps in PR campaigns. This analysis makes me wonder if social media marketing matters and if so, does it scale.
• Social Media / Business Marketing Links | The Global Social Media Network - Social Media Marketing - business marketing and social media marketing links
• Tweetmeme - 15:20 PM, October 9th, 2008 GB - less structured way to keep track of what links are buzzing on twitter categories links in to blog, image, video and audio posts
• Twitscoop - Search twitter, see what’s hot right now - What’s hot on twitter right now
• Twitturly - Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter - top trends on twitter, use this to stay ahead of the curve and tracks links
• Twubble - suggests new twitter friends based on your current twitter friends
• Tweet Scan - Tweet Scan is a real-time search engine for Twitter and identi.ca. Tweet Scan indexes all public messages on both services so you can find the conversations, people, and tweets/dents you want. You can search by keyword or author with results available via email(Twitter only for now), RSS, and Twhirl.
• GroupTweet - GroupTweet allows Malcolm and the gang to send messages via Twitter that are instantly broadcasted privately to only the team members.
• Rogue Amoeba - Nicecast: Broadcast any audio on Mac OS X - Nicecast is the easiest way to broadcast music from OS X. Broadcast to the world, or just across your house. Nicecast can help you create your own internet radio station or allow you to listen to your iTunes Music Library from anywhere in the world!
• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine - some excellent wordpress themes
• Irssi - Community Ubuntu Documentation - Irssi is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client. It is a text-based client as it lacks a graphical user interface (gui) such as XChat, Chatzilla and others.
• Fitbit - Automatically Track Your Fitness and Sleep - Did I get enough exercise today? How many calories did I burn? Am I getting good quality sleep? How many steps and miles did I walk today? The Fitbit Tracker helps you answer these questions.
• Gnip API v1.3 - The Gnip API provides notification of activities (events) occurring in a variety of services and, whenever possible, a guid that identifies the activity itself vis a vis the service it was created on. Activity examples include a user “tweet” (twitter), a user “dugg” (digg), a user creating a blog post, etc.
• CrunchBase, The Free Tech Company Database - CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.
• ONLINE BUSINESS TOOLBOX: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online - A great roundup of business tools for running a business, all web based. I found some good stuff here.
• Eventbrite - TechCrunch Austin Ventures Meet-Up - TechCrunch is heading South for a Meet-Up in Austin, Texas with the team from Austin Ventures (http://www.austinventures.com/). We are landing in town on Thursday, September 25 just in time for the Austin City Limits (http://www.aclfestival.com/default.aspx) music festival. We do have a handful of three day ACL passes to give away to sponsors and attendees, and will be announcing details of music festival give aways in the coming weeks.
• Rudder - The New Free Online Money Management, Budget Planning And Personal Finance Software - product that looks forward and determines how much you can spend today and still pay all your bills
• Gustav Information Center - good social network resource along with http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Gustav for tracking Gustav news and resources
• Schedule Future-Dated Twitter Tweets » TweetLater.com - Keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer. Or, use it as your personal reminder system. Send automated thank you notes to new followers, automatically follow new followers,
  if you choose to do so.
• (6) near:”Austin, Texas” within:50mi - Twitter Search - realtime search results for twitter tweets near Austin, Texas. Twitters official advanced search.
• SocialGO - Social Network Maker - Create your own Social Network for FREE
• Mashable Summermash Austin interview with Will Pate - spring.net - Spring.net interviewed Will Pate. Will cohosts CommandN a very popular video podcast with Amber Macarthur out of Toronto, Canada. He founded Raincity Studios which recently bought Bryte. Will ?can?t talk? about some upcoming ventures, but he does talk broadly about his future direction.

  Spring.net did over 30 interviews at the Summermash Party in Austin at Buffalo Billiards on the night of July 30, 2008 and also videod the entire daytime Socialmedia Camp at the Thistle Cafe on West Sixth Street in Austin. The evening party featured an open bar, food, and a packed second floor. Brian Massey said ?It took a bunch of people from San Franciso to round up some of Austin?s best bloggers and developers in one place.?

  We?ll be releasing the full 5 hour session of the Mashable Social Media Camp on one hour installments and we?ll also be releasing all of the 30 plus interviews over the next 2-3 weeks.

• chrisbrogan.com - one of the best social media and marketing sites on the web. It’s a must daily read if you’re a social network addict, like me.
• Social media camp at the Thistle Cafe 300 W 6th street in Austin - social media camp at the Thistle Cafe on 6th street the same day as the Mashable event.
• Austin 3.0 - If one were to look at the slew of Tech events happening this week, you?d think we were gearing up for SXSWi. Instead, it?s 104 degrees outside, and it?s just another eventful week in Texas; it?s time for our mid-summer stretching exercise.
• AgencyTool Web Design Dashboard - best web design, development, marketing and website maintenance resource I’ve every seen. Excellent! Five Stars. *****
• Web 2.0 Mashup: Best of the Internet Today -
• Ad Revenue Sharing Communities & Forums | Social Web Tools - social communitys that share revenue with their users
• Leveraging Social Media by springnet - Connie Reece and Paul Terry Walhus present “Leveraging Social Media” at SEOforSMB in Austin Texas on July 17, 2008.
• Deanna Zandt randomdeanna / Linkwad - Short-n-sweet Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and the Hightower Lowdown, and hosts TechGrrl Tips on GRITtv with Laura Flanders. Interview at http://austincast.com/blog/
• | LivingSocial - recommended by MichelleMMM on del.icio.us
• 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing | chrisbrogan.com - 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
• How to Be Interesting | Copyblogger - Be wrong: The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It?s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that is willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing
• Five Ways to Build Your SMB Via Social Media Marketing : Online Marketing for Marketers - 5 primary strategies for building small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) via social media marketing. This post is a summary of my presentation, for those that couldn?t make it to Austin.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Services Portland Oregon | Anvil Media, Inc. - Search Engine Marketing for High Performance Companies Anvil Media, Inc. (Anvil) is a search engine marketing (SEM) agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, search engine marketing public relations (SEM PR)
• http://seesmic.com/#/video/iXR1hYyDEF/watch - boiling down the basics of SEO
• The Definition of Social Media Marketing: How to Find the Best Social Media Consultant » techipedia | tamar weinberg - The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices.
• Search Engine Optimization for Small Business - SEO Blog: Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing :: Get Page One - And the co-founder of our humble SEO company, Brian Rutledge, will be talking about search engine optimization for small business at the SEM for SMB conference in Austin, TX. More on that later!
• Video SEO for SMB?s: What Does Standing Out Online Really Mean? - consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - seo blog aggregation. Guy Kawasaki’s alltop seo page. SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, SEO Book, Search Engine Journal, Matt Cutts, SEO Noobs, Google News Inside, SEO Blackhat, SEO by the Sea, Search Engine Watch, Stepforth SEO, etc
• ContentRobot | Blogging & WordPress Experts - awesome wordpress site with plugins and themes
• FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby! - FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby!
• Josh Highland : Internet Superstar - classic social lifestream webpage, a guy who lives in Redlands, CA
• TweetDumpr - This is a hideous tool that can be used to export your entire Twitter timeline to a CSV file, readable by any spreadsheet application (Excel, Numbers, etc.). Exported data includes the tweet plus a timestamp of when it was sent.
• Technology Review: Social Networking Is Not a Business* - In less than two years it has created the underlying structure for more than 20,000 social-networking sites–”mini-Facebooks” with an aggregate of 300 million page views per month. You’ve probably never heard of it.
• bub.blicio.us - social networking blog, really smart content
• Summize Conversational Search - another killer app du jour for twitter, conversational search
• All I Ate Today - clever little food app somehow connected to twitter
• austinlifestyles’ bookmarks on del.icio.us -
• Derbyshire Writer?s Guild - - Crysty Shih is now heading this major fanfic site for jane Austen aficianados
• Social Media Club Austin - You’ll find a number of social media types hanging out at Cafe Caffeine as part of the Jelly! Austin co-working scene. Come join us.

Mashable put together a list of Austin’s most important technology blogs and AustinCast.com – sister site of AustinLifestyles.com – wound up on that list in some pretty great company.

Here’s the list with a few excerpts from the blog entry at Mashable:

1. Austin 3.0 - A website designed to give the “younger Austin Geek a place to see what is going on in Austin.”
2. Austin Startup - Austin Startup is simply a news site that chronicles the goings ons and creation of new tech sector business in the Austin area.
3. AustinCast - This site is a frequently updated hub for video and audio interviews of local area movers and shakers in the technology scene. He’s published over 100 video interviews with the likes of Veronica Belmont, Pete Cashmore, Zadi Diaz, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, and Leah Culver as well as a number of local heroes to the Austin scene.
   
4. Austin360 - This is the official New Media offering from Austin’s reigning Old Media institution, the Austin-American Statesman.
5. GeekAustin - Probably one of Austin’s oldest tech blogs, LinearB’ and Orion have been chronicling the gaming, business and tech communities of Austin since 2000.
6. Michelle’s Blog - . . . she’s a very active leader and figurehead to the new, young Austin Tech community, and has her hands in just about everything. Her personal blog reflects all the myriad of ventures she’s involved in there.
7. Josh Dilworth - Josh is over at PR group Porter Novelli, based in their Austin office. Amongst all his many work related projects like SXSW, he has quite visible presence amongst those in the online Semantic and AI community as well as an avid participant in a number of widely used social media tools. I was recently a guest on a podcast of his, Falken’s Maze.
8. John Erik Metcalf - John Erik Metcalf is a major figure in the Austin scene as well, as he’s a co-founder in one of the town’s two co-working spaces: Conjunctured
9. Social Media Club Austin - The site describes itself as “part think tank, part curiosity, all new media” and is a repository for all that is going on in the “business networking event” scene for the Austin area.
10. Some Assembly Required - a self-described “business development and networking blog” authored by Thom Singer.
11. The Jeff Beckham Weblog - Jeff is an Austin area blogger who focuses his posts on the evolution of media, specifically in relationship to how the Internet is forcing transformation on not just media industries but “the word itself.”
12. Door64 Blog - The blog for Door64, the forum and community portal for the Austin-area tech community.

If you an Austin area blogger and want to be added to the OPML file email Mark at Mashable to be included in the next version of the list.

Download Now! (OPML) (import this into your favorite feed reader)

Listal is a social networking site where you can find people who share your tastes in movies, books, music or games. Lists and collections are shared via a simple url like (in my case) http://springnet.listal.com and they give you widgets to plug in to your blog or website.

The site stands out for it’s tight integration of tagging, friends, finding others, forums and messaging. The “explore” feature is hot, it lets you scan through reviews of movies, tv shows, books, games, dvds, and music.