Jeff Bezos Likes My Show

Heya.

I have a lot to say, but not a lot of energy with which to say it. I'm running on empty mostly because it's 5:14 am right now. Instead of talking about stuff, I'll let Jeff Bezos (founder and President of Amazon.com) do the talking about one of my podcasts for Mashable:

I hardly ever listen to broadcast radio in my car anymore. Instead, I subscribe to a whole bunch of podcasts, some technical, some fun, and others educational. Here are two episodes which should be of interest to anyone who reads this blog:

The Mashable Podcast interviews Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale. Michael talks about their product and how it helps organizations to use Amazon EC2 in a cost-effective fashion.

The IT Conversations Podcast captures Amazon CTO Werner Vogels as he talks about AWS at last years ETech conference.

You can listen to either or both of these on the respective sites or you can simply subscribe to their RSS feeds.

-- Jeff;

Thanks for subscribing, Jeff. I'm incredibly flattered. I've got more episodes on cloud computing coming up - some about AWS, and some not. You'll probably not link all of them via your blog, but I know you'll likely enjoy hearing some of the competition spill the beans on what they're doing.

/mark

The Lethargy is Lifting

I spent most of this week in a state of lethargy. You've probably noticed.

That's over now. Today and yesterday, I've had significantly more energy, and my work product reflected that. I've edited, described, and pre-posted almost a week's worth of podcasts for next week. I've written four proposals tonight. I've reviewed two contracts. I'm rip-roaring along.

Tomorrow, I'm going to be in Dallas for the WordCamp Meetup at Cafe Brasil on Lower Greenville Ave. I'll probably be incommunicado but for phone calls for most of the weekend, as a consequence.

I'll probably turn on my webcam and UStream the event, assuming I can find some free WiFi.

Things I didn't get done this week:

• The db structure for Project Linkfish.
• Lining up all the guests for the podcast for the following week.
• Writing about the ADM standards.
• Writing about Video Comments.

Meh. Win some, lose some.

I'll Keep This Short

This is a post of administrivia:

• Subscribe to my RSS: You're probably getting to these pages from Twitter or from FriendFeed - or maybe a few of you are finding them via my actual domain, I haven't looked at referral logs yet. If you want to get on the RSS feed (I know I've hidden it away from you), it's http://feeds.feedburner.com/rizzncom.
• Progress on the Site: I'll fix the layout and the RSS links and all the myriad of other things wrong with this site soon. Maybe even this weekend. Now that the server issues appear to be resolved at Mashable, and I don't have as much downtime, my personal projects once again get shoved to the backburner.
• These Posts will be Short: You'll get a break from my usual bloviating style. That's because, for now anyway, I don't care about pageviews or ad revenue on my personal domain (that and the fact that this is the last thing I do, usually, before I pass out). Pete Cashmore, however, does. My opinions here will be expressed, but probably without adequate exploration. For that stuff, you'll need to tune into my various podcasts and blog posts. Look over at Mashable for that stuff.

I have some malformed thoughts on the whole video posting thing. I think it's a net positive, but there's some cart-before-the-horse going on here. There needs to be a bit more technology developed in terms of indexing, tagging, and other such mumbo jumbo to make video comments effective.

On the whole, though, if video comments catch on, it could lead to that sort of metric and user habit we all seem to be striving for in the ever evolving path to better ad revenues - that is long term engagement.

I'll probably write something more cogent about this some time tomorrow.

East Texas Allergies Suck

I've lived in East Texas for the majority of my lifetime, although I've spent almost a third of my life outside the area. Still, I'll never get used to the horrible allergies I experience every spring here. I think that, aside from a tropical rain forest, there is more crap around here per cubic inch to be allergic to than any other place on the planet.

Hence, my writing on Mashable today was below my usual standards of excellence. Also why I didn't get any coding done.

If I say things off the wall to you over the next few days, I'm blaming it entirely on the OTC allergy medicine I'm taking. Stuff messes with my head!

/rizzn

Where My Site Seems to be Going

Well, Mashable was down for most of the day. I wish I could vent here and tell you all the sordid details, but as I understand it, Adam Ostrow will be putting a post up once we get the skinny from our dev and admin team.

Aside from that, it left me with most of the day to play with the backend on Rizzn.com. I've been working on a couple of things. Obviously, one of those things was not the backpage layouts. If you're looking at this page right now, it probably means it looks like the default blogger template threw up all over an HTML editor.

The reason I'm not doing too much with the backpages is that I'm designing an RSS Overlay system based loosely off the Magpie RSS parsing engine. I've had this dream to create a web magazine style CMS based on the concept of the link blog for some time. It looks like I might have given myself the kick in the ass I need to make it happen.

Hopefully, then, this site won't sit dormant for another several months, and the active development will continue. Keep an eye on the rizzn.com root domain - that's where most of the active development will be taking place, though the end result is going to end up residing elsewhere eventually.

/rizzn

Back to Personal Blogging

I let the site go to fallow for the last six months or so. That ends now. I'm not sure exactly what this site will end up looking like over the next several months, so just keep an eye on the domain, and check back from time to time. I expect in the next couple of weeks, the site will start looking more and more like I want, and I'll start publicizing it a little bit.

In the mean time, enjoy the dust. There might or might not be cool things going on here.

/rizzn