It’s Halloween today, woohoo! I’ve not dressed in a couple of years. Doing a little flashback… It’s 2003, I have just completed the code for the OnlineCameo Card (aka SparkCard) and we launched with our first event - Helloween.

For those that didn’t make it (which would include most of you), it was a fun little networking/dating/costume party we held at Lemon here in NYC. In total, we had about 75 people turn out for the event (a collection of friends, some press, and a bunch of strangers we met while handing out postcards in Union Square). It wasn’t a profitable event (wasn’t meant to be), but it did break even so I can’t complain.

They say being an entrepreneur is one of the most exciting (and stressful) things in life. I’d definitely agree, but damn it sure can be fun from time to time.

Here’s the invite, the postcard, and one of my favorite photos from the night.

Well, the Internet Identity Workshop is now over. I’ve sitted at Hello Croissant, using the WiFi from the McDonald’s across the street - whoever made WiFi is a genius ;)

I’m about to get on the Bart. I’m still not done with my demo for TagCamp but I’ve got all night to finish it, haha. I’m using the code I created for QuitFiltering, to some degree, to put a new spin on tagging. It should be pretty interesting if I can get some more of the bits and pieces to work.

Chris Heurer, Mary Hodder, Drummond Reed, and a few others ended yesterday with an interesting conversation about tagging, tagspaces, and XRI - go figure. We’ll certainly be talking through some more of that in the next day and a half I am sure.

Sometimes making something simple is just so complicated.

It’s not often that I get to link to something that’s not only scary but pleasant. Back in June I attended Gnomedex and had the opportunity to meet Bre Petis. Bre is really one of the coolest people I met at the conference and I’m really glad I had the chance to learn more about him and what he’s up to.

At the same time, it was my first extended exposure to a videoblogger :) Bre popped a comment the other day to let me know that he had posted a video he and I made while on the escalators at the public library. So here it is. The camera really does add 20 pounds ;)

What’s also interesting to me, of course, is that Bre is hosting his video on blip.tv. Blip is one of the leading videoblogger destinations for lots of reasons. I like to think it’s because of the super-talented guys behind it - close personal friends of mine. I remember going one of the first meetings when the Pokkari guys were getting ready to move towards Blip. Some time ago I came close to becoming a full-timer with Pokkari, but opportunities pulled us in different directions. I’m still close to the gang and meet with them from time to time to see how they’re doing.

So check them both out, you’ll enjoy it!

Sorry for the long lapse on the blog here. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, but mostly I’ve been fighting the flu or something and it’s managed to really chew up my precious time.

In the last week, I swept through Vegas for a wedding, San Francisco for a few meetings, and Provo for our second Coding Retreat (it’s awesome to see the code fly together).

This week, I’ve been home for something like 36 hours before I head West again. I’ll be attending the Internet Identity Workshop in Berkeley on Wednesday and Thursday where I will be talking about some of the things we’ve been working on as well as some old things like The Many Faces of Identity, and I might even give away some SparkCards. Friday and Saturday, I’ll be meeting a lot of new folks and hanging with some old ones at TagCamp. Since everyone is required to present something, I’ll be hopefully ready to demo something Chris Heuer and I snapped out last week.

I get back on Sunday afternoon, but the train has not stopped yet. I’m leaving on Tuesday, again, for Las Vegas. We’ve been retained by JD Powers to provide some Sparkcasting goodness for the International Automotive Roundtable which will take a look at Automotive Internet trends and futures. Talk about getting to meet some old friends - I’ll be back in touch with folks I haven’t seen in 4 or 5 years.

Of course, I’ll be home for a week, processing audio and working on the Secret Project for a week or so before heading to Boston for Corante’s Symposium on Social Architecture. That’s going to be a great event packed with super-smart people (I’m just tagging along ;)).

Once the symposium is all over, you can expect a re-birth for the Beercasting gang. We’ve been waiting for it to get cold again before we start up and it’s nearing the one year anniversary. Good times for all are guaranteed.

The month will end in Atlanta, but I can’t tell you all why just yet ;)

So in summary, it’s gonna be a very busy 6 weeks or so. I’ll try to post as often as possible, but I know it’s gonna be light for a short bit.

In case your head has been buried in the sand today, or puddle in the case of us New Yorkers, you may not have seen the release of the video iPod. Apple in its remarkable way has released another iPod that outdoes the Nano (released just a few weeks earlier it seems).

Best of wishes to all those producing Video Blogs as now you have a chance for some serious throughput. I’ve always said that the primary force preventing broader acceptance of vlogs was the lack of hardware. This is a MAJOR step in the right direction.

Of course, the really big news for me was the deal with ABC/Disney. That’s something so big it’s hard to contextualize. Plus, I can now watch TV!

We’ve seen the explosion of blogging into all facets of life. It seems that nowadays we can expect our blog served cold and hot, depending on the engine of your choice. As this content continues to bloom, many are trying to better understand it. You see, we put everyting and anything into our blogs - from photos to reminders to articles and everything in between. Of course, this is all potentially a huge database of different types of information - if it only had structure.

That’s right, we aren’t very good at actually making our information consistent. Each island, what we call a blog, develops its own standard and method for publishing this data right now. Some groups have set out to scour the web for that data and make sense of it - a valiant effort to say the least, but some future efforts may largely undo the necessity.

What are those efforts? Well, there’s two primary camps right now. Microformats, advocated by Technorati, provide a XHTML-based approach to identifying meaningful data. Microformats rely on convention over configuration - a phrase I’m borrowing from my Rails bretheren. Microformats establish a standard convention for how to map and model your information and publicize that for all to use. Specialty tools, currently in the form of Javascript extensions, are able to automatically extract this information based on the pattern.

The other entrant in this movement, is Structured Blogging, from the fine folks at PubSub. Structured Blogging tends to work from the other end of the spectrum, advocating the extension of publishing tools to generate “better” content. Right now, Structured Blogging is taking the plug-in approach and working to create plug-ins for the leading blog tools that will assist the user in creating structured blog content.

Of course, I was talking about this more than a year ago. I ran a series of posts about Blog Entry Archetypes. I definitely can appreciate where both groups are coming from.

However, for me, these two camps are really different sides of the same coin. The end result of Structured Blogging is XML, so why not XHTML? If we go with XHTML, we end up with Microformats. Realistically, why wouldn’t we present the data using a microformat, when available?

The same goes true in the reverse. No one wants to remmber the standard. No one wants to really write XHTML if they can just fill out a form (well most sane people don’t). Tantek demostrated the conversion process for me at Gnomedex earlier this year - it was straightforward (especially for him). But why bother? There are tools that can assist me in the creation process and Structured Blogging seems to be advocating that route.

Stowe has alluded to potential business motivations tht might be driving the various approaches. I think he’s certainly onto something. But in the end, both parties say they’re open - and I believe them. In the end, they want data that’s parseable - what red-blooded geek doesn’t? Arguing over what’s more important, the hammer or the chisel - well, that seems pointless.

In the end we’re all just users and we want to be as lazy a s possible but still expect the world ;)

Last week at Web 2.0 there were a number of great presentations (so I hear). One theme that seems to have emerged from the event was the less is the new more.

I don’t know the specific order, but I know two parties that contributed. Seth Godin did a presentation on Squidoo, a wonderful project I am proud to have helped with. As Seth noted:

“For a long time, the web has been about more. More links, more traffic, more hits, more choices. In the face of all that more, many sites (and most surfers) are not getting what they want. This free ebook proposes a different way of achieving your goals: less.”

Source: Seth’s Blog, “The next free ebook (Squidoo!)”

Jason Fried, the vocal developer/founder of 37Signals also gave a presentation. He’s commented on it at his blog:

I want to talk about the concept of less. And more specifically the idea of using less as a competitive advantage.

Conventional wisdom says to beat your competitors you need to one-up them. If they have 4 features, you need 5. Or 15. Or 25. If they’re spending X, you need to spend XX. If they have 20, you need 30.

Source: Signal vs. Noise, “Less as a competitive advantage: My 10 minutes at Web 2.0″

Jason goes on to list these points:

• Less Money
• Less People
• Less Time
• Less Abstractions
• Less Software
• More Constraints

I would have to say that in my heart of hearts, I agree with them both. Living that way is an entirely different story.

Last night we had another late-night planning session - you know the kind that runs past midnight and then I get stuck waiting 1.5 hours for the next train to take me back to my palace in Newark.

We have been working through the requirements for another arm of the project and it seems we always go back and forth, back and forth. Fortunately, everyone involved is super smart and passionate about the part they know. It sure makes for some interesting discussions.

In the end, we landed on our A-ha moment in the last 10 minutes (of course) - and it was all by accident (naturally). It’s funny when that one piece is uttered and all of a sudden the whole thing makes sense like you never imagined before.

I was happy to find an entry on Charlie’s blog today that dealt with what we were grappling with - what to start with. It’s really the hardest thing in the world to answer. Here’s Charlie’s recommendation:

• List all of the ideas for functions of your service.
• Rank them in terms of value to the user.
• Kill off the most useless 20% of the features.
• Take the remaining 80% and map how many clicks it takes for someone to actually complete them.
• Even with the most simple, try and kill off 20% of the clicks… or if its really simple to begin with, just shave a click off of everything.

All I can say is Amen, brother.

Well, I’m getting closer to launch with everything we’re doing here at **** *****. To that end, I’ll be in the Bay Area meeting with some people I’ve been conversing with over the past couple of months to explore ways to work together.

I have to admit I feel a little lonely sometimes on the Right Coast.. seems most of the folks I know and talk to about work are out there instead of here. It’s somewhat difficult to balance at the moment, but it’s more than reasonable for the time being.

In any event, I will be in San Francisco from Monday October 17 - 18. I’d love to meetup with anyone that is in the area and would like to talk shop. Drinks and dinner are also quite fun and appropriate :)

Tomorrow, October 6, at 1PM EST I will be conducting the second segment of the Podcasting on Windows. The next topic will focus in on the hardware and software required to get a Podcast flowing from your computer to the listeners ears.

The show will last for approximately 45 minutes. There will be a twenty-minute interview with buddy and audio geek master Jake Ludington. Following that, I’ll be sharing my desktop and workflow and demonstrate how to put Adobe Audition to the paces to produce podcasts quickly and easily.

There’s no cost - our sponsor GoToMeeting.com is making it all happen, in collaboration with Corante.com. Here are the details to participate:

To join the web conference: https://www.gotomeeting.com/join/172828395

To join the teleconference (for audio):
Conference Call: Dial-in #: 563-843-7500
Passcode: 8524544507

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Hope to see you there!