My favorite time of year is upon us.. (ok so, fall is awesome for football, summer is awesome for beaches, and winter is awesome for Christmas but...) Spring is festival season in Birmingham, so here are a few things I am looking forward to doing over the next few months...


First off, my favorite: THE MAGIC CITY BREWFEST - May 31 & June 1 at Sloss. - Over 250 beers and all the food you can grab, set to the tune of some great music. Last years festival was a blast... check out www.magiccitybrewfest.com ... As a proud member of Free The Hops, I hope you can come out and enjoy this while helping us fund the fight against outdated beer laws in Alabama.

Next: Do Dah Day. - Dogs take over Caldwell Park in downtown Bham. Chloe had a blast last year. www.dodahday.org

The Buck Creek Festival in Helena. A very laid back affair around the creek in old town, complete with a rubber ducky race down the water fall. Too chill to miss. www.buckcreekfestival.com

City Stages - A pretty cool lineup this year... www.citystages.org

The Crawfish Boil - An AWESOME music lineup... Candlebox, 3 Doors Down, Seether, Flo Rida, T Pain, Gavin Degraw, and Fergie. Wow! www.schaeffercrawfishboil.com


And, although it isn't a festival, the Farmer's Market on Saturday's at Pepper Place. So cool.. homemade ice cream, Okafes Coffee!!!, fresh produce, tastey baked goods, and a really cool atmosphere. www.pepperplacemarket.com


Did I miss any? I know there are others....

Haven't posted in a week or two (dang you, life!  Getting in the way of me blogging!) but I thought I would feed you a quick update. 

Free The Hops had an awesome write up in the Montgomery Advertiser last weekend.  If you are not aware of Free The Hops or where the gourmet beer movement in Alabama stands, here is your chance to catch up.

I am walking in the March of Dimes' March for Babies this weekend... if you would like to donate to, you know, save freakin babies... that would be awesome... Donate here!

Also, Slamwire did the Magic City Brewfest website this year.  Check it out.  I am also working with the festival, so if you don't know about it, check out the website and come out for the best beer and food Alabama has to offer.

And on a personal note, poison oak sucks... if you see the dreaded leaves of three... run like hell.  I'm serious.

Finally, enjoy my new favorite song of the moment... Ludo - Love Me Dead

Most of you have probably heard of Pandora, the radio-ish music site based on "the music genome" project that lets you stream music over the web for free. Many other sites let you do that (grooveshark!!) , but none as easily, or as ACCURATE as pandora.

The genome project game them a great way to classify music as if it was DNA, allowing them to predict what songs you will like based on songs you have gave the thumbs up to. Yahoo Music did this also, but it is no where NEAR as accurate as Pandora. And yahoo has ads if you don't pay.

The thing I like most about Pandora is the fact that it appeals to EVERYONE. No one will look at this and go "what good is that?" Almost everyone loves some type of music, and the prospect of finding more that you will like is a universal appeal. Facebook is great, myspace is huge, people love blogs and twitter... but no web 2.0 development is as universally appealing as pandora.

Check out some of my stations that it created me, based on songs I like:

I have been involved with the Free the Hops organization for a year now.  For those who don't know what Free The Hops is about (from our FTH website):

Free The Hops | Alabamians For Specialty Beer (FTH) is a grassroots, non-profit organization whose mission is to help bring the highest quality beers in the world to Alabama. Commonly referred to as craft beers due to the skill and artistry required to brew them, they are also appropriately classified as specialty or gourmet.
....

The world's finest and most expensive beers are prohibited in Alabama as result of the state's current alcohol by volume (ABV) and container size limits for beer. Beverages defined as beer under Alabama law can contain no more than 6% alcohol by volume (ABV) and can be sold in containers no larger than 16 ounces.

Meanwhile beverages defined as wine can contain up to 24% ABV and have no container size restrictions. (Note: Under Alabama law, wine is further divided into "table wine" which has a limit of 14.9% ABV and "fortified wine" which has a limit of 24% ABV.) Likewise, liquor can contain up to 100% ABV and can be sold in any size container under Alabama law.

Well, just a few weeks ago, the first step in HB195 (the Gourmet Beer Bill in the House of Rep's in Alabama) passed.  The next step is to pass the other house, then be signed by the Governor. But we didn't pass without a spirited debate.  I am not going to say anything about the video below other than this:

1. It's highlights of this years debates

2. it contains serious "jumping to conclusion" by bible thumpers who want us to return to prohibition

3. And at exactly 5:33 into the clip, Rep. Alvin Holmes of Montgomery is un-freakin-believable.  How someone like that can get elected to the State house is beyond me.  It's an embarrassment to the state of Alabama.

enjoy...

Ok, I admit it. I have been a serious hater on twitter. All the geeks love it, but I just didn't get it. Even techcrunch, which rarely becomes fanboys of anything, has PAGES of posts on the twitter, tweets and twittering. But or me, I just didn't see the value in it. I mean, its just the latest evolution of the AIM away message. Its a short blurb that you spit out of your mind so that others can see it. It could be your mood, where you're going, what you're doing... anything.

And don't get me wrong, I loved the AIM away message back in college, and I have been an avid facebook status updater for a while now. But I didn't see the value in twitter, which was basically facebook-type status updates that sat in a stand alone site with no connection to the network of people I had built on other social networks. Why would I use that when I can just use status updates on facebook and people would actually see them?

But I finally found a use for twitter (at least for me). Twitter has taken the world by storm because of it's ease of use with mobile devices. Thanks to twitter, I can now post simultaneous updates to my facebook status, to my blog, on my myspace page, and on my twitter page. How? Lemme show ya...

I send all of my updates (or tweets, to twitter addicts) to twitter. That updates my twitter page.

Then, my facebook status is updated using the twittersync facebook app. Blamo. Now, my friends see what I just said.

Next, I have a twitter badge on my blog and myspace page. Now its updated there too!

And best yet, you can tweet using google talk, but IMing twitter@twitter.com. G talk has a rocking good app for my blackberry, so I can now update twitter, facebook, my blog, and myspace, all with 3 clicks.

So for those who follow my updates, this is why you will see some strange ones, such as the ones last Friday night that I sent out, updating everyone on each of the great beers I was drinking at Hop Jacks in Pensacola. It wasn't like I snuck away to a computer, I simply typed the update in 5 seconds while I stood at the bar waiting for the bartender to come back..

Its mobile applications like this that will be the next big wave of innovation on the internet. And this type of thing is catching on too. Robert Scoble blogged about how a huge party broke out at SXSW just because one guy twittered that he was going to start a party at a certain bar. He walks in a bar, whips out his phone, tweets that "the party is right here", and people start flocking in. That, my friends, is the future.

I have a new rule that I would like to throw out there. I read alot of blogs; several from people who claim to be "professional bloggers". But you cannot have a professional blog if you do not have three updates per day. Why three? Because your average RSS feed defaults to showing the last three entries. So, if you only put one update per day, on the third day, I still see a two day old entry on your RSS feed. There are no exceptions. If you want to hold people's interest and build up steady traffic, then you must post three times a day.

Maybe this makes no sense to some people who don't read blogs, but it makes perfect sense to me. For the record, I have NEVER intended this blog to be a professional blog, so there is no need for me to live by the 3 post rule. But for those who do want to be pros (i.e. people who want to make a living blogging) then three posts per day (excluding holidays and weekends) is a minimum.

Freethehops... Engagements... and a teaser on slamwire



Have a killer weekend folks.. I know I will!

When I was at the University of Florida, we had a course called Computer Concepts and Applications.  I learned some things about technology in that course that continue to shape my opinions today.  What I learned there is a common topic on one of my favorite blogs, howtosplitanatom:  how common people interact with technology... specifically the internet.

One concept discussed in that course was something called the "Oz Factor."  The oz factor is the idea that the average person simply wishes not to deal with technology except on an end-user level out of fear of the unknown.  I live in the south and it is very common for me to speak to someone who says something along the lines of "I don't mess with computers. It's too complicated."  When any geek can tell you that technology, especially internet technology, is rarely THAT complicated.  The difference is that some people just decide to figure it out, and others, since they do not understand it, refuse to.

This feeds into something I have currently been working with: SEO (or search engine optimization).  For those who don't know what I'm talking about... search engine optimization is what you do to a website to ensure that your website about dog biscuits is on the first page of a google (or whatever) search for "dog biscuits".  It is, literally, a huge industry.  But SEO has become a sort of black magic.  While there are books out on the subject and numerous best practices, I have started to see all sorts of consultants, amateurs, and companies claim to be SEO experts.  Can they really be?  When I see a junked up car driving down the road with vinyl lettering on the back window claiming that their company can take you to the top of google, my shennanigan meters go off. (I'm not making that up).

SEO is a growing industry.  It is growing because search engine algorithms are intimidating to the average person.  So, thanks to the oz factor, people would rather pay someone to deal with it than understand it.  And thats ok, it just opens the door for many people to fake expertise in the subject.  But those of us who understand it, can spot bull from a mile away.

As some of you may know by now, Alaina made a questionable decision on Friday and agreed to marry me.  Thanks for all the well wishes... you guys are awesome.  Cue the sappy emo music: