Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

It’s Aloha Friday again and I for one can say thank goodness. The week has been uber busy and I don’t feel like I’ve gotten anywhere!

I’m in the midst of a restructuring of sorts over at Blogtown Press as well as working on building new ventures and revisiting old contacts. During this process, I feel like of course there’s too much to do and thus I’m getting no where.

With all that jumble said here’s some links for you Entrepreneur Types out there.

The first one is just a funky little when will I be a millionaire calculator done nicely in AJAX I assume due to it’s no refresh graph adjustment. Put in some variables and see when you’ll be a millionaire. It’s a basic calculator geared towards savers. If only there was a calculator for entrepreneurs…

Here’s something from the Wall Street Journal called Startup Journal. It’s a WSJ online publication for entrepreneurs. I’ve never been nor knew it existed but in a brief poke around it looked like it could help out in some regards.

Lastly I’d like to say congrats to Josh Buckley who this week announced the formation of his network of sites called 2slice Media. Always great to see more people building networks and discussing their paths openly for all to learn and grow. Good luck Josh, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for the new site design and the network growth.

All for the weekend,
Aloha,
Erik

I don’t follow many conferences that go on. I live out here in Hawaii and getting back to the mainland for work (at my “real job”) and lately, for friends weddings is usually all I see, so following conferences is kinda pointless. But this one got my attention.

I am a regular reader of Jason Calacanis’ blog. i love his controversial writing style. He writes things that spark conversation and ultimately more creative thinking. So when I recently read that he and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch were doing a conference together, I had to check it out.

It’s called the TechCrunch20 and it’s going to bring together the 20 newest and most intriguing (to them I assume) new companies to show their products to the “press, VCs, investors, and bloggers.”

The best part is, it won’t cost these companies squat. It appears the conference is going to be setup so these companies can present their goods and get immediate feedback from these groups of people.

Even if your product gets ripped to shreds by some of the biggest names in the Web2.0 world, you’ll still more than likely get some amazing coverage in some of the biggest blogs and newspapers there are. Plus VCs like to invest, and 20 isn’t a large number. My guess is most of these are pre-picked winners and will likely get some primo funding.

Tickets to the event aren’t cheap…
$1,995 if you register by July 15 and $2,495 up til September 10, 2007.

Yikes. I guess if you gotta go it’s worth it. Maybe Blogtown Press will have the budget available by then?

I was tipped off to an interesting article over at Forbes about the concept of Google and Apple joining forces to form a super power of tech goodness. Talk about monopoly!
It seemed cracked out at first, would the world let this happen? Would Microsoft let this happen? If everyone under the sun has been suing Microsoft due to bad business practices which include bundling software wouldn’t they naturally do the same with Google and Apple?

But then I got to thinking, the nice thing about Google is that most of it’s services are given away for free and are open source or semi-open source. Who the heck would anyone sue?

What if Google actually did team up with Apple? Could they then give away the iPhone infinity, a super powered iPod, iTV, Browser, life organizer phone. It would be in the spirit of Google and with the tech sexiness of Apple, all funded by you and I buying music from GooTunes and spreading the advertising love around the world.

What a utopia!

If the iPhone Infinity were to actually exist I would like to be a bunch of things.

Be Apple Sexy
Have a regular sweet scratch resistant screen
Paper thin fold out screen
Option bluetooth wireless mouse
Solar and Motion rechargeable (Think of those watches)
Phone
iPod
Projector
Browser Based Desktop with all the “office like” capabilities
Automatic 411 with GPS
And just be sexy!

Please?

Picture came from Forbes and a dude named Dave Klug who I think is this guy.

Here are some links to keep you busy this weekend and a sweet video of someone who is a little crazy.

For those of you who are bar goers this link will hit home and amuse the crap out of you. It’s from a site called Modern Drunkard Magazine and list 86 Rules of Boozing. My favorite on the list is number 30 Never complain about the quality or brand of a free drink.

For those of you getting into the wide world of ajax you should really check out this site, Miniajax.com. It has tons of great little gadgets to make your site wonderfully interactive.

Probably the best color scheme generator on the web, better than colorschemer online due to it’s layout. Check it out over at the well-styled color scheme generator. You can drag your mouse over the color wheel and see the outcome in the mock website setup.

And now on to the flying squirrel!

Found this gem about a month ago and decided I needed to share it with everyone cause it’s just that cool.

For those of you that are MTV junkies, like myself, you might remember the sweet TV show, that I hope they bring back for season two, Rob and Big. They had a bull dog that they found out could ride a skateboard pretty well.

This dog is ten times better than the one they saw originally do it, and their dog. Although I do think Rob could produce the best skating dog ever, just give him some time. But here it is, this dog leans to turn, kicks and pushes (lupe would be proud) and coasts around the parking lot.

I have to spread the love for someone who has dugg the idea of the link to a coconut contest and is now running a sweet contest of his own. And the title says it all.

You can win a a nice big juicy Argentinian steak! by joining in the contest Cesar has running over at his (sexy design) Argentina Travel Blog. Although I’m not sure if they’ll send you a steak from Argentina, I would imagine a lot of dry ice would be involved he is sending you the love and a steak, worldwide.

Although this is a contest, I should have linked to this blog a while ago. If you’re a travel blog enthusiast such as myself and dig seeing pictures of people enjoying different parts of the world, then this is the blog for you.

He has several writers posting over there, some who are traveling around Argentina and always giving great info and views. I personally really want to visit Argentina and expect a full country tour when I go Mr. I also really want to spend a Buenos Aires party night until 6 in the Morning which he told me about often while we worked. Sounds like an awesome time.

Besides partying I would really like to go to the Patagonia area and found out that there’s a Patagonia Glacier tour you can go on. Which I didn’t even know there was glaciers down there, but I should have guessed. Where else would they have tried out all those sweet thermal clothes they make.

Also, since my fiance and I are into adventure travel, I would probably end up stopping by the white water rafting in Mendoza. I’ve never gone before but the picture he has posted with it sure does look like fun.

Man, entering this contest and thumbing through more pictures of your Argentina Travel Blog has made me want to head out there. Might have to plan a trip soon….

The rest of you, head over and join the contest!

If only there were enough time in the day to do all the reading I want to do.

Magazines; currently I only get monthly magazines, Wired, Business 2.0, Transworld Surf, and Food and Wine. I’d like to also read Time and Business Week.
Newspapers; currently reading none daily but would love to have time to read, The Wall Street Journal and The Honolulu Advertiser (local paper).
Books; anything business related and books similar to what Jared Diamond and John Stossel write.

Blogs: These are what I’d really would like to spend more time reading and keeping up to date on. Mainly because they’re updated with things I’m trying to get into.

Blog Maverick - Mark Cuban rocks! Plane and simple. I love his opinions and the way he runs his basketball team. He writes a lot which makes it tough to keep up with everything, but he writes things that make you think and not just force opinions on you, and that’s great writing.

TechCrunch - It’s by far the best way to keep up with cutting edge ideas happening in on the Internet and keeping up with all the brand new business ventures.

Problogger.net - How anyone produces that much content is beyond me but I wish I had time to take in and learn from everything he posts. Just reading the titles of all his posts isn’t enough sometimes, you gotta read them.

Lorelle on Wordpress - Because I love wordpress and find this blog to be the most comprehensive up to date blog on wordpress. I’d love to follow everything you can do with the software and then have a team of programmers create greatness from what I can piece together.

Of course there are blogs that I do read, but that’s another blog post altogether.

No, I haven’t left the blogging game, just been super busy trying to manage everything I get myself into. This includes new hosting, revamping sites, managing bloggers, patents, domain names, working full-time, planning wedding, etc, etc, etc, blah, blah blah.

Servers
First up, servers. I’ve decided to test out some new servers that can withstand more traffic, and more bandwidth. This means transferring blogs and making sure everything is set-up properly, time CONSUMING!

I needed these new servers because my traffic was growing steadily and I was consuming too much bandwidth for a shared hosting account. Aloha Update was dugg three times to the front page and the site was down for hours at a time until all my sites were pulled from the shared server and put on a super slow, “you’re being punished” server.

I estimated the loss in traffic from the week long ordeal at just under 15,000 unique visitors. For me that’s a lot of uniques.

So I took the plunge and am testing a server setup that costs me 10 times what I was paying previously. Eeek! But not too worry, the increase in traffic that I’ve seen from the diggtastic craziness will hopefully help offset this new cost.

Aloha Update
After chatting with Yaro a few weeks back I’ve decided to make some adjustments to Blogtown Press. One of those adjustments is a revamp of Aloha Update. I’ve been working feverishly into the night on a new layout and format that I hope to have ready for prime time in the next week. (We’ll see how the evenings treat me here in Tucson.)

Moving Forward
Although I’m not making the cover of Business 2.0 or finding myself in wikipedia yet, I like to think that I’m moving in a solid forward direction, no matter how slow it is. I’ll continue to keep you all updated with progress, without letting the cat out of the bag early, but not keeping you in the dark either.

I don’t want to be one of those black magic internet entrepreneurs. The ones where you’re never quite sure if they’re really making money or just BS’ing their way to making money. I’ll tell you when I fail (if) and when I succeed.

I just have to give a little shout-out to Yaro Starak who writes great content over at Entrepreneurs Journey. He was on his way back to Australia after being in Canada for six months and had a stop over in Hawaii for a few days. He happened to be staying in Waikiki, where I live, and we were able to meet up for dinner and some great discussion.

It was really nice to have a networking meetup like this and discuss blogging, entrepreneurship and many other things with someone who has had a fair bit of success in those areas. Yaro offered many tips to help me on my way building my blog network. I imagine I made him laugh or his head spin with my randomness and subject jumping that I often get myself into when I begun talking about all the crazy things I claim to be doing.

I did manage a picture via my cell phone that I hope to have up sooner or later but can’t figure out how to get it onto my computer without sending it and god knows what else I have to do.

Anyway, thanks again for meeting up Yaro, it was great. And all you readers make sure to stay up to date with his Blog Traffic School as I’m sure it’s going to be well worth it.

I know, I know. I should be happy I have such a problem as feeling the digg effect. But truth be told, it sucks. I’ve been getting slammed once again via digg and my server can’t handle it. It’s time for an upgrade.

I’ve spent the better half of the evening searching around for solutions to the digg effect for dynamic pages such as those served by wordpress (which is what I use) and have come up with one main solution. Get a dedicated server. However, I’m not quite ready for what I would consider the big-time solution of a dedicated server and have been searching around for other solutions.

One that I’ve found is Dreamhost.com. It would appear that several large traffic sites use dreamhost and I would assume that not all of them use dedicated servers. But I could be wrong?

Is there a shared hosting solution that my readers could suggest to alleviate my digg effect woes?