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Petentials Reviewed by Amber and Leo June 8, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Site News, Markteting, Podcasts, Links, Reviews, Web Sites, Entrepreneurship, itunes, Petentials, Social Networking , 4 comments

Best of the Net Hooray for Google Alerts, and my media habits. A few days ago, I got an email from the google (now with a new and un-improved favicon…blech). This email linked to a blog post that linked to a podcast, and that was exciting.

The blogger was Kym Huynh, one of the hosts of a brand-new podcast called Best of the Net. In their first episode, The Google Bar, the topic was Pets, and the first story was Petentials, which is just amazing.

Then as I’m listening to some of my weekly podcasts, I noticed something even more amazing.

Net @ Night Every week, Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte sit down to talk about the latest happenings on the Internet. A few weeks ago, they were complaining about not having any guests, so they solicited the audience to email in if they had a web startup. Being the faithful listener that I am, I had to tell them about Petentials. I really thought they’d have thousands of suggestions like this every week, so I didn’t exactly expect to hear anything too soon, but…

I was listening to this week’s Net @ Night, “Tiffany Roll”, and when Amber got to the letters, I heard her say “This week’s letter is from Ryan Price in Orlando…”

Excuse me?

…and then they talked about Petentials for the next several minutes. I stopped right where I was standing and smiled the biggest smile. Right after that I called Darren and told him the good news.

Let’s keep the good vibes going - I know lots of you folks out there have podcasts and blogs - how would you like to feature a new social network that has been covered by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur? Yeah, I thought so…!

Listen to net@night 55: Tiffany Roll (RSS, iTunes)
Listen to Best of the Net 1: The Google Bar (RSS, iTunes)

Looking at the dates that these were released, I almost wonder if the Best of the Net show heard about us via the live stream that Amber and Leo do over at TwitLive.TV while they are taping the show. If so, that makes for a great follow-up to my previous post.

Final Weekend of Fringe May 23, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Blogging, Orlando, Links, Events, Reviews, Fringe, OrlandoScene, Theatre, bloggingfringe , 1 comment so far

Only 3 more days! (plus Patron’s Pick Day) Looks like When Pigs Fly and Alice in Wonderland have already been announced as Patron’s Picks for their venues, which sort of makes sense. If you’re interested in supporting the Fringe AND seeing TJ Dawe, check out Monday morning at 11:30, when TJ will be performing the Slip Knot.

As we rolled into the weekend last night with some light rain and lots of folks crowding the Shakespeare Center, I noticed three college-looking kids soliciting people for photographs. I walked up to tell them about Blogging Fringe, and it turned out they were the Orlando Metromix “SHOCK SQUAD”! Is Metromix the Sentinel one, that’s going to be changing their name? It’s not CityBeat, is it? It’s one of those. I went to see what coverage they had of the festival, and it was exactly one article - recommendations based on watching the preview. Also, no comments allowed. They asked me to link to them, and in hopes that they link back, here we go.

Check out Orlando Metromix’s Fringe Photoset - lots of familiar faces in there.

Last night, I lost my festival program. Normally no big deal, but this was different - I had written all sorts of notes in my program, marked down page numbers of shows, kept my tickets inside, and started to feel like my program was a treasured item - sort of like a stuffed animal or something, now lost. I checked the Brown Venue, the Blue Venue, the Ticket Booth, and the Garbage Can too, but my program was gone. I went to the box office to get some tickets re-printed ( handy reason for using credit card or the internet to buy your tickets), and proceeded to go through the tickets I did have with the volunteer to make sure I wasn’t missing any others.

Apparently, I’ve seen a lot of shows:

  1. A Brief History of Petty Crime
  2. American Squatter
  3. Boom
  4. *Flamenco con Fusion 08
  5. Galapagos: The Directors Cut
  6. **Here Be Dragons
  7. *Mark Baratelli
  8. Move!
  9. MR. FOX
  10. *Mr. Marmalade
  11. **New Rochelle
  12. On Second Thought
  13. *once upon a time: The End
  14. Oral
  15. Parlour Games
  16. perfectly broken
  17. Power To Pleasing: The Sex Lives of Teenage Girls
  18. *Red, White, and Ignorant: An American Love Story
  19. **Reefer Madness
  20. Shadows In Bloom
  21. Skip Peril and the Players of the Lost Trunk
  22. *Swell
  23. The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook
  24. *The Bric-a-Brac Vagabond Vintage Variety Show
  25. The Cody Rivers Show presents: Stick to Glue
  26. The Greg Barris Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus
  27. *The Slipknot: A Benefit for the Orlando Fringe
  28. Totem Figures
  29. TV iMature
  30. *Wet
  31. **VarieTEASE: No. 24 Doll Factory
  32. When Pigs Fly

* Indicates shows I have not seen, but I have a ticket for.
** Shows I saw after writing this blog post.

All of these shows (that I have seen) are awesome. Go see them all. If I could only tell you three, I would include The Cody Rivers Show, On Second Thought and Boom (not in that order). I would say Power to Pleasing, but it’s sold out. I continue to tell folks that if they haven’t seen any dance, they MUST go - we always have great dance at this festival, and I’m seeing all of the 5 dance shows this year. Lastly, (not leastly) if you’ve never seen TJ Dawe, Barry Smith, Jimmy Hogg, Greg Landucci, Gemma Wilcox or any of the other out-of-town monologists (like Paul Hutcheson from On Second Thought, mentioned earlier), they are all worth your time and money. This is also not counting Patron’s Pick day, where I plan to see some shows that have floated to the top, but I managed to miss. It should be a fun experience.

What was also a fun experience was getting a random contact from some folks from Rake Theatre down in Boynton Beach - they’re putting on Fluency this week at the Fringe. Apparently, they are wanting to start an all-Florida arts blog - a very ambitious project. I have about 3 such very ambitious projects in my head, in the works with locals, or I at least own the domain name for them.

The South Florida folks’ project is called, of all things, Florida Arts Blog, which is a Wordpress.com site right now, but for some reason the posts about Fringe have disappeared… ::shrug:: Something and someone to watch in the coming weeks and months. I am trying to sell them on Florida Creatives myself, blogging can come later. They’ve also got a link to Mark’s Orlando Arts Blog up there… I wonder if they’ve been emailing him too…?

Other things happening this weekend would be:

Orlando Silent Rave (see a video)
Saturday, May 24th, 5:24PM @ the Green Lawn of Fabulosity

Kite Flying 2.0 with Radio Rickshaw and Greg Barris
Sunday, May 25th 11AM - 5PM @ the Green Lawn on Drunkenness

Zombie March 3.7 with Rich Weirdos and Friends
Saturday, May 24th @ 3PM Park Ave and 5PM Lake Eola

If you know of more cool stuff, leave a comment and we’ll get it listed.

For Post’s Sake! April 23, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, News, Blogging, Orlando, Links, Drupal, Events, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, OrlandoScene, Friends, Petentials, PopSci , add a comment

Feeling like I haven’t blogged in a while, so here are some things that have happened.

I saw (and played a bit at) an awesome marathon show by marc. with a c. on Saturday at Stardust. I used to be in the band, and I remain a fan. Marc just released his latest album, Linda Lovelace for President, on Amazon MP3, official plastic + DVD due out this summer.

We had a super-awesome Florida Creatives Happy Hour last night - HUGE thanks to all the first-timers, and of course our repeat offenders. If you haven’t seen or registered for the new site yet, surf on over and create a group, get organized, or otherwise try to toss some useful information in there.

Went to an inaugural Refresh Central Florida and Orlando PHP group (seperately). Refresh may or may not be the “tech association” that everyone has been hububbing about - there was talk of turning it into a “United Arts for Geeks”, supporting local groups and individuals. Actually, I was thinking of using United Arts as a channel to have a Florida Creatives professional grant that gets specified in all the same ways the regular UA grants go, just sponsored by us.

Things have been going gangbusters for pet dating site Petentials.com in the last few weeks our US ranking for Alexa is hovering around 100K (we’re more like 400K globally). We’re currently on the second page of Google for “Internet Pets”, but not too high for “pet dating”, hence the googlebombing you may or may not want to participate in… ha!

We’re planning a downtown Orlando photowalk as part of an episode for OrlandoScene.TV - this will be either May 10th or 11th, barring weather, number of RSVPs and other factors. Bring your SLR and your eyes. We’ll be doing interviews with photographers and linking to photosets and whatnot. The idea is to get a little co-promotion on, and get a hold of some much-needed production stills for Orlando Scene. In the AXIS Mag article, well, globe with a network cable… yikes.

Did I mention the kick-ass Drupal meetup we had last week? That was a fun time. I signed up to talk about Drupal Theming with Zen and… I think Views sometime this summer, but I know for certain that our next meetup will be held May 17th in Maitland. Check the Florida Drupal Group page for more info.

Ah, let’s not forget Likemind - we ARE still doing that - now we’re back at Panera Bread by Lake Eola. The next one of those should be May 16th. I have a picture of that somewhere… check the Ryan Price and the Media feed for those bonus Flickr pics you get in there from time to time.

I’m sure I’m missing lots and lots and lots. I have been SO busy lately.

BTW, over at Bonnier (the makers of PopSci) we’re hiring a MySQL Admin. If you are an experienced database administrator, or you have several years of experience with MySQL, send us an email.

P.S. I almost forgot! If you like the movie Clue, Improv Comedy, theatre, mystery, games, or if you’re my friend then you MUST MUST go and see “Murder We Wrote” over at Rollins College this weekend. YOU WILL THANK ME.

Conversation about Orlando Tech Association April 7, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Markteting, Orlando, Links, Events, Trends, floridacreatives, BarCamp, Politics , add a comment

…is happening right now over on Robert Dempsey’s blog - he gave some highlights from the weekend at BarCamp and some of the many events and discussions around the idea of forming a technology association in Central/all of Florida.

I obviously had something to say, and I think this conversation is headed in a healthy direction. If you want to get involved, please check out Robert’s blog and the subsequent comments.

Here are my words:

Florida Creatives is not the tech association, but it could be one option if people get on board. I would love to be involved, and if we end up using Florida Creatives as the name for the organization so be it.

Robert and I have discussed getting a regular conference call together that is recorded so people can listen in and post responses, as well as meetings in person, but I think something like a video or audio recording of these events will help ease everyone’s minds. I think the more open this entire process is, the fewer witch hunts we will see.

Over at FloridaCreatives.com we’re going to be setting up a free tool to help folks get organized, make connections, get a centralized list of events, and have a conversation.

The tools will be similar to those you see on Meetup.com but offered for free to anyone who wants them.

The work we’ve already done starting the wiki will continue with a more user-friendly look and feel, and hopefully the information will become even easier to find, search and import/export. The point is to make the tools free and openly available with a very low barrier to entry.

I’m stoked to hear so many passionate voices. It’s a sign that we’ve arrived as a community and it’s time to take action.

I never wanted to set up Florida Creatives like that and put in all the work until we were ready and it would be easy to get some folks to help us keep the thing running smoothly. This is the sort of thing we can write grant proposals about and gather donations for. Meetup.com’s $20/month fee is exorbitant, but they do have to pay the bills.

We’ve got a volunteer who wants to help with the design, but I’m sure we could use more. I know we have a couple of Drupal nerds in town, I’m willing to train more. Drupal’s Organic Groups is really one of the most robust and easiest tools to get this job done, and it will let everyone have a level playing field here.

This is a political movement - the word politics is scary, but creating a group like this means a consolidation of power - from individuals, groups and businesses alike, they all wield some influence, some resources, and often times the larger groups are not submitting higher quality volunteers, or more passionate, or even a larger number than the smaller groups. There’s a lot of talk going around about the size of companies, but one passionate and focused person can achieve what a large group of lazy and disagreeable types can.

If we can come to a consensus, philosophically, ethically; set a good example for others to follow, we can be a large group of passionate and focused individuals all going in the same direction.

BarCampOrlando IZEA Geekout Party

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, Links, Events, Video, Beer, floridacreatives, Entrepreneurship, photos, Contributors, OrlandoScene, BarCamp, Social Media Events , 1 comment so far


BarCampOrlando April 2008 IZEA Party, originally uploaded by hyperlinkguerrilla.

This was how I spend 90% of the time at the IZEA GeekOut Party - talking to Tara Lamberson and Dan Kinchen about a Central Florida Tech Association, or something like it.

Thanks to Ted Murphy for throwing the party - we hope to see you on the 21st for Florida Creatives. Also thanks to Adam Teece for hosting the podcasts.


Also appearing in this video: Ted Murphy, Gregg Pollack and a widdle baby
See more videos by Adam at the GeekOut

BarCampOrlando Downtown April 5th and 6th, 10AM - 6PM April 1, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, SEO, Music, Links, Events, Video, Coworking, Trends, Standards, floridacreatives, mashups, Graphics, OrlandoScene, Teaching, open source, BarCamp, PodCamp, Storytelling, phone, Web Services, Social Media Events, Social Networking, Programming , add a comment

BarCamp Orlando is a weekend for all types of creative folks to come together and share with each other. The event is dubbed an “unconference”, a format which derives power from the people instead of the event organizers or the presenters. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get on stage and speak, teach or lead a discussion, playing off of the idea that at any given conference, the people in the audience have more knowledge collectively than the presenter(s) on stage.

This second installment of BarCamp will be held over 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, April 5th and 6th, in downtown Orlando at the Wall Street complex, from 10AM - 6PM each day. Registration is free, and a registration promises a shirt and lunch on the sponsors of BarCamp, businesses who are passionate about the technology and media communities of Central Florida.

Saturday is the designated “Dev Day”, playing host to everything from web programming to robot building and video game development and everything in between. iPhone hackers, guys with soldering irons, the latest technologies, and plenty that haven’t been realized yet. Every 30 minutes, both venues will have a different talk going on, so if you’re feeling lost in the jargon, apply the “rule of 2 feet” and check out what’s happening in the other room!

Sunday is dubbed “Media Day”, and is the place for storytellers, journalists, writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, 2D and 3D artists, podcasters, bloggers and social networkers to show off their work, share their tricks or talk about the state of the industry. From 12 to 1 we will be talking about the “Past, Present and Future of Media in Central Florida”, hoping to give our community a sense of our story, and where we’re headed.

Registration is free, and the event runs from 10AM - 6PM both days with a lunch break at 1PM. The event will be housed in Slingapour’s and One-Eyed-Jack’s, with Wall St Cantina acting as our “hallway”. There will be projectors and microphones, chairs and a space to speak. All you have to do is write your name on the whiteboard and you get 20-25 minutes to share your passions with a group of energetic, engaged geeks and creatives. I would not use the words “captive audience” to describe the BarCamp crowd, because they all want to get involved.

Visit www.barcamporlando.org today and register for Dev Day, Media Day or both days. Wall Street Plaza is at 18 Wall Street Plaza, Orlando, FL 32801 - barcamporlando.org/where has a map to the venue and information about parking.

The 80/20 Rule and Win-Win-Win March 21, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Markteting, Podcasts, Links, Quotes, Video, Trends, Entrepreneurship, open source, Love , 2 comments

Gary Vaynerchuk talks about a secret that he thinks is at the core of much of his success.

Reposted from: The 80/20 Business rule…..heck Life - my 2 minute take on life

Many folks who were at Future of Web Apps in Miami had nice things to say about Gary V’s talk. I’ve also seen some other really nice videos by this guy on the web, and probably bookmarked them on my Ma.gnolia - check the RSS or link over there to check my bookmarks.

I can’t say that Gary has all these ideas himself, and he does credit Kathy Sierra and Tara Hunt at the beginning of his video (google those people if you don’t know who we’re talking about).

Right, I don’t think all his ideas are too super-original, but he has a very large and very rabid audience, and he understands how he got them, and he also presents it in a very down-to-earth manner. There is no barrier to entry for Gary unless you’re afraid of spelling his name or people from New York.

I also like how he tells us not to channel Calacanis (or whoever), but just to be ourselves and do it really well and look out for other people.

If you look at your seemingly selfless (my brother would say altruistic) efforts in the ways you are benefiting yourself, the other person and those around you (or you, your partners in business and the community, or you, your fellow artists and the people who enjoy your art), you’re going to have not only success, but a great feeling about how you got there.

Win-Win is not enough, you have to look for Win3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, true, but if you paid attention in physics, there is always a release of heat or some byproduct of the reaction. If you can find the way to set up a reaction with a happy byproduct, everyone wins.

Take Hydrogen Fuel Cells. They last longer, they’re sustainable to produce (I think), and the waste product is water. The customers are happy because of the small powerful battery, the business should be happy because they’re not working with a limited supply of something like oil, and the people of the world should be happy because there isn’t a battery rotting in the ground.

Open source is the same. When everyone is giving 80%, expecting 20%, the products are amazing, the community is healthy and the users of the products are happy. Win-Win-Win.

I can see this especially given my new situation with Petentials. We have all been giving so much for so long, but it’s getting so easy to do things now, our vision is getting really razor-sharp, we’re having a napalm-like burst of awesome ideas, and we can see the next plateau.

Things are just going really well right now. I have my complaints, but if there was nothing to reach for, I think I would lock myself in my apartment and curl up in a ball for lack of something to do. I am addicted to this stuff, and I’m starting to see the rewards.

Coworking Tuesdays Photoset March 19, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Orlando, Links, Events, Coworking, Trends, floridacreatives, photos , add a comment

I went on my lunch break today, and those 30 minutes were actually quite fantastic.

Not only Coworking Tuesdays at Stardust, but also Cup-O-Code, the Orlando Coworking article from the Sentinel (about), and Alex on Cow-orking at BarCamp Orlando 2007. End very short slideshow.

There is a reason the slideshow is so short. Outside of Likemind (which has tons of coworking connotations in this town), there haven’t really been many documented coworking sessions here. That’s what Coworking Tuesdays are all about - adding folks to the mailing list, taking pictures, recording podcasts, making videos, setting up a web site and keeping the wiki up-to-date… and more.

There’s lots of almost-happening coworking stuff in downtown Orlando, check out the mailing list for updates about that. This is going to happen before Memorial Day at the current rate, and I’m likely jinxing it by saying anything, but we want interested parties!

Would you pay for some space at a table if someone had their name(s) on the lease and other folks were paying for some desk space too?

5 Essential Firefox Plugins for Web Developers March 13, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Links, Drupal, Reviews, Browsers, Standards, Web Sites, PopSci, Programming , add a comment

Since I have a new job, I had to sit down at a fresh installation of Windows today and get my machine developer-ready. I already miss the Dock and Transmit and the Terminal, but I’ll deal.

One thing I noticed was my reflex-like action to go download 4 plugins no web developer should be without. They are, in no particular order:

  1. Measure It! How wide is that sidebar? Don’t pull out the DOM inspector or Firebug, just MeasureIt! I also like that once you drag the box it persists on the screen and you can drag it around to compare measurements.
  2. ColorZilla Sample any color in your browser - don’t open Photoshop, just hover over a color you like and voila! Also generates Photoshop pelletes, but I don’t open Photoshop, so I don’t use that feature.
  3. FireBug I can’t actually tell you how awesome this is. Being able to see the http response of every file that was loaded and how long each file took to load is already a killer app, not to mention dead-simple editing of any markup, CSS or JavaScript on your page, and being able to execute JavaScript on a live website without having to open any windows.
  4. Web Developer Toolbar My #1 used feature is the Resize menu. So many pages break my window from being exactly 1024 wide, and I also want to check things out at 800 wide as well. This just feeds the my OCD streak and lets me get on without worrying.
  5. Honorable mention: FasterFox This wasn’t on my list, but it is now, if only for the nifty little timer in the bottom-right-hand corner of the browser that tells you how long it took for the page to load.

These don’t include any of my plugins for personal productivity, web browsing, media sharing, or Search Engine Optimization. Instead, these are 5 plugins I think should come pre-installed on every developer’s machine.

Also, if you’re doing Drupal development, I hear very good things about this Theme Developer Module for Drupal 6. I’m not using 6 on any production sites yet, but I think it will prevent you from having to open up TextMate and do a “Find in Project”.

Leave your favorite development plugins, or other kinds below.

Tampa Film Fan Immaortalized as a Comic February 26, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Blogging, Links, Film, Newspaper, floridacreatives, Tampa , 1 comment so far

Tampa Film Fan is written by Lisa Ciurro. It’s a local blog I read has been featured in the Tampa Tribune. My only question is this:

Your paper acknowledges bloggers?

Ours has plenty of bloggers that work for the paper or blog on behalf of the paper, but what’s all this business about recognizing a job well done? I won’t stand for it! (actually, I’ll give a standing ovation for it.

Tampa Film Fan » i’ve blogged, been blogged about, and even blogged about blogging: now I’ve been blogjammed and i think i like it

Lisa CiurroI’ve been called a cartoon character before. Now, according to the Tampa Tribune’s BlogJam section, I actually am one!

Visit www.myspace.com/wikiworld to see more of Williams’ talent and creativity on display.