Remember remember, the end of November
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
Working on a lot of stuff that will involve Jennifer Saylor and Jason Sanford in the near future. It will be good for Asheville bloggers. Since so many people seem to have latched onto social media here, to the detriment of their blogs, we have some cool stuff in store to get our awesome wonderful bloggers back to creating the great original content we all love. Stay tuned 
I will be heading out of town on Thursday for a trip to Juneau Alaska. It is work-related and I’m very excited to be a part of what appears to be a great team of developers. I will also be visiting some family and even have a 24 hour layover in Washington so I can hang with my dad. Hopefully they will still have some great turkey leftovers.
I’m taking a couple audiobooks with me on the trip. I have What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, as well as Good Omens by Neil Gaiman. Additionally I grabbed some great literary lectures from The Learning Company. They are 30 minute lectures on the evolution of literature from, well, the beginning of time. While some of it is generally review for me, there are some great insights and additional information that have filled in a lot of gaps for me and given me new directions and book titles to read in the future. Next up is some Homer (Odyssey and Iliad), then a lecture on Chinese Classical Literature. I can’t wait!
I have some podcasts I regularly listen to that are going to be on rotation on the way to Alaska. Figured I would share:
- This Week in Google
Naturally I’m a fanboy of Google. I will elaborate my reasons why in a future post, but Leo Laporte, Gina Trapini, and Jeff Jarvis are the hosts that most regularly run the show. Sometimes they have guests. Last week Matt Cutts was there. There’s a lot of real world and not-so-real-world speculation that happens, as well as real hands-on stuff you can use to get the most out of Google tools. - This Week in Tech
Another one hosted by Leo Laporte. This one is in the same format as This Week in Google, but covers a broader spectrum of tech items and usually has a stellar rotation of guests. - This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis is one of my favorite entrepreneurs and his regular rotation of startup guests that he interviews are quite wonderful. - You Look Nice Today
From the site: “You Look Nice Today is an audio-based Journal of Emotional Hygiene, staffed by lonelysandwich, scottsimpson, and hotdogsladies (Merlin Mann).”
Basically it’s just really funny and they deconstruct smart and silly stuff that I also think is smart and silly. Deceptively smart junk food for the mind. The kind of guys I’d like to meet and hang out. - Chicken Pop Pod
A local (Asheville North Carolina) podcast about 80’s and 90’s pop culture.
For those of you that want to follow what could possibly be the future of blogging, Dave Winer has been writing about his creation of the nextgen blogging tools. My interpretation is that he wants to allow people to post from one place to multiple destinations, (Twitter, your blog, Flickr, Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr, etc) but still be able to pull it all back together into one consistent timeline. It’s interesting to follow the successes and challenges he is encountering in the process. Read this one first, and then this one.
I tweeted this earlier today, but I thought I would share here as well. This is an old post from Jason Calacanis on the “startup depression”. There are some great insights into the ups and downs of startup life, as well as some great motivational advice. I think it’s required reading for pretty much anyone – even if you’re not a tech person. I hope you enjoy it.
Closely related to the Asheville project listed above, I’m working on a great little app for local blogging communities that should be live in a couple months. I’ll give more details as they’re worked out. Updates will be posted to BlogAsheville as well.