One of the highlights of the conference was on Tuesday, Google threw a big party at their campus. Officially called the Google Dance 2008: Glow in the Dark. It was a great time! There was all sorts of food, goodies, games & dancing…. not to mention the free beer!

At the Google dance, they gave you a really cool black shirt. I really wanted the light grey color, but I was told that was for the ‘Staff’ only. Most of the nite, I walked around asking people if they wanted to trade shirts. I found it quite odd that 17-out-of-20 people with the incorrect sized t-shirt said “Yea, sure. Let’s trade!”. But nobody with my size (XL) wanted to trade me shirts. I only found eight people with Grey-Google shirts that were XL’s, and every single one of them told me “No Trade!”

I guess my A/B test concluded that Fat people like the color grey! (And I got stuck with the traditional black)

Google Dance 2008: Glow in the Dark Photos:

Below are a few images I snapped at the Google Dance and posted on my flickr account.

flickr link	flickr link
flickr link	flickr link
flickr link	flickr link
The Obligatory Self-Pic	My ‘Glow In The Dark’ Look

Were You At the Google Dance? Send Me Your Flickr Photos!

If anybody has any photo’s they took at the Google Dance 2008: Glow in the Dark, feel free to drop me a comment with a flickr link to the photo. Or send me an email.. For the next few weeks, I’ll continue to update the page, as people start to upload their photos.

But, please make sure that you change the Creative Commons license in flickr.

Random Flickr Images of Google Dance 2008
flickr photo by IAmAGenious	flickr photo by DennyTerrio	flickr photo by DennyTerrio	flickr photo by IAmAGenious
flickr photo by DennyTerrio	flickr photo by DennyTerrio	flickr photo by Jyri	flickr photo by Jyri

For more photo’s of the 2008 Google Dance, check out the below galleries.

• TopRankBlog.com - Google Dance 2008 Photos
• Andy Beard’s Flickr Photo Gallery of the Google Dance 2008

Not too long before we left for Cancun, I started getting more active on my YouTube account. I like to surf around and find good videos, in order to submit them to digg and the various other social media sites. Because I have this account, I figured I should at least put some kind of content on the profile. Which was one of the primary reasons I wanted a Flip.

While I was in Cancun, I set up my Flip Video Camera, and recorded a LONG video of the Lagoon in Cancun. We stayed on the 6th Floor of the Oasis Hotel, so we had a pretty nice view of the lagoon. I didn’t have a tripod, so I had to make the equivalent out of what we had in the room. I ended putting a patio chair on top of a glass table. Then stacked a layer of books, set of domino’s, a box of wheat thins, & then two container’s of nuts. Check out this crazy tripod setup I had going.

I ended up capturing 90 minutes of film. So I just condensed that down to 60 seconds. The below video is what ended up coming out. The quality of the flip isn’t too great, but it’s still pretty cool to watch all the boats & waverunners in the lagoon. My timelapse from Cancun.

Timelapse: 90 Minutes in Cancun (in 60 seconds)

I’m pretty excited about it, because it’s my first REAL video-editing project.

Any thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

UPDATE - 06/09/2008:

I just wanted to quickly update this post. I also submitted my timelapse video to digg, and it almost hit the Front Page. Ended with 178 diggs & 17 comments. But never popped. I’m thinking of submitting it to Reddit tomorrow, but probably won’t. We’ll see.

The amount of views on the YouTube video itself, is currently sitting at 817. It’s received 2 comments, and was rated 3 stars, after 13 ratings..

That is all. Comment away…

On April 23, I visited the Blog of the Houston Chronicle’s Cartoonist, Nick Anderson. He had a pretty funny animated clip of Hillary Clinton & her presidential campaign, and wanted to submit it to Digg. (Check out the post & read all of the comments.)

Unfortunately, digg gave me an error message when I tried to submit it, so I decided to send Nick Anderson a blog comment asking him about his video. Which started a very interesting dialogue that gave me an interesting new insight into the power of the internet.

• 10:08am - My first comment to Nick Anderson: “That’s hilarious! Are you going to post this on YouTube? You definitely should.”
• 11:36am - Nick Anderson responded to my comment: “Yes…later today or tomorrow.”
• 6:00pm - I responded: “Hi Nick… What’s your YouTube channel/username? Or are you just gonna post the YouTube-link to the video here on your blog?”
• 10:34pm - Nick Anderson responded: “Bukowsky, the link to my channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/andertoon I haven’t done much with it, yet. The animations tend to get a lot more views when they are posted on the Chronicle’s channel, but I’ve started putting some of them into mine recently. I’ll get this animation posted

This is where it starts to get interesting. I’m not sure why, but is last response made me laugh. It almost seemed like a challenge, and I was pretty confident that if I got one of his YouTube video’s to the front page of Digg or go popular on StumbleUpon or Reddit, that I could get him at least 1,000 views on YouTube. So, I left him this response:

• 11:30pm - “Probably… What do you want to bet, that I can get your Move Over Obama Girl video to over 1,000 views by the end of the week?”

I didn’t even give him a chance to respond, because I knew that it was possible. So, first thing that next morning, I submitted the below video to all of the social media sites.

I then left Nick Anderson this comment:

• 8:40am - “The race to 1000 Views has officially started…. The Move Over Obama Girl video is currently is sitting at 359 views on YouTube. Let’s see how long it takes to reach 1,000.”
• 1:58pm - Nick Anderson simply responded: “Did you post it somewhere?”
• 2:26pm - I responded back with a bunch of links to where I submitted the ‘Move Over Obama Girl’ YouTube animation

Apparently, there were some random readers of his blog, that started to get into it, because at 9:46pm that next night, somebody called flypusher left this comment:

• 9:46pm - “I just bumped it to 925!!”

It was pretty cool to read what flypusher wrote, because I was constantly hitting refresh on the YouTube video page, just to see how many views it now has.

Long Story short, the ‘Move Over Obama Girl’ animation did well on both Digg & StumbleUpon, but failed miserably on Reddit. Although, it didn’t make the Front Page of digg, the final result was 155 diggs & 6 comments. It did exceptionally well on StumbleUpon, and was prominently featured on popurls.com. However, the folks over at Reddit voted it down within minutes of it being submitted.

That very next morning, at 8:56am, I checked and the video had 1,364 views! So, basically, within 24 hours, this video on YouTube received over 1,000 views, ALL because I submitted it to different Social Media sites. I could only imagine how many views it got if it hit the Front Page of digg.

Anyways, I’ve been playing around with the Flip a bit. Filming random stuff. My girlfriends birthday was this past weekend, so I got some good footage during the celebrations! Of course, she won’t let me upload any of it. Figures.

However, I do have a short video of my dog Harley Jane playing in the backyard.. She’s a pit bull, and people are generally a bit timid of pits. Understandably so. But, I will say, Harley Jane is one of the sweetest dogs you will ever meet. She helps my disabled mom around the house, and is very smart. She just looks mean!

So, for my first video I posted on YouTube is a short clip of Harley Jane & I.

Nothing great, because I still need to find a good video-editing software… Just 37 seconds of Harley Jane running around in the backyard. Enjoy!

Yep. I know! You’re wishing you had the last 37 seconds of your life back. But that’s too bad. Let me know via comment if anyone have any suggestions for a Free or Cheap Video-Editing software?

Check out these Homeless Hippies on My flickr.

As we were walking from bar to bar, we saw these two homeless guys sitting on the corner. They literally just finished writing this sign and were laughing about it amongst themselves.

Once I read what the sign says, I knew I had to take a picture. I told the guy I would give him a dollar if he let me take a picture of him and put it on the internet so I could take him “Viral!” He gotta pretty excited! His friend got a little pissed!

I mean no disrespect to these two random homeless guys, but just from the looks of your sign…. I can see why you’re on the corner.

Long story short, I totally lost that bet. I read the sign. We all had a good laugh. My friend & I each gave them a buck…. and I wouldn’t doubt it if they spent my money on some sort of ‘illegal substance’ by the end of the night! But it’s all good…. I’ll make more than that on the AdSense below.

So… earlier today. I submitted something to digg that I thought was freakin’ hilarious. It was entitled “Pedophile Glasses by Jon Lajoie” It’s easily the stupidest, most pointless thing you’re going to watch all day, but totally worth 1:18 of your life.

Then I started watching the related videos that YouTube puts on there.. and I think I found my new theme song. Actually, it’s two songs with the same premise. But, it’s freakin’ hilarious, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I can relate in many ways. Which is frightenly scary!

The Everyday Normal Guy

The Everyday Normal Guy (Remix)

Yes.. I know. It’s sad. But laughably ironic, because I’m sure we can all relate to these in some way. Because I know I make a killer spaghetti sauce!

Check out the dude’s website - Jon Lagoie.com or his videos on YouTube. This guy has talent, I got a feeling we’re gonna see more of him down the line.

So, lately.. There have been alot of diggers complaining about the algorithm changes. I understand why they don’t like the algo changes, and I feel the same about many of the changes too. But, I know that in time, smart diggers will realize that in order to be successful you must evolve in the way you digg, just the same as the digg-algo evolves itself.

Due to these digg-algo changes, I’ve been spending less & less time on digg. I still surf around my RSS feeds and submit stuff to digg, but I find myself spending more of my time and submitting more content to StumbleUpon, Mixx, Del.icio.us & Reddit. I’ve also started utilizing my Twitter account, which I have grown very fond of.

Because of all of this extracurricular social-media activity, I went to update my digg profile and drop a link to all of my other profiles, so that anyone who cared, could easily find me on other social media sites… I mean, that’s why Digg built in that function, right?

That’s when I noticed something. If you want to add a link to your StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us account, Digg will put the logo of that Social Media/Bookmarking site next to it. But, there are a few sites, such as Mixx, Propeller & Buzz that Digg does not put the logo next too. These other sites merely get a ‘generic page’ icon next to it.

Why is that? Is Digg purposely censoring Mixx, Propeller & Yahoo’s Buzz?

I understand that things are pretty busy around the digg office, but seriously… how long does it take to create 19×19 icon’s, then program it to specific profiles, just like you’ve already exhibited when people link up their StumbleUpon, Reddit and the other Social Media profiles.

The picture to the right is a screenshot of my profile. It’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I can understand why Sphinn doesn’t have their own logo-icon. It’s an SEO site, and the digg community generally frowns upon SEO stuff. Ok. I get it. While I think Sphinn should have their logo present, as ALL social media sites should be represented fairly, I can understand why Digg knowingly leave’s Sphinn’s icon off. Fair Enough.

But what about Mixx, Propeller & Yahoo’s Buzz? These are all big, upcoming player’s in the social media world. Why does Digg refuse to give them equal representation?

I understand that Yahoo’s Buzz is fairly new. But, Mixx & Propeller have been around for awhile now. There should be some sort of icon associated with these two social media sites by now. They’ve obviously proven that they are not just “fly-by-nite” social media sites that are going to slowly waste away. They are here and they are here to stay. In my opinion, it’s time that those social media sites get represented fairly on Digg.

I know the logo-icon is a very, very small (and unnoticeable) function of everyone’s Digg Profile. It’s on the back burner, the end of a very long list of things to do at Digg. I understand that. But, it just seems that anytime somebody submits something to Digg that is somewhat positive about other social media sites, it gets buried and never see’s the Front Page… hmmm?

So, the question remains - Is Digg purposely censoring these other social media sites? Perhaps, Digg is just intimidated by Mixx, Propeller & Buzz? Why won’t Digg just admit that they have some new competition on their hands?

And, if they are purposely censoring these other sites, then Kevin Rose & Jay Adelson need to realize that it’s starting to become noticable.

The Good News

I have taken the liberty to create icons that would work for these three social media sites. They are the same size as the other logos - 19×19. So, all the Digg programmers have to do, is drop by and download them below!

	Mixx Logo Icon - [DOWNLOAD.jpg] [DOWNLOAD.gif]
	Buzz Logo Icon - [DOWNLOAD.jpg] [DOWNLOAD.gif]
	Propeller Logo Icon - [DOWNLOAD.jpg] [DOWNLOAD.gif]

Yes, I’m finding cool stuff, which I have emailed around to friends and family, as well as some dj’s at a local Houston Radio Station. I’m digging, thumbing up, tagging and bookmarking every site I come across. Slowly shaping the internet in my own special way. Sometimes I even sign up for the site’s RSS feed, even though I already have hundreds of categorized RSS feeds saved!

As I sit here building all of my social media profiles, I’m also trying to think of something that I could write here on my blog. But, I have no ideas. Writer’s block. Blogger’s Block… whatever you want to call it, I am currently plagued with a lack of creativity.

So, I continue to sit here and surf around at least hoping something will pop out and give me some sort of motivation. Then it occurred to me.. what if I just provide a few links to a few of my favorite links that I’ve found online recently.

My Recommended Articles:

• 9 Clever Billboard Advertisements
• 20 Different Translations for the Phrase — “Thank You”
• Man Declared Brain Dead, Now Says He Feels ‘Pretty Good’
• Is Evolution Possible on Planets Outside our Solar System?
• 7 Simple & Cheerful Activities to Cure Anyone’s Blues
• Plant a Tree & Watch it Grow on Google Earth
• 8 Delicious Foods To Boost Up Your Energy Levels

Recommended Videos:

The Most Bad-Ass Tribute to Quentin Tarantino:

Crazy Bible-Thumper Goes Nuts in a Coffee Shop!:

I was going thru some of my many RSS feeds, and found a good article entitled “7 Simple Cheerful Activities to Cure the Blues.” I liked it. It made sense to me, so I changed the title up, as I pretty much always do, and then submit it to digg.

As a complete social media addict, I then turned around submitted the same article to Mixx,thumbed it up on StumbleUpon and finished the hat-trick by tagging in Del.icio.us. No problems whatsoever doing this on any of the sites.

I then continued to browse thru my RSS feeds, and I came upon TIME Mag. I found this article about Detroit Mayors recent sex-scandal. I’m already a natural fan of TIME mag online, but I liked how the article read. I thought it was a perfect digg submission.

So, I completed another hat trick and submitted it to all the social media sites…including reddit, which I hardly ever do! But, this time I encountered a problem when submitting the story to Mixx.

It was some sort of a “Duplicate Alert - We may already have this story”. I’m used to this, because every story is potentially a duplicate of each other if you analyze and compare keywords.

As you can see, Mixx gave me a three very unique options:

• Update of the same story
• Different Perspective of a Popular Story
• Same story, but from a different site

I went ahead and clicked on ‘Different Perspective’ since I felt that my story reported the same news, but from, ironically enough, a different perspective. My submission had no problems afterwards… and was submitted with no issues.

Mixx’s Duplicate feature isn’t anything great. It’s nothing spectacular or revolutionary. I know, in reality it’s something really small and stupid. But, for some reason, it really struck a chord with me. I liked it. I liked the choices that I was given. I was glad to see the different options that Mixx provided me with.

It’s just one more thing that makes me smile, as I continue to explore the Mixx world!

I’m a very busy person. I have to juggle alot of responsibilities, just like everybody else has to in their daily routine.

I have found that as I have gotten older, and the real world seems to get heavier and harder every month, I start to let things slip. Deadlines are harder to meet. Juggling many responsibilities between work, girlfriend, being a caregiver, my freelance work, and the seemingly never-ending upkeep of running a household has carried a heavy load for a long time.

I know what the problem is. I’m spread too thin. Too many projects. Not enough time. Poor organization habits. I try to remember every little thing that I have to do, without consistently writing down my tasks.

Without a doubt, I will forget stuff. It’s only natural. And I will be the first to admit that I have let things slip. Sometimes knowingly, because I didn’t have the energy to continue on.

The one thing that has ALWAYS helped me, is to write down and carry around a “To-Do” List. A small, folded-up piece of paper that you can easily pull out and write down those random thoughts & ideas that pop up throughout your day.

Carry around the “To-Do” List in your pocket or wallet, so it’s right there for easy accessibility. If you suddenly remember something or have a “light bulb moment,” then you pull out the To-Do List and write it down. And everybody knows that a Good Idea written down on a piece of paper, can manifest and brainstormed into a Great Idea!

However, the quick accessibility of your “To-Do” List also leaves you with no excuses for not being able to stay on top of your responsibilities. Just as easy as it is to write something on your “To-Do” list, it’s just as easy to scratch something off.

So if you have a poor memory, or if you find yourself completely overwhelmed with life’s responsibilities, try making a “To-Do” list. Just a small piece of paper and a pen. We all have plenty of those at our house.

I guarantee to you, that having a “To-Do” list constantly on you, burning a hole in your pocket, it will keep you more motivated. You will be more prompt in handling everything you need to routinely handle. Because you have this constant reminder, you will find that you have more time in the end to do things you really want to do… like hang out with the girlfriend, or play silly games with your family.

oh, and another good tip for a successful To-Do List - Carry around a pin.

* flickr image - “To Do List” by Ebby