Kansas City Startup Drinks
Today I found out about a kool new group that is forming here in the area called Kansas City Startup Drinks. What is Startup Drinks you might ask?
a) A drinking group with a startup problem.
b) A low key, unstructured group drinking (coffee, beer or spirits) event that happens in cities across the world
c) Therapy for startup junkies (you don’t have two days to go to a conference, but you do have two hours and would love to stay involved in the community)
Sounds like a great concept and I look forward to checking out any meetups in the future.
Kansas City Social Media Club Breakfast Tomorrow (5/1)
To all you social media types in Kansas City it is that time again when we all get together for some food, fellowship, and fun!
As always the event is open to all and free (besides what you want to purchase food wise). There will be some discussion on a topic around social media and you can meet some of those peeps you follow on that little service called twitter.
below are a few more details on the event and if you could jump over the the smckc site and rsvp so we can get a count that would be great.
Hope to see you there!
Time: May 1, 2009 from 7:30am to 9am
Location: First Watch - North Kansas City
Street: 409 Armour Road
City/Town: North Kansas City, MO 64116
Social Media Meets Severe Weather
Whitney Mathews of the local Kansas City company Spiral16 recently sat down with a local blogger/podcaster Ed Roberts who runs the KC Weather Podcast and they discussed using social media when it comes to reporting or talking about severe weather
Some new features Ed has added when it comes to sever weather in the social media realm is adding a chat room for everyone to get together and interact with Ed and others as well as using the hashtag #kcstorms on twitter.
Updating Twitter And Facebook With TweetFace
Found a kool way to update twitter and facebook at the same time via twitter while adding some extra functionality like using the hashtag #fb to post your tweet as well as changing @mentions to the persons real name. Its called Tweetface and its a snap to get up and running.
Features:
* Post tweets as Facebook Status Updates
* Post links you tweet on your Facebook Wall (so your friends can watch videos and see pictures right in their News Feed)
* Ignore @replies
* Change @mentions to real names
* Only post the tweets you specify to Facebook (if this is all you want, Selective Twitter is the app for you)
* Track links posted to Facebook with awe.sm
Pretty much all you have to do is connect via Facebook Connect, setup some options, and then you are ready to go!
One thing I will mention in my early testing is I would like to see the conversion of @mentions to use just the first name rather then the whole name. An example would be when i did and @msgigglebox who is my wife it converted it to Allison Smith on facebook. Now this is correct but when I a put that on Facebook it just seems weird to be mentioning here with her complete name.
example:
Allison Smith and I went to the mall today would like to see Allison and I went to the mall today
Other then that so far I think it is a pretty kool little app to help in updating both twitter and facebook right from a twitter itself.
It Has Been A Good Month For (jeff)isageek.net
So today is the last day of the April and traffic/readership wise it has been the best month I have ever had.
This week alone I have had 2 days with over 1,000 page views in a day, I passed my previous monthly page view total and went over 6,000 and thanks to the 2 huge days I am about 40 page views away from hitting 8,000 in a month! To me that is awesome!!!
Now I love the stats and they are great to see where you are going but more then that I love getting content out to people about things I enjoy or events and such i get to experience. I have made some great friends, learned about a lot of kool things and been able to attend some great events just because of this blog.
So I pretty much wanted to write this post to say thank you to everyone who follows my posts, comments, or shares the things I throw up on here. You guys are the best!
Twitter In Real Life [video]
College Humor has a funny segment where they bring twitter to our real lives. funny stuff.
The Tarantino Mixtape = WIN + A Side Of Awesomesauce
Eclectic Method brings you The Tarantino Mixtape. Enjoy!
Eclectic Method - The Tarantino Mixtape from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.
Bring FriendFeed To Your Site with Sharing
One of the kool new features added to the beta version of friendfeed is the ability to share posts from the service. You can share them on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us, and even embed it into your page like I did below with one of the Talk Social News episodes with my fellow Social Geeks contributor Wayne Sutton.
Definitely a very kool way to share stuff you find on FriendFeed around the interwebs as well as pretty easy to execute.
Here is another example...with a picture I had posted on FriendFeed. As you can see not only do you get the picture embeded but you get the likes and comments and you can even posts a comment right in the embedded item that will show up for all to see! Very kool. I think I will keep playing with this and see what different ways I can come up with to rock the house with this functionality.
Startup Weekend KC : TopChirp – Twitter Meets Digg
"Rise Above the Flock. Rate a tweet to the Top Chirp."
TopChirp was one of the many startups that came out of Startup Weekend Kansas City and I think you could define it best as digg meets twitter allowing you vote on tweets and with enough votes it could become the top chirp. Since it just came out of startup weekend I thnk it would be safe to say its in a very beta stage but will be interesting to see it grow and where it goes from here. Check out the presentation the group did Sunday night.
Commodore 64 Orchestra
This is what happens when you bring commodore 64 game music to an orchestra. very kool! [Commodore 64 Myspace page]
Use Google To Find Out Which Of Your Tweets Are Favorites
Here is a simple little google search to find out who has favorited your tweets and which one they liked as well.
All you have to do is pull up a google search and in the search box type the follow:
site:twitter.com/*/favourites @[twitter_name] obviously [twitter_name] will be your twitter name.
an example would be to find my tweets that have been favorited I would enter :
site:twitter.com/*/favourites @jeffisageek
Nothing earth shattering but a fun little google/twitter search trick
Startup Weekend KC Finalist – Annotify
First let me say that my intent when going to the presentations on Sunday night for Startup Weekend KC was to get video of all the demo's and post them on (jeff)isageek.net but my flip video had other ideas and decided to flip flop or something. I was able to get the demo from the eventual winner Activism2Go as well as the 3rd place team which ended up being Annotify.
With Annotify their thought process is the web is full of documents...why cant you mark up a site, add notes, save your own personal copy and annotate the web. As I stated the service came in 3rd out of the 8 startups and below you can check out the video of their presentation to everyone last night.
Want more information then check out the site at www.annotify.com [note the site is currently not live at the time of this blog post]
As I had mentioned earlier I had wanted to get video of all the presentations from the weekend but my flip had other ideas. If you were part of one of the groups and want to share your presentation or just talk about you startup then feel free to contact me and we can get something setup to film a little demo or something.
And The Startup Weekend KC Winner Is…….
Congrats to Activism2Go for a great presentation as well as a great startup. There was some great ideas that came out of Startup Weekend but when the dust settled these guys were the winners.
the team
Joshua Dieker
Ryan Renner
Jennifer Bruenjes
Sean Blaes
Bruce Lill
Serge Bushman
Joel Buckingham
Jonathan Wagner
Susana Bruhn
Startup Weekend Kansas City
This weekend there was an awesome event that took place here in Kansas City called Startup Weekend. So what is Startup Weekend you ask?
It’s an experience unlike any conference you’ve attended before. Over the course of a single weekend, you get to take time out from your current venture/business and practice building a new one. Think of it like time off the field.
Most ventures fail on Monday morning, which isn’t the point. The point is, you learn new skills, processes, coding frameworks, legal jargon, business practices, spread sheet programs, etc that you can bring back to your current venture. Startup Weekend is a weekend warrior event where anything goes, and practice is implied. You’re not judged (unless you judge) and learning is paramount.
People who attend the weekend stay in touch, hire each other and form new ventures as a result of ‘colliding’ for 54 hours. Its an awesome three days of networking, team building, coding, business planning and pitching (with some added cocktails and food).
Even though I missed the major part of the weekend I did get to attend the presentation part on Sunday night and let me tell you there were so many kool and smart people there showing off their hard work getting the startup from and idea to a working model. The startups that presented were as follows:
Activism2Go
Annotify
Covalent Bonding
Eussi
MyConcerts.FM
Rare Brew
Stashmate
Top Chirp
TreadEX
[Check out the Startup Weekend KC site]
[Check out the Startup Weekend KC Vimeo videos]
[Check out the streaming broadcast of the presentations on ustream]
So as you can see the event was a great success and I look forward to following the startups that were born this weekend to see where they go and how they grow into who knows maybe the next twitter or friendfeed? Great work to everyone involved!
[on a side note I will make sure and make it for the whole weekend next time]
AMC Mainstreet – A Trip In History To See The Future
This past week I got a chance to check out the new AMC Theater in downtown Kansas City called "AMC Mainstreet".
Now AMC Mainstreet is not your typical new theater setup in the suburbs of a major city. This is a building that opened in downtown KC in October 1921 as a vaudeville and movie house bringing it a rich history that adds to the movie experience when you walk around the complex. One of the kool parts of the tour was getting to see part of the original 3200 seat amphitheater still intact! very kool!
Now what about what you will find today? what are some of the features of the remodeled theatre?
* Cinema Suites - The ultimate in luxury moviegoing at an affordable price, featuring Seat-Side Service™, with special amenities like plush reclining seats and a custom menu of favorites from The Marquee Bar & Grill.
* Self-serve drinks with flavor shots and popcorn seasoning station to give your concessions an extra kick.
* Reserved seating in all auditoriums.
* Grab a warm cappuccino, latte or cup of joe at the Coffee Café.
* Sit back and relax with a cold beer or glass of wine while you enjoy your movie.
* Digital Projection and 11-channel surround sound puts you in the feature.
With all the great history of the theater as well as the food options of a bar and grill right there my awesome moment was the cinema suites...Now you may have been to the cinema suites at Olathe 30 but the added features at Mainstreet really took movie watching to the next level.
You have a bigger screen, you have extra speakers including ones in the ceiling raining sound down on you from above, as well as the butt kicker under each seat which brings the feeling of that huge explosion right to your chair! It was so much awesome sauce!
Here is a little video I took of the tour we took
So when can you check out all the great things going on with the new AMC theater downtown? Opening day is May 1st and it is located at the corner of 14th and Main, in the Power and Light District.
New Footage Of Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen
The new footage/trailer comes from ShoWest 2009. Can't wait for the movie to come out!
The “Chewbacca Song”
This song plus video is all kinds of WIN! Have always been a chewie fan...but then again who isn't? Enjoy.
In case you are wondering the band that plays this song is Supernova.
Filtering FriendFeed = Becoming a FriendFeed Ninja
One of the awesome new features of the FriendFeed beta is the ability to filter information from your streams pulling what you want and more importantly what you may not want.
Bwana one of my fellow FriendFeeders and general geek put together a great post and video about the new filters (as well as highlighting some of the other new features).
Check it out and learn some kool new ways to use what I think is the best service out there!
[from Bwana: FriendFeed Filters Are The Star Of The Beta]
After checking out the video and chatting with some of my fellow users of FriendFeed I am having a great time pulling tons of great content off of FriendFeed and getting the most out of the service. I have been geeking out adding filters all morning 
On a side note if you are on FriendFeed already there is also a room devoted entirely to filters called FF Filters so check that out for all kinds of discussion and updates.
Free Tickets To The New AMC Mainstreet In Kansas City
Next Tuesday April 28th thanks to the local movie site the Scene Stealers you have a chance to participate in "Free Movie Day" at the new AMC Theater in downtown Kansas City which is called "AMC Mainstreet".
All you have to do is jump over to the Scene Stealers, be one of the first 25 people to sign up, and you are in!
The Mainstreet originally opened in October 1921 as a vaudeville and movie house. Having closed in the mid 1980s, it will have its grand opening on May 1, 2009, and now features an all-digital projection, six-screen movie theater. There are three traditional auditoriums and three Cinema Suites (for the plush in-theater dining experience), plus The Marquee Bar & Grill for drinks before and after the show. This is a true historical gem in downtown Kansas City. Back in its heyday, the theater hosted live performers such as Cab Calloway, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers.
This looks to be a pretty sweet place to check out films and I think will be a great addition to the downtown area. So jump over to the Scene-Stealers and get you some free passes!!!
The Social Bird Icon Set – The Twitter Bird Re-Imaged
Inspired Magazine just released an icon set to spice up the twitter icon you use on your site or blog. They had some big name illustrator's create their vision of the most famous bird on the interweb and are providing them to you and me for free.
For some reason this one is just caught my eye
Reason #6423 Why I Love Allison…..
For tweets like this Follow her at twitter.com/msgigglebox
We Didn’t Start The Flame War
Funny song from College Humor. Based on the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start The Fire".
A Peek At Twitter HQ in San Francisco
Kara from All Things Digital recently took a little tour of the Twitter HQ in San Francisco and had her camera along to give all us twitter addicts a look at where the magic takes place. Check out the video below as she gets a tour with co-founder Biz Stone.
Every Frackin Battlestar Galactica Clip On Robot Chicken
I can always enjoy me some Robot Chicken and I would call myself a fan of Battlestar Galactica so I was happy when adult swim made a list of "Every Frackin Battlestar Cip On Robot Chicken"
Enhancing The New FriendFeed Beta With Greasemonkey
My fellow FriendFeed'er Rasheen put up a blog post on ways to make the new FriendFeed beta work for you and included were a couple of greasemonkey scripts you can use to change the look, add a few features, and customize what you see.
Below are the scripts that were featured. Of course the first thing you need to do is install greasemonkey if you have not already and if you have any questions feel free to contact me and we can see what we can do.
Cleaner FriendFeed [Widescreen] [Regular]
* Cleaner and cool look and feel (FriendFeed is already clean, this makes it a lot cleaner)
* Different font style
* Highlights friends comments with baby yellow (instantly know that the user is already your friend)
* Highlights your comments with baby blue (it’s cool to see your own comments from river of comments. Looks good when you are a distance away your computer, makes your comment a marker in conversations)
* Highlights Likes to light pink
* Dims comments from non-friends (normal color of FriendFeed comment)
* Separated each posts with a bottom border
This userstyle brings the FriendFeed conversation to another level by instantly letting you know…
1) Your own comment (Powder Blue)
2) Your friends comments (Light Yellow)
3) Your non-friends comments (Normal FriendFeed Comment Color)
4) Likes (Light Pink)
FriendFeed Beta Service Icons [Script]
Adds service icons to the Friend Feed beta site using the API (only works on public entries)
FFlite [Script]
You can take on the real-time feeds without being constantly updated with a barrage of updates as other FriendFeed users participate with comments and likes on the feed.
before
after
FriendFeed Twitter Tweaker [Script]
Tweak the way Twitter entries are displayed on FriendFeed
1) For Twitter entries, appends the username of the Twitter user after the "N minutes ago from Twitter" message in the entry metadata
2) Helps you track Twitter users not on FriendFeed:
- Create a feed (formerly known as a Room) that includes the text 'twitter-friends' anywhere in the name (e.g. "kshep-twitter-friends")
- Add the Twitter feed from each user you'd like to track. You can add as many users as you'd like.
- When an entry appears in this feed, the name of the feed will be replaced by the username of the Twitter user who created each entry.
So there ya go. Hope you find the scripts useful and if you come across anymore for FriendFeed or any kool greasemonkey scripts you wanna share please feel free as I am always on the lookout for more.
Downloading The Internet
My geeky side found this animated gif file to be funny this morning. figure I would share it with you all.
Around The Intewebs with (jeff)isageek April 13th
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Liked Bohemian Rhapsody LEGO
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Shared 2 links.
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See The Results Of Twestival
So twestival has come and gone and we all raised money and had a great time at the events put on around the world that day. But what about the results? Have the wells begun to pop up in the villages we were wanting to give the gift of clean water too? The answer is YES!
The projected amount raised by Twestival currently stands at $250,000 USD.
$250,000 USD = 55 water projects in Ethiopia, Uganda and India - clean water for just over 17,000 people.
Check out the video below documenting the drilling in Ethiopia last week.
Twestival Well Drilling - Day 1 from Ethiopia - charity: water from charity: water on Vimeo.
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