Technically Speaking

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In this current day of information overload, I figured I’d offload a few tidbits in my blog post today. If I had the time each day to do this, it would be like the good ol’ days here on Technically Speaking. Unfortunately, only time these days to catch my breath occasionally. While the economy is in the dumps, my company Lookery as tweeted by Todd the other day, is booming. We are all busy and slammed with enough work for 3 or 4 people.

Check Your State - If you are interested to see where your state stands in the general election coming up on November 4th, you need to go to this site. Currently, Missouri is now leaning Obama, but just last week it was leaning McCain. Thanks to @billstreeter for the original URL he sent over which lead me to the above.

Cloud Contacts - This is Allen Stern of Centernetworks new start up called Cloud Contacts. I say “new start up”, as those who remember, he had another great start up that didn’t quite take off a little more than a year ago. That one was dealing with running ads on video content. Again, and probably like this one - he was ahead of his time. Read the great write up here on CNET by Rafe Needleman.

Scott Rafer in Berlin - Wow, almost is like dejavu for us guys who started Lookery. Last time Scott was in Berlin, that was when this whole Lookery journey started. Though last time, he was on a well deserved vaca, this time he was speaking at the Berlin FBDevCon. Side Note: Scott, I’m usually still groggy and sans laptop connected at 7am my time zone!

This Is Cool - Especially if you are a smoker (which I am)! The idea seems like it could work, only the one time I tried the patch, as soon as I stepped down successfully - I went back to smoking with no nicotine input into my system. I am hoping that Drew does quit for good. Smoking Everywhere is what he is using, and I wonder if you can really “light up” like the video showed.

Technically Speaking, if you haven’t gone Lookery yet, you really need too with the new cool site design as well as the enhanced audience analytic data page. What I really enjoy is the more direct message (tagline) on who we are and what we are all about:

Lookery is a user-targeting service that helps site owners amplify their audience data.

Everything pretty much sucks online these days. It’s the same garbage recycled 25 times over and I still get PR stuff from all sorts of places and people. I know, not one of the big dog blogs, but yes, people still beg me to write about the product that has already been done but done better.

Finally today, someone that actually matters or rather something that matters contacted me. The company is a startup out of San Diego (my #1 favorite city) and is called Collarfree. They are currently running a contest that taps into what does really matter in the next few months - the 2008 general election for the President of the United States.

The contest they are running is called “Keep Politics Positive” which is an oxymoron, but I hope that people realize the days of dirt slinging politics is old news. No one is interested in that anymore. I think it’s great that a t-shirt startup came up with a positive spin on the election.

The contest format is simple. Graphic designers from around the world submit stylish, pro-candidate t-shirt designs into Collar Free’s voting system on a daily basis. The public votes on their favorite shirts for either Obama or McCain. The shirts are then ranked and displayed based on their win percentage, calculated by totaling the positive votes for each design.

This is a leading a trend among online communities called “Crowd Sourcing,” which is the concept of bringing together a large group of people to create a product. Collar Free posts competitions for designers from around the world and allows the public and consumers to select the products they love most. This innovative design process increases demand, reduces risk, and engages customers, in part because shoppers and designers find it fun.

This company is based out of San Diego, CA and was founded in April 2008 by Jimmy Hendricks and Patrick Dillon.

Technically Speaking, I’m so glad that there are startups that are actually doing worthwhile cool stuff still out there. I wish these guys luck and hopefully they can leverage past the 2008 election and have a successful run.