I browsed around a bit today to get a better idea of what’s happening with technology companies in the Seattle area — and found some interesting stuff:

• Seattle Startup Blogs – this is where my browsing started. It’s a great selection of links to local Seattle tech blogs (make sure to thank Sampa for putting it together)
• ProgrammableWeb – I’ve read this blog before, but had no idea that John’s blog was based in Seattle
• Seattle 2.0 – a cool new blog started by Marcelo Calbucci, the founder of Sampa
• Marcelo has his own blog as well
• Seattle Tech Startups – this is not a blog, but a group of Seattle entrepreneurs. The next meeting is May 9th from 6:00 – 7:45 at the Capitol Hill Branch of the Seattle Library. I plan to be there.
• I hear Amazon Web Services team had a killer event last week. My buddy Tim from Venture All Stars and New Media Synergy told me about it, but I wasn’t able to make it. Bummer.

With so much cool stuff going on, it’s an exciting time to be a Seattle entrepreneur in the tech industry.

My latest “Stumble” resulted in being sent to this Master list of Java interview questions – 115 questions. Obviously, I’m not a master java dev — the 10 or so questions I looked at meant little to nothing to me. If you know answers to the majority (or all) of these questions, please check out Zillow’s job openings — maybe we can find a place for you (Zillow has 16 openings currently).

Guy Kawasaki is the latest guest on PodTech’s Marketing Voices. Be sure to check it out if you are looking to improve your blog.

This morning, I met with Cliff and Mark, two UW Bothell entrepreneurs working on Zeebits.com. The site is aiming to be an online classifieds destinations for anyone selling technology related items — used servers, an iPod, graphics cards, an external hard drive, etc. They certainly have lots of challenges ahead of them in the very competitive web 2.0 space, but anything is possible if you are passionate. We spoke quite extensively about social media and how a small business can use it to their advantage, since an obvious barrier that any web startup faces is attracting an audience (cheaply). I think one or both of them will be starting a blog this week to become more entrenched in the web 2.0 space (where seemingly everyone is blogging). Some initial feedback of mine to improve the site:

• Put a big search box on the main page. The user should immediately be given a call to action.
• Focus on building tools for sellers
• Don’t have the login & register links in the middle of the main page
• Have a story for the Zeebits name (I forgot to ask them, so maybe one of them will leave a comment with the story at how the name Zeebits was born)
• Get mentioned in TechCrunch or Startup Meme or GigaOm

What do you think? Is there enough of a market for a technology-focused classifieds site? What do they need to do to attract Craigslist users? I’m sure they would love some feedback (or you can just leave a comment & I’m sure they’ll read it here).

Yes, Nash is the best player in the NBA. Note I didn’t say “most talented.” I’m watching the Lakers-Suns game on ABC right now and Steve Nash is simply amazing. 15 assists at halftime. No question about it — if I had to pick 1 player to have on my team, it would be Nash. He gets the whole team involved and working together. Kobe is not a team player. Even Jordan never won anything until he finally realized he needs his teammates to win games. No one wants to stand around and watch one player take all the shots. I’ve played with self-centered ball-hogs who shoot every time down the court — it eventually gets to the point where I don’t even want to be on the court, regardless of whether we are winning or not. Maybe I’m just different from everyone else in the fact that if I’m part of a team, I want to contribute. I won’t be happy if I’m not — I don’t think NBA players are any different. Nothing is fun if you’re not involved in the action.

I really don’t understand why players try to win games by themselves — it doesn’t work. Have you ever heard of a business with a superstar CEO succeeding without a supporting cast? No. Ever heard the term “You’re only as strong as your weakest link?” Nash makes everyone better, which is what real superstars do. Sorry Kobe, Labron, D Wade.

I know this is a little late, but here’s an e-mail titled “This e-mail is not for you” that I received from ONE.org last night. It ends with a call to action to e-mail the letter to one friend, but I figure blogging it is better than sending an e-mail to one person -

It’s for your friend.

So far this week over 74,329 Americans have joined the fight against extreme poverty making us the fastest growing movement in America. Let’s keep it that way.

To truly eradicate extreme poverty once and for all we need a strong and sizable block of Americans working to make poverty a priority.

To this end, I am issuing a challenge to all members: get at least ONE friend to sign up and join ONE and help end poverty. Let’s add 25,000 more members by Wednesday, making it 100,000 new members in one week.

Forward this email to at least ONE friend and ask them to go to www.ONE.org and sign up.

To keep track of our progress we will replace the standard counter on the front of ONE.org with a counter showing the number of new members. You can help raise this number by forwarding this e-mail to a friend and sending them to ONE.org where they can sign the ONE Declaration and start using their voice to end poverty.

Thanks to Idol Gives Back, over 30 million people learned about the ONE Campaign on Wednesday. One by one we’re growing, and making a difference, whether it is successfully pushing for billions of dollars of poverty fighting funding, or crucial trade reforms, we are winning. Keep up the amazing work.

Update: Sorry I wasn’t clued into this sooner, but I just found the video online at MSNBC – Click here if you want to watch it.

The democratic debate was tonight — but it was not on broadcast television. Why not? I thought this was a great take on the situation from Jeff Jarvis’ post:

A properly pissed off birdie forwarded me NBC News’ restrictions on tonight’s presidential debates, which are many and lead off with this: “internet use is not permitted.”

I think that’s ridiculous and so I sought to find out why they would do this. I called Joe Alicastro, producer of the debate for MSNBC, who was on site. I asked him why they were restricting use of the material on the internet. He twice didn’t answer and said “that’s our policy.” I said I know that’s their policy. I asked why. He would not answer.

I asked whether he thought the Amerian people had a right to this debate since it is our election. He said that “the American people have ample opportunity to view the debate on MCNBC and two North Carolina stations.”

Shameful. What makes NBC think it has the right to own the democratic discussion in this country?

The debate was on MSNBC and two North Carolina stations. I realize the majority of people in the United States have cable. However, I’m not one of them — so I was left no way to see the debate, which I would have very much liked to watch.

I don’t get it. Political debates should be broadcast in as many mediums as possible so that everyone can educate themselves on where the future leaders of this country stand on the real issues. Further, wouldn’t you think television networks would want to make some further ad renevue by broadcasting the debate online and selling ads? Oh well, media outlets that don’t start embracing new media are going to suffer as businesses. Consumers expect to consume their media where they want, when they want.

I’m truly stunned that LinkedIn has gone such a long time without a corporate blog — they now have one (H/T to Mashable). Mario Sundar kicked off the LinkedIn conversation with this post. I’m a pretty big fan of LinkedIn, though I must admit that the site isn’t that “sticky” for me (yet). Maybe that’s because I can only track so many social networks on a daily basis (myspace, facebook, mybloglog). Regardless, I think this is a great move for them strategically. I’m going to add the blog to my feed reader to keep track of what they are doing to improve their community of business professionals.

Geez, my addiction is getting pathetic, but StumbleUpon just turns up too much cool stuff and I want to share it — check this picture.

I absolutely love seeing celebrities use their status for driving awareness of what is going on in the world around us. Bono from U2 is a great example of a celebrity using his status to push the fight to end poverty. Did you know that a child dies every 3 seconds as a result of extreme poverty? Bono is helping drive awareness of this fact — and people are listening. Bono is the most notable spokeman of ONE.org, but certainly not the only one. There roughly 2.5 million people who support the ONE campaign, including movie stars such as Brad Pitt and George Clooney. ONE’s goal is to make poverty history by giving everyone a voice.

ONE.org Ad

I’ve been browsing around YouTube this morning and found the following videos that you might want to watch for some more inspiration.

Bono’s acceptance speech at the 2007 NAACP Image Awards

Tribute to Bono

There are lots of other videos worth watching here.

I’m an active member of SeattleONE, which has undergone two lobbying efforts in the past couple weeks. Several members of SeattleONE met with Congressman Jim McDermott. I was part of a conference call with one of Senator Murray’s aides in Washington DC two weeks ago. For those in the Seattle area, there is a meeting with Congressman Adam Smith scheduled for June 4th — if you’re interesting in getting involved, sign-up for the SeattleOne Yahoo group and reply to this thread.

I’d encourage you to sign the ONE declaration if you haven’t already.

Sorry for another short pointer post (StumbleUpon is getting the best of me), but I thought THIS was kinda neat.

I “stumbled” upon this post this morning and think it gives some good advice for job seekers. Most importantly, make sure you take note of point #1:

Tap your contacts. Do you know anyone who works for the organization already? Do you know anyone who might know someone who works for that organization already? Try to get ahold of people already in the organization and see whether or not they can put in a good word for you somewhere. This works best in smaller organizations where people generally know each other and wear multiple hats.

I certainly do – Last.fm is a regular part of my day. Anyways, the point of the post is that I was made aware that it might not be around in its current state if we don’t act. Her’s an e-mail that I received today from a colleague:

The survival of all Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites.  The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all.  Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site.  SaveNetRadio Coalition is a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters, and they created the following petition to solicit your support.

Please sign this petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541 

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners, the better.

If you listen to internet radio, please sign the petition (and BLOG THIS if you maintain a blog).

According to Mashable, Facebook may launch local classifieds. WOW – I really do think they can make a run at Craigslist. Pete at Mashable mentioned that CollegeMedium has already used the FB API to built a classifieds site, meaning facebook might alienate some of their developer community. In my mind, taking on classifieds is definitely the right strategic move. Being so locally focused, classifieds are an obvious addition to the site. The rumored ability for users to post free to their own network means many would quickly try it out. Posting to nearby networks is said to be an additional charge. It’s all about the UI in my opinion — where will they surface the content from? Will classifieds be its own entire section of the site?

Facebook has one thing many, many sites do not have — a massive (& instant) built-in AUDIENCE. Sure, it might take a little bit of time to train people to look on Facebook to find classifieds rather than Craigslist. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Last I heard, Facebook had something upwards of 17 million users – there’s definitely potential to reach critical mass fairly quickly with classified listings.

One huge advantage that Facebook has over other sites is that they seem to have done a great job of keeping SPAM to a minimum – partly because they kept a closed system for so long that was fairly exclusive to college students.

Lastly, I’ll answer Pete Cashmore’s questions:

1. Knowing it’s free, would you list something to your network?
Yes
No

2. If you were making a free listing for something in your network, would you also want to list it in nearby networks?
Yes, I would.
No, I wouldn’t.
I said I wouldn’t list an item.

3. If you said you would want to list your item in nearby networks in addition to your network, would you be willing to pay to do this?
Yes, I would.
No, I wouldn’t
I wouldn’t be at all interested in listing in nearby networks.

4. How much would you be willing to pay for each additional network (knowing your own network will be free)?
50 cents
$1.00
$2.50
$5.00
I don’t think it’d be worth any money.

So, Google purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 BILLION (jeez, that is a lot of money) to give Google an instant, major foothold in online display advertising. This tells me one thing: keyword advertising is not the only online advertising game in town. Evidence of this is the fact that others in the industry (Microsoft) think this is big enough of a deal to play the anti-trust card. Sure, they could have built the technology behind DoubleClick – but Google realized advertising is a relationship business (surprise, surprise – just like every other business). It would take years to build all the relationships DoubleClick has.

Google has always been known for it’s text link ads – which are effective for hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. CPC (cost per click) advertising works for a variety of companies — such as E-commerce sites that make money as a result of visitors showing up and buying products. For example, say Company X generates an average of $4 in profit for every visitor that shows up at their site — they will gladly pay $2 for each incremental visitor to their site. It makes sense to buy as much traffic as possible for less than $4 per visitor. Company X doesn’t really care if you remember their name as long as they catch you when you are looking to purchase something they sell. This is why they don’t mind buying text ads for certain search terms and getting very minimal branding in the process.

However, keyword advertising doesn’t quite cut it for large brand advertisers who can’t make money off their traffic — like Ford and Coca-Cola — or are focused on building their brand for the long-term. Fortune 500 companies have multi-national brands they’ve spent years (or decades) and millions of dollars to build. Ford wants to engrain their F-150 into your head so that, when you’re in the market for a truck, you think of them 1st. I’m sure some will argue with me on this, but I really don’t think that consumers use a search engine to determine what type of car or truck they test drive. I think brand advertising and word of mouth are the two primary reasons for consumers choosing Honda over Kia or Lexus over BMW. The larger the investment, the more people desire established brands because of the reputation (brand) they’ve built. Building a brand is not cheap (in most cases) and takes a long time. Brand advertisers know they’ll be around in 5 years — meaning their ad dollars are spent to attract customers 5 years from now in addition to current customers. Brand advertisers are more than willing to spend the extra money to build their “brand” rather than just buying traffic with a text advertisement. Apple is one company who has done an extroardinary job of using advertisements to build their image. They would not have the image they do today without the years of visual advertisements they’ve invested in.

Branding is also important for cheap products whose goal is to sell in mass — such as soft drinks. Does anyone really do a search for “best softdrink” to determine whether they buy Coke or Pepsi? I doubt it – they go by what they recognize in the store. Why do they identify with Coke better than Pepsi (I personally like Pepsi)? Brand advertising.

My point is this: brand advertising is as important, if not more so, as keyword advertising in the online advertising industry. Plenty of web sites (CNN, Bankrate, WebMD, Yahoo!, etc) make plenty of money as a result of banner advertising — and it’s only going to increase. Consumers are spending more time consuming media online — meaning it’s inevitable that more of the advertising dollars spent by large brand advertisers are going to shift online as well. The shift will not happen overnight, but, day-by-day, it’s slowly happening. As everyone knows, change doesn’t come quickly in any industry – online advertising is no different. Google’s purchase of DoubleClick means they see the massive banner advertising opportunity just like I do.

Today marks the 60 year anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Numerous players wore Jackie’s #42 today in his honor, which commissioner Bud Selig encouraged following Ken Griffey Jr’s request to wear the number. This year’s national celebration took place at Dodger Stadium. Though it is true that the number of African-American major leaguers is declining, I know they all appreciate the sacrifices Jackie made to blaze them a trail.

I almost forgot about this video that I just saw on Chris Hotz’ blog – it’s pretty neat. It got passed around my office via e-mail a week or so ago.

Today, I finally switched the theme of my blog to the RockinNewspaper 3 theme. I can’t believe it took me this long to swtich to a theme with 2 sidebars. The header still needs some work, but I’m about done on the computer for the day, so it’ll have to wait until later. Anyone know how I can fix the formatting bug on my category list?? The theme doesn’t like the sub-categories for some reason.

Let me know what you think and further tweaks I need to make. What other widgets should I add? Suggestions are welcome!!

BRILLIANT! Yeah, I know everyone has already written about this, so I won’t bore you. Go read all the chatter on Techmeme.

Here’s the post on Google Blog