NowPublic Names LA’s 20 Most Influential Individuals

Crowdsourcing news site NowPublic released a list of LA’s ‘Most Public’ and — however arbitrarily — selected many of my favorite people both online and off including #4: Micki Krimmel, #5: Zadi Diaz of Epic Fu, #6: Dave Bullock, #8: Zach Behrens of LAist, #10: Kent Nichols of Ask a Ninja, #15: Sean Bonner of MetBlogs, and #20: Efren Toscano of TechZulu.

The full list (and [purported] methodology) is here.

Coolest thing about the list? It drew me back to NowPublic for the first time in months and I really like the re-design. Last year NowPublic’s partnered with AP and more recently, believe it or not, NP acquired Guy Kawasaki’s Truemors. Most attractive about their redesign is the dynamically updating homepage… much more inviting as a reader and contributor.

UPDATE: Sean Bonner wrote a great post exposing the true annoyance of such link-baiting tactics as engineered (in this instance) by PR firm morris+king to exemplify how filling a page with self-referential links (all of the names on the list refer not to that individual’s web site, but to a nowpublic.com member page, created especially for this campaign) and baiting such “influentials” to spread the word and linkylove spam is ugly and should be seen through. THIS is where the rel=”nofollow” comes handy. By adding that tag to the end of a URI, search engine robots and crawlers are flagged to not weigh the reference of a hyperlink to the rank or relevance of the destination.

Baracky II: The Movie

Excellent work once again…. Baracky takes to the streets, this time — he’s gunning for McCain after conquering the Clinton machine. Can’t wait for Baracky III 🙂

Ticketmaster Can Still Bite Me



Ticketmaster Can Still Bite Me, originally uploaded by revolute.

If Radiohead really wanted me to go to their Monday night (8/25) show at the Hollywood Bowl, would they actually send me to Ticketmaster’s proprietary scalping site, TicketsNow?!? I didn’t think so. Take your overpriced ticket scam and eat it Ticketbastard… you are to blame for holding tickets to resell for your own profit ala the Hanna Montana fiasco and everything else. Count me in on any class action, people.

Oh yeah, and I’d love to buy your extra pair of Radiohead tickets at face value.

Screenshot via my Facebook minifeed. Way to go, Beacon!

Travel Hacks: Oregon Coast Weekend

Today I’m introducing a new section to netZoo called Travel Hacks. I’ve traveled quite extensively (at times) over the past 15 years and in digging through my many notes and recollections, I realize there are quite a few tips, tricks, and secrets that I’ve come across. I’m hoping these posts are helpful to those who read the blog or stumble upon it and I know it will be helpful in digitally archiving the more incredible encounters and experiences of the past, present, and future.

This past weekend I met up with more than a dozen college friends for a long weekend retreat on the Pacific Coast (photos here). We chose Oregon because many of us have relocated to the West Coast since graduating from the University of Iowa in Iowa City between 1997 and 1998 and perhaps more notably, one of us needed to stay close to Portland with a seven-week old (these plans were made in early 2008) and two others were not far in western Washington State.

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