iSawToday – The Coolest Thing I Saw Today on the Web

Just like MTV stole much of the thunder from the Grammy’s and the American Music Awards years ago, here comes YouTube. Here’s a great way to spend an hour if you’re caught in a spring snowstorm like I am today.

Snowstorm = Milwaukee, WI

Videos = http://www.youtube.com/ytawards07

Have a safe and happy Easter.

P.s. It had been 3months, 10 days, and 3 hours since I last saw Chocolate Rain. Phew!

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Here’s a great article detailing someone’s opinion on how to save money and cut costs while starting up a company.  Having worked for two bootstrapped early-stage companies; one in Internet search and the other in financial software I fondly recall the benefits and disasters that I’ve seen caused by these practices.

Link: Saving Money at a Startup

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Well, he finally did it.  Our longtime star quarterback retired today after years of speculation.  Here’s a great video from his first game, have to  love ‘The Juice’s" commentary.

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As a frequent patron of musical theater I’m always looking for ’secret’ ways to get discount tickets to shows.  Wether it’s checking the local theater’s rush policy(usually half-price tickets 30 or 60 minutes before show time), or searching for Ticketmaster promo codes I’m always up for a discount.  Here’s a great article from CNN that covers a few Broadway tricks.  I’m copying the entire article over because I don’t trust CNN to keep it live and I personally would like to refer to it. So

Read full article at CNN

Crack the codes

When you’re buying tickets online, the major agencies — Telecharge and Ticketmaster — ask for a promotional code, which can shave between 25 and 50 percent off the face-value price. You can find one of these codes by visiting Playbill, TheaterMania and BroadwayBox.com. These sites list promotional codes for many shows, including blockbuster productions like "Hairspray." Playbill and TheaterMania are more comprehensive but require registration. BroadwayBox.com posts a more limited number of codes, but you won’t have to cough up any personal information.

Insider’s tip: If you buy directly from a theater box office, where you can also use a code for savings, you will avoid the fees that Telecharge and Ticketmaster slap on the tickets they sell online.

Try a ticket broker

If you’re gunning for one of Broadway’s most popular shows, such as "Grease" or "Spring Awakening," you’re going to struggle to find discounted tickets from any source. Your best hope is to look for tickets during Broadway’s slow months: January, February, September and October. You’ll most likely find these tickets being resold by respected online ticket brokers, such as StubHub and TicketsNow — often, though not always, at a discount to their face values.

Buck the system at the 11th hour

General rush tickets and ticket lotteries are available to anyone looking to try his or her last-minute luck. Some productions, including "The Color Purple" and "Chicago," sell a select number of discounted tickets, called rush tickets, at the box office on the day of the show. Others, such as "Wicked" and "Avenue Q," hold lotteries in which people go to the theater a few hours before a show and enter their names in a drawing. Rush and lottery tickets usually cost between $20 and $30. Go to TalkinBroadway.com or Playbill.com for details on the rush and lottery practices of the top productions.

Sit onstage

Two popular musicals offer onstage seating at a fraction of the standard prices. "Spring Awakening" sells 26 onstage seats at every performance for $31.50 a pop (which is far less than the typical $70 a seat); "Xanadu" sells 22 onstage seats for every performance at $41.50 apiece. These seats tend to have rear or side views that obscure some of the action, but they still sell out quickly because viewers get to sit so close. It’s best to book "Spring Awakening" onstage seats about four months in advance; "Xanadu" onstage seats require a lead time of a week or two. Onstage seating is available at the box offices as well as through Telecharge.

Take a stand

For theatergoers feeling light on their feet, sold-out shows can be a good thing. Many productions — even hot shows like "Jersey Boys" and "Spamalot" — offer standing room only (SRO) admission when no audience seats are left. Like rush tickets, most SRO tickets fall in the $20 to $30 range and can be purchased at the box office on the day of the show. Find out which productions offer SRO by visiting TalkinBroadway.com and Playbill.com.

Become a member

The nonprofit Theatre Development Fund — which also operates the red-and-white TKTS booths in Times Square and at the South Street Seaport that sell discounted, same-day tickets — has a TDF membership program that offers advance tickets for less than $35 for some Broadway shows (without the hassle of standing in a line). To join, you have to be a student, a teacher, a union member, a senior, a civil service employee, a nonprofit or performing arts organization employee or a member of the armed forces or clergy. There’s an annual membership fee of $27.50, but you can usually make up the difference in a single show, given that the average Broadway ticket goes for $76. Find membership details at tdf.org.

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My friend Bill pointed this out to me last night as we were watching the Wisconsin basketball game.  Ajaxonomy, a website that let’s you watch a ticker of what people are bookmarking on del.icio.us.

http://www.ajaxonomy.com/deliciousspy/

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Amazon.com Empowers Anyone to Create Their Own Book

I came across a great article this morning on wired that talks about the growing industry of on-demand publishing. On-demand publishing means that an average person can visit a website, upload their book, artwork, music, or movies and have them distributed and printed to paper or disc at the time an order is placed. Thus making it easier for the masses to publish works of art that would remain otherwise unseen. Take a look at the following sites:

LuLu

Create Space

I would highlight the second choice CreateSpace as it is a product of Amazon.com. This means that once you upload your book it can be found on the world’s largest marketplace right alongside the likes of Martha Stewart.

That’s all fine and dandy but how much does an aspiring writer have to gain(or lose) by publishing his/her works in this fashion? I ran through a test using CreateSpace and found that to sell my black/white 200pg book via Amazon.com it would cost me roughly $18 per book sold. Not terrible if my manuscript is collecting dust in the closet or the ink on my recipe cards is fading.

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I was recently planning a January 08 trip to visit a friend in Phoenix and ended up being plunged into a jungle of travel websites all promising me the best fare, what was I to do?

The Answer: Spend several days searching and monitoring the all too standard travel sites; Hotwire, Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity for the best flight deal to AZ.  In the process I came across several tools that were a great help which I wanted to share with everyone.

1. Farecast – http://www.farecast.com

Farecast allows you to search flights from all of the major aforementioned travel sites but at the same time provides you a handy historical graph of prices for your trip.

Lucky me! I happened to be searching for my ticket around the 6th of December (the low spot on the graph) Farecast correctly predicted that prices were rising (holiday traffic no doubt) and I got in on a great deal; $202 from Milwaukee to Phoenix on Midwest. 

2. Kayak – http://www.kayak.com

Kayak has been around for several years now and has helped me find the best fare on several trips.  That said, there’s very little special about Kayak other than it searches all the major travel sites and airline direct sites to  show you the best fares.  It’s a good site to check out if you’re looking for a ballpark price but I often find myself heading over to :

3. Orbitz – http://www.orbitz.com

Orbitz is just like the other travel sites out there but I find their interface well organized and the process of booking painless.  Furthermore Orbitz offers a grid-view of the search results

this is what I mean when I say organized, it’s easy for me to find flights that match my search and compare the cheapest with preferred airlines (Midwest & Frontier). 

 Added 12/20 – I just read a review from TechCrunc that taked about www.Mobissimo.com as another great site to get travel info, and although my trip is already planned I’ll be sure to try this one next as it looks great.

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A friend just sent me the following link to conditions that have been blamed on the ‘global warming phenomenon’.  Note the following:

- Global Warming
- Global Cooling
- More Snowfall
- Less Snowfall

With all this contradictory data I’m getting confused.

A list of links of things caused by global warming

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Or at least it seems like it, a new site that GigaOM reviewed the other day will allow you to listen to almost any song out there.  While the GigaOM writer threw in some obscure terms and artists I chose to search for some obscure musical theater material and I too was quite impressed with the results.  Even though the quality of playback varies, some material is just plain hard to track down and this engine did a decidedly good job at it. 

The GigaOM reviewer mentioned the possibility that one of the sources searched is YouTube but minus the music,  I’d say that’s a good guess since several of my musical-related searches returned live-recorded content.  The other tell-tale is the number of "Me singing ..<song title here>.." search results.  As with any high-volume search engine where quantity is the central focus quality often becomes a challenge.  But we’ll see, I suspect there will be several more quantity-based search engines appearing in the days to come, how will they handle this issue?  We’ll have to wait and see.

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