I am a huge Joss Whelan - Buffy - Serenity fan - he’s imaginative, fun and I love the way he writes his female characters. This is a man who likes women. So I was exceptionally bummed when a studio passed on his Wonder Woman script.

Then out of the writer’s strike came “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Blog“, with Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. How does that not sound like a great time?

From http://doctorhorrible.net/

“Dr Horrible” is not a a new TV show or movie. It’s a streaming event, with the first Act starting today (7.15), Act II on 7.17 and Act III on 7.19. The free airings are only available until the 20th and then it’s the looonng wait (hopefuly not) to the DVD release.

Let’s talk social.

Of course this isn’t some indie production with no marketing budget relying on Word of Mouth to drum up interest. This is a guy with a devoted fanbase that will follow him anywhere and to any medium. So instead of the large, mega-ad campaign - they relied on that fanbase to spread the news:

• The Official Site
• Facebook Official
• Myspace Official
• Myspace Fan
• Twitter Official
• Capt. Hammer Comic
• Wikipedia Entry
• Dr Horrible on IMDB

Additional interviews and information is housed at Dr. Horrible.net.

So run, not walk to DrHorrible.com or buy the “season’s pass’ on iTunes - 7,926 Facebook , MySpace, etc. users can’t all be wrong…

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There are blogs that are a addictive must-read - clusterflock is one of those for me. This just came across my reader - and I think it’s an different social take. And an unexpected smile.

Postcrossing’s idea is simple - send a postcard, get a postcard from someone picked at random around the world. It’s kind of link getting a bunch of surprises by mail (remember - actual mail? In your mailbox? That’s not a bill or junk?).

How does it work? (from the website)

• request an address from the website
• mail the postcard to the address
• wait to receive a postcard
• register the received postcard in the system

Go to the website to read more on the specifics.

This reminds me of messages in bottle and having pen-pals in grammer school - nostalgia and poloroids.

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With all of the up and down (time) of Twitter, many people are looking at alternatives for their microblogging platform of choice. Tonight I noticed (ironically through Twitter) a number of my friends trying out Plurk.

My Plurk Page

Plurk has a very visual timeline that also tracks the comments in real time (the unread comments show up in your browser tab in FireFox). Right now, there’s no way to differentiate comments to your plurks or your friends without actually clicking on the “Show all” link.

They also track interaction by awarding karma points (from the website):

“Every plurker has his/her own karma value. It is recalculated every day and falls within these intervals:

• 0.00 to 21.00: You are in the state of creation
• 21.00 to 41.00: You are in the state of maintenance
• 41.00 to 61.00: You are enlightened
• 61.00 to 81.00: You are so close to Plurk Nirvana
• 81.00 to 100.00: You have reached Plurk Nirvana!

Your karma score is directly influenced by your and your friends Plurk activity. The more active you are, the more points you’ll get. Using various features of Plurk such as instant messaging or uploading a profile image will also help.

Invite your real friends to boost your karma!”

It’s weird that you can’t fill out your profile with a description (250 characters) without reaching 40 karma points.

There are growing pains - I’ve already gotten a couple of database errors and I was unable to use any of the “Find a Friend” tools. But there are a couple of things I like - the “Alert” feature makes it easy to see who friends you (or accepted your requests) and there’s a group feature - “Cliques” - which has always been a missing Twitter feature for me.

It’s fun to try out, but the true test is how easily it folds into my workflow. I do like that Plurk is supported by Profilactic (which feeds my Lifestream page) and a number of people that I follow are already trying it out. As the service (and my use of it) grows, I’ll post my updated impressions.

Please feel free to friend me on Plurk.

UPDATE: Interesting Reading:

Plurk: Our Philosophy in a Walnut Shell

Sean Percival - Plurk: Timeline Based Microblogging

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Just FYI - I wrote a post on the Semantic Web for our company’s blog here. Please feel free to read and comment.

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Thanks to my FriendFeed, I saw a blog entry from Fred Wilson about Disqus.

Disqus adds threaded comments to your blog, instead of the usual inline comments and or using the @convention. This has been a nagging annoyance of mine - threaded comments makes for understandable conversation flow. It’s hard to interact when every new comment seems to start a new point and conversation, even if it’s an actual reply.

Disqus replaces the existing comment structure with their own (hosted) solution. Once I uploaded and activated the plugin it took me only a few moments to set everything up - I was worried about losing existing comments and checking the “entries with no comments and future posts” option left everything intact. I then went to the Disqus website to set up my profile and enable my settings.

In his post, Fred Wilson says that the number of comments and interaction on his blog has gone up five to tenfold. I tweeted about installing Disqus and immediately got a response from Daniel Ha (co-founder), who pointed me to this FAQ page.

Disqus features:

• Integrates with your blog
• Receive/reply to comments by email or SMS
• You can subscribe to conversations
• Moderate and block unwanted comments/commenters
• Very customizable

Disqus works with a number of blogging platforms including WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger and Tumblr (my next Disqus site!). Sites that have implemented Disqus (according to the post, there are over 10,000 blogs) include Fake Steve Jobs, Scripting News, Rev2.org and, of course, A VC.

I’m looking forward to seeing what impact Disqus has on the conversations on my blog and will update with any significant impact.

Other posts on this topic:

• Mathew Ingram
• Howard Lindzon

UPDATE: ReadWriteWeb’s Corvida compares SezWho to Disqus and Intense Debate

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Jeff Jarvis in his BuzzMachine post today discusses his Guardian article about Gary Vaynerchuk. I had the pleasure of seeing Gary at a TechMeetup at Webster Hall a few weeks ago and in ten minutes changed the way I was looking at my job and my life. Not an exaggeration.

Go pre-order his book and look at his videos on WineLibraryTV. Go now.

Jeff Jarvis really captures the excitement and devotion that Gary inspires in anyone who watches his content or is lucky enough to meet him, as well as a great glimpse into his background.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the American Dream personified in Social Media.

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I’ve been using Mahalo, Jason Calacanis’s “people-powered” search engine for about 5 months - and am really enjoying it.

Mahalo uses “guides” to build our SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) so that the most relevant results are always given the most importance. The problem is the amount of manpower it takes to build out all of those results. So, besides the actual Mahalo employees, the service looks to crowdsourcing to fill in the results - and will pay them for their work (Mahalo Greenhouse).

Then came Mahalo Social, which added a social component to the service and Mahalo Follow, a way of sharing the links you upload to other services including De.lic.ious, Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, Facebook, Google Bookmarks, Jaiku and StumbleUpon. This was actually the piece that helped me get more involved with StumbleUpon, as Tamar Weinberg - AKA Queen of all Social News sites - was always after me about. Using a quick combination of keystrokes, I can easily post a link to all of these sites, or any combination I’d like.

As an aside - I rarely post links to Twitter - I’m protective of my network and don’t want to spam them with a lot of links.

But what makes any company - especially a startup - is the people. And everyone that I’ve had contact with from Mahalo has been impressive. If I send a feature request or some bug report, it’s been rare that I don’t hear from someone within the hour. Jason has been very gracious about forwarding reports to the right people and I always hear back with solutions or a commitment to fix the issue. This has really added to my enjoyment of Mahalo - even when my links are denied (or added!), it’s with a very polite note.

So who uses Mahalo? I”ve started using Mahalo for search results - it’s fun to see what people recommend and I really enjoy the Guide Notes. But the real value is for people who are looking for simple, specific results, or find Google results too confusing. It’s always hard for me to remember that most people don’t use the Web like I do and need easy tools that make them comfortable. Then I spend some time with my sister, an elementary school teacher with her first Mac, who doesn’t know what Twitter is and is nervous about shopping online. So I bookmarked Mahalo for her. With the easy and clean user interface, she’ll be able to find whatever she needs quickly (Google results are also included on the page).

And that’s valuable to both of us.

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I’ll be at a few events in the next few weeks - please find me and say hello if your attending any of these!

April 25th and 26th - Podcamp NYC, Brooklyn NYC

May 7th to 9th - “Food for Thought”, a conference on unconventional creativity, Greenville, NC. I’ll be participating on a panel on the 8th.

May 10th - SocialDevCamp in Baltimore MD

June 13th - BlogPotomac, Falls Church, VA

I’m also looking into going to Graphing Social Patterns East in Washington DC, June 9th to the 11th.

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Gary Vaynerchuk,  is one of those amazing people who can motivate you and put you on a path to change your world in the space of 10 minutes (I saw this myself during the NYC Tech Meetup Monday Night). Whenever I need a shot of inspiration, I watch one of his videos and this passion and enthusiasm is infectious.

So yesterday, when Gary posted this video asking people to participate in “Good People Day 08″, I couldn’t wait - I have a long list anyway of people I’m grateful for. There are tons of others - Connie Reece, Jason Falls, Scott Monty to name three - but these are the people I check in with most often.

Chris Brogan - Chris gives like no one I know - knowledge, time and amazing hugs. He finds the time to check in when I haven’t been around for awhile and was exceptionally supportive when setting up JaneQuigley.com. His post inspired an experiment that still has a lot of my clients and potential clients talking, which is always good. I wish I could repay Chris for the constant push he gives me.

Laura Fitton - I’m so proud of Laura (@Pistachio). She has really come into her own this year - I think of her as our Social Media “It Girl”. I think her lifestreaming work is brave and so open. We’ve also developed a very cool friendship, which I treasure. She lives a huge life.

Geoff Livingston - Author, BlogPotomac organizer, Buisness Driver - Geoff does it all.  I’ve given “Now is Gone” to many of my clients and peers because it’s a fantastic primer for people wrapping their heads around the social media space. He’s agressive and smart - and our conversations make me smile. He’s a daily touchstone and a fantastic friend.

Jeff Glasson - I met Jeff at PodCamp Boston and have enjoyed his friendship ever since. Jeff and I send videos (Facebook or Eyejot) and he always brings a smile to my face. He smart and funny and has so much to contribute in any conversation. Jeff has a really subtle enthusiasm which is very winning and must really work well with his clients.

Britt Raybould - I met Britt at SXSW (thanks to Chris Brogan). She’s an amazing and focused person - much more than I was at her age - with a very clear perspective on what works for her and her clients. I wish I could find someone just like her for my team and I look forward to connecting with her again. It was great seeing things in Austin through her eyes and our conversation really gave me this new sense of excitement for what I’m doing.

So those are the people who have really made an impact on me this year - I feel lucky to have gotten to know them.

UPDATE: I love Laura’s (@Pistachios’s) point that “Good people are made” and that people should work to do this for themselves. Belief in yourself, as well as validation from others, is key from going from “Good” to “Great” - and who doesn’t want to be great?

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So with 4 Days to Blogger Social here in NYC, I’ve been tagged by my SXSW roomie, Tamar Weinberg for this 4X4 meme. You’re given 4 questions and you need to give 4 answers, then tag 4 people.

4 Jobs I’ve Had

1. My first job was working for a Waldenbooks store for a lovely man named Joost, who introduced me to The Moonstone (one of my favorite books).
2. Worked for Harrod’s in London (the section where you buy those PVC bags). Best job ever. They bought me a plane ticket home for Xmas when the airline I was booked on went bankrupt and replaced Christmas presents that had been stolen at a company function. And wouldn’t let me repay them. Best job ever.
3. I was a Nordstrom Dress Buyer - worked my way up the company, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Everything I know about managing people comes from this experience.
4. I am currently the Senior Director at <a href="http://www.zetainteractive.com">Zeta Interactive</a>, an interactive ad agency in NYC - and my focus is Social media and emerging technologies. And it’s a blast.

4 Things I’ve done in the Last Four Years

1. Go back to London and reestablish friendships and my love for the city. It’s still my dream place to live. One day.
2. Change jobs - I ran the Interactive Division of an Ad Agency that focused on Real Estate, now I have a much bigger purview. I do miss the interaction with my developers and creative team - who I still keep in contact with and adore. It’s one thing I miss in my current position.
3. Have a major operation - which I didn’t take as seriously as I should have and am still experiencing (not serious - just enough to be annoying) repercussions.
4. Fell in and out of love. Ok, serious Like.

4 Movies I can watch over and over

1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - Newman and Redford at their best. "You just keep thinking, Butch…"
2. The Suicide Kings - Denis Leary, Jay Mohr (who does the best impression of…) Christopher Walken.
3. High Society - Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra (and great music). This is a definite 2am movie.
4. Grosse Point Blank - John Cusack and the best soundtrack ever.

4 Websites I visit everyday

1. Google - and that includes Gmail and my Reader
2. Twitter - I check in on a lot of my friends pages to catch up (it’s hard to hear all the conversations with over 600 people)
3. Facebook - I use it a lot for business as well as personal
4. My Basecamp/Backpack/Campfire, etc pages - my 37Signals web tools. I’ve just restarted using them again and it’s really gotten me focused again.

Ok - here’s the four people I want to hear from.
Bill Cammack
Connie Reese
Geoff Livingston
Jeff Glasson

You can answer any of these questions: 4 Jobs I’ve had, 4 Favorite Foods, 4 TV Shows I DVR, 4 Movies I could watch Over & Over, 4 Places I’ve been, 4 Places I’ve lived, 4 Places I want to go, 4 Music Artists I’m listening to now, 4 All Time Favorite Musicians, 4 Shows I have been to, 4 Cars I have owned, 4 Things I have done in the past 4 years, 4 websites I visit daily, 4 places I’d rather be right now, 4 People I think will respond, 4 Things I look forward to this year, or 4 Underrated conversational topics.

Can’t wait to hear from you guys!

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