December 2001

The sooz!radio playlist has been updated with a merry collection of REM holiday tunes: a fun little assortment of songs from their 1988-1996 fan club records. A few of the songs you’ll hear include:

• Deck the Halls, 1988
• See No Evil, 1988
• Academy Fight Song, 1989
• Ghost Reindeer in the Sky, 1990
• Baby, Baby, 1991
• Toyland, 1992
• Silver Bells, 1993
• Only in America, 1996

There are new events in the works including a monthly mixer type gathering at The Elephant
Walk Restaurant on Mass Ave in Cambridge. That event will most likely start in February. More info soon,
soon, soon. Song+Story is also in the works for a date as yet unknown in April: an evening of songwriters and storytellers with
proceeds benefiting a local non-profit. Did you know Lloyd Cole lives in Massachusetts now? He’s
originally from England. One of my favorite musicians. Wouldn’t it be grand if he participated.
A girl can dream! Perhaps all it takes is an email. It might not hurt to cross my fingers, too.
More on Song+Story as details come together. Soon!

I remembered to bring my camera to the Freelance Hub lunch today. It was our biggest lunch in the two years we’ve been getting together. Check out the photos in the photoalbum.

We’ve got an anticipated full house at Thursday’s Freelance Hub lunch. If you’d like to join us in January and can set aside 1.5-2 hours in your schedule: learn more about the lunch and RSVP for the Thursday, January 17th lunch at Bertucci’s in Cambridge at Alewife. I think I’ll bring my digital camera this week and add a few new photos to the image banner at the top of the Freelance Hub pages.

This month’s lunch marks the 2nd anniversary of Freelance Hub, an informal network of freelancers, independents, contractors and consultants who work on Internet and web projects in the Boston area. Due to the large number of expected attendees, there is only room for 5 2 more RSVPs at the upcoming Thursday, December 13 lunch. If you’d like to join us, learn more about the lunch and RVSP.

The “Independents Day @ SXSW” panel (one of the three that are part of the ID track) that I’m moderating in March is coming together. Ev Williams and Dori Smith are new to the gang, joining Nick Finck and I. I’m really looking forward to this. It’ll be the first panel that I’ve ever been on. The scope of the panel isn’t entirely worked out yet but some of the things we’ll discuss (hopefully with a lot of audience participation) include: should independent sites rely on more than word of mouth promotion; what can an independent site do to create awareness about their project; and what happens when a site becomes wildly popular and the bandwidth bills come knocking — are there ways to sustain a site without alienating the site’s visitors and community?

Learn more about SXSW and then register!

The networking resources page is new! If you know of an excellent networking event or calendar in Boston and beyond, fill out the submission form.

sooz!radio has been down for a couple days. Apparently Live365 is experiencing problems with their bandwidth provider. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Makiko Itoh gave a talk about CSS at the Web Design World/Web Builder conference in New Orleans last week and included sooz.com in her list of websites that do a good job of utilizing CSS. Fun! I had an opportunity to meet Maki and Max when they were in town for a Seybold conference this past Spring. Very nice people.

If you’re using IE and you see little white asterisks falling down your desktop … they’re snowflakes; but they won’t smudge your monitor.

Last night Michael and I attended the Harvard Book Store’s holiday party at Flattop Johnny’s in Kendall Square. I haven’t played pool in years. And this was certainly evident last night. I took a few photos, too.

Today is World AIDS Day.

Resourceful websites:

AIDS Action Committee: AIDS Action is New England’s leading provider of AIDS services, education and advocacy.

Boston AIDS Information Outreach Project: A compendium of resources.
AIDS.org: “Because Good Information is Still the Best Cure for AIDS.”