August 2005

I took a few photos at the Cambridge Carnival today. The annual festival happened in Central Square for many years and moved to Kendall Square this year. I ran into Watertown blogger Michael Feldman and then met up with Michael and his roommate Rachel to find food and drinks.

The rest of the photos I took are tagged “cambridge carnival” at flickr.

About the annual festivities …

Caribbean Carnival is a colorful and festive celebration that is rooted in African traditions. Having been brought to the Americas and the Caribbean as slaves as far back as the 1600s, the rich rhythmic culture and the music of the African people is the primary seed for carnivals—worldwide.

Using carnival from Trinidad and Tobago as its basic model, the city of Cambridge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is one of twenty-four North American Caribbean-style Carnivals that combines wire-bending, costumes, masks, music, steelpan, street-parades, dancing, food, and craft exhibits, to embellish the diverse cultures of all the countries and Caribbean islands, where transplanted Africans settled.

The Boston Photo Mob at flickr is meeting up on Wednesday, August 31st near Fenway. It’s nice to know that after eleven years in Boston I’ve finally found a mob to join.

Here are the details that they’ve come up with for the next mob meeting:

5:30 PM: Meet in front of Pizzaria Uno’s in Kenmore Square (and then venture out for photo taking)

7:15 PM: Meet at Boston Beer Works across from Fenway (for food, drinks and conversation)

The monthly game night that John Brigham and I organize at True Grounds was written up in a Boston Metro article on August 24 titled “Hottest Coffee Shops.” For some reason the article highlights the Star Wars game that someone brought to the July game night. Just for the record, there are a lot of other games to play at game night: Scrabble, Boggle, Apples to Apples, Uno, etcetera. We have a few games on hand and people bring their own favorites, too. The article mentioned that True Grounds doesn’t have a website. They’ve got one and are working on a new design.

The game night schedule is the fourth Tuesday of every month, 7:00 - 9:30 PM at True Grounds, 717 Broadway, Ball Square, Somerville. It’s all ages, free admission and complimentary snacks during the first half hour. The tables can accomodate 2-4 players. True Grounds full menu of food and drinks is also available throughout the evening. They normally close at 7PM (the article incorrectly notes closing time as 8PM) but stay open late for game night.

To view Boston Metro’s archive of the article, go to their website at metropoint.com and select the August 26, 2005 Boston edition. The article is on page 10.

I noticed there’s a Bar Camp Boston logo for an event sometime in 2005. Anybody know who is organizing it and if they’d like help? I couldn’t find any Boston contact information on the Bar Camp website.

There are two obvious reasons why “My Mood Swings” is fabulous: it’s an Elvis Costello song and it’s from The Big Lebowski Soundtrack. For some reason, this is the only song off the soundtrack that is available on iTunes. Listen up!

In related news, Lebowski Fest is coming to New York City October 21-22, 2005: bands, a film screening and bowling. Sounds amusingly fun.

I’m having a hard time figuring out Feedburner. I use their service to manage my sooz.com RSS feed because I’m a web stats junkie and like to see how many people read certain entries, etc. One day it tells me I’ve got 120 people subscribed to my feed. Then the next day it’s 110. Today it’s 208. Have nearly 100 people really subscribed to my feed in the past 24 hours? I have a hard time believing that.

Some people have a countdown to Christmas or their wedding, I’d rather have a countdown for the next South by Southwest Interactive Festival. It’s happening next March 10-14, 2006 in Austin, TX. Craig Newmark of Craig’s List is doing one of the keynotes. South by Southwest Interactive is the best tech/web event to go for learning, recharging and lots of fun.

From their FAQs page:

What is SXSW Interactive?
The SXSW Interactive Festival offers five days of panels, keynote discussions, trade show and exciting evening events. Attendees benefit from hands-on, how-to training as well as long-term, big-picture analysis in an atmosphere that super-charges creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

Who attends this event?
SXSW Interactive appeals to uber-geeks and digital creatives who push the cutting edge of technological change. More specifically, the event appeals to content developers, web designers, programmers, bloggers, wireless innovators, gamers, tech entrepreneurs, bankers, investors and educators.

Shimon Rura recently launched his awesome voo2do task management website. I had a chance to check it out a few months ago while it was under development. It’s great to see it come to life for others to use, too.

So, I thought I’d compile and describe some of the tools I use to keep my work world organized.

Basecamp
When I first started to use Basecamp last year I used it extensively to manage client and internal projects. These days I’m mostly using it as a knowledgebase and not for tasks and milestones/calendars. Basecamp is an essential part of my world and is the first thing I see when I open up Firefox.

iCal and phpicalendar
I use iCal to manage calendars and tasks. In order to easily share this information with clients and collaborators, I publish the calendars and tasks to a private area on my website with phpicalendar. Everyone can subscribe via RSS, mobile phone or on their computer via the published iCal file. One of my collaborators has bluetooth on his cellphone so he is able to receive alerts on tasks and appointments that I’ve added an alarm to. (This can be an amusing feature since I can use it to send out alerts like “Hey, call me back!”, etc.) The only reason I’m not using voo2do is that I like being able to keep the data on my own server for work related tasks.

del.icio.us
I use delicious as my bookmark manager. I’ve created special “bundles” that group different tags together. For example, I have a “PR” bundle that compiles anything PR-related for my work including the Joshua Darden Studio. How it works is that the “PR” bundle is the overall box for the collection and then I associate specific tags to the bundle such as “pr:joshuadarden.” I use the “for:” bundle to drop bookmarks into other people’s accounts. It’s a handy way to share a website with someone without having to email the URL or bug them in instant messenger. (I’m hopeful that spammers won’t figure out a way to tap into this.) For example, I added the for:pc4media to my bookmark to Google’s page about their “Google Advertising Professionals” program. By using this tag, it drops it into his account and creates a special RSS feed for all the bookmarks that everyone else has tagged “for:pc4media.”

I will probably add more to this page; but for now, that’s it!

I moved into new office space recently at Cambridge Innovation Center. They’re in Cambridge at One Broadway in Kendall Square. I first checked them out last year and was impressed with their setup. On a month-to-month basis (no long-term lease) you can rent cubicles and offices that include a suite of services and amenities including business services (office furniture, receptionist/concierge on main floor, parking in the building, mail/package handling, cleaning, conference rooms) and technology services (telephone and voice mail, dedicated fax line, fax machines, copy machines, printers). Each of their three floors has a kitchen area that is stocked with snacks and beverages, too.

Most of their tenants seem to be small companies and startups. And just for the record, I receive no perk or million dollar payment for writing about them. I’m just a happy customer.

Something weird seems to be happening with the new event website I set up for Game Night on August 23rd. I’m not sure what I’ve done to mess it up. Oddly enough, the site looks fine on WhizSpark’s Windows-based computers but when I try to go to the site on a Mac, it doesn’t work. A friend on a Mac tried the site and got the same error message.

If you’d like to do me a favor and test it out, please do! Please post your results (what you see when you go to the URL, operating system and browser) in the comments. Thanks!

Update 17 August: It’s working OK now.