January 2006

The show I booked at the Paradise Lounge featuring three of my favorite Boston-ish area bands is tomorrow night (Tuesday, January 31, 2006)! Doors open at 8pm, it’s 18+ and $7. If you mention that you heard about the show from sooz.com, you’ll save two bucks. The bands that will be playing include Uncle Shaker, an Americana band I saw at The Burren a few months ago. I wasn’t sure what to expect — it’s definitely not the indie rock/pop sort of music I usually listen to. But they are damn good. You can sample their tunes on the Uncle Shaker website. The MP3s are good, but their live show is better. The Curtain Society from Worcester will be playing tunes from their new album — the first in five years. It was worth the wait; but hopefully they’ll get around to making their next album before 2010! The last band is Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints who I’ve mentioned include two people who work with Michael at the Harvard Book Store. Andy, the singer, is a suberb songwriter and performer. He had been doing mostly solo shows under the Tom Thumb pseudonym but added a full band the past year. The band recently signed to independent label Three Ring Records.

Web startup Top 10 Sources hosted a launch party on Tuesday in their new Harvard Square office. Dan Bricklin wandered around the room recording interviews with the Top 10 Sources crew and other party goers. Listen up!

I can’t remember the last time I went to a launch party for a web business. It’s been a while! Everyone seemed to have a great time at Top 10’s shindig. The two rooms were packed, the food was tasty and the tshirts were a well designed black/white combo. I was going to bring my camera but decided not to be the blog paparazzi.

About Top 10 Sources:

Top 10 Sources is a directory of sites that bring you the freshest, most relevant content on the Web. We know it’s impossible for anyone to keep track of the 20 million+ online sources of information. So our editors search Web 2.0 — blogs, podcasts, wikis, news sites, and every kind of syndicated source online — by hand. Our Top 10 lists are updated frequently as great new sources come online.

Frances and I are meeting up on Sunday for our birthday dim sum brunch at Chau Chau City in Chinatown. If you’d like to join us, please do! The official gathering time is 12noon but I’m going to get there a little early in case there’s a line. Mention you’ll be there in this entry or send me an email.

photo courtesy of foodite at flickr.

Another year, another birthday to share with Meryl. :)

I finally had a chance to spend some time at Squidoo this week. One of the lenses I set up is called “Boston Rocks” featuring Boston area bands, weblogs, podcasts, etcetera. Photos that are tagged Boston Rocks at flickr will appear on the lens, too.

About Squidoo:

Squidoo is a co-op run on behalf of its members, the Lensmasters.

We have built an online platform that makes it easy for anyone to build lenses on topics they are passionate about. These lenses help you find a unique, human perspective on things that interest you… fast. Not only can Lensmasters spread their ideas, get recognized for their expertise, and send more traffic to their Web sites and blogs—they could also earn royalties.

Right now, in the earliest days of our public beta, our payment systems are turned OFF. Soon lensmaster royalties will go to the lensmaster directly, or to organizations or charities chosen by the lensmaster, or to our charity pool.

Three of my favorite Boston(ish) area bands are playing a show at the Paradise Lounge on Tuesday, January 31st. It’s part of my “Exploit Boston Presents” collection o’ happenings. Doors open at 8pm with the first band, Uncle Shaker, going on at 9pm. Then it’s The Curtain Society from Worcester who will be playing tunes from their new (and dare I say downright spectacular) “Every Corner of the Room” album. Last up is Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints (half of which work with Michael at the Harvard Book Store.) If you’re one of the first twenty people to get there by 8:30pm, there will be a free drink waiting for you. Tickets are $7 and can be purchased online at Music Today or the night of the show. If you were thinking to yourself “I wonder what Sooz wants for her birthday that’s coming up?” Well, joining me at this show would be just the thing to do!

More info on the concert’s event listing at Exploit Boston, of course!

We had an awesome turnout at Monday’s Exploit Boston Game Night on January 9th. The tables were full plus two groups were playing games on the floor of the lounge stage and a few more small groups gathered along the bar for card games. It looks like we’ll have a regular (monthly) spot on the Paradise Lounge schedule for February and beyond. Check out the Exploit Boston group at flickr for photos that Abby and I took throughout the evening.

David Beisel is hosting the third Web Innovators Group meetup at 6:30 PM on Monday, January 30th at The Blue Room. The restaurant is at One Kendall Square in Cambridge. You can RSVP on the group’s wiki: www.webinnovatorsgroup.com. Here are photos I took at the November gathering.

HeyLetsGo is a new social networking and event calendar website in Boston that I found out about at the November Web Innovators Meetup. I set up a “Sooz Events” group that you can join if you’d like to receive invitations to my events and share info about other events, too. I still have my email newsletter, but I thought I’d experiment with HeyLetsGo, too. Their site is invitation only for now. But if you sign up through the link to my group on their site, you can sign up directly without needing an invitation from me or anyone else already signed up. Most social networking websites I try out I forget about after a few months (hello Yahoo! 360); but this one seems like it might be a good one to use often. I like the map view for events. It’d be great if there was also a view that incorporated subway stations, too.

Sarah Tomlinson noted Exploit Boston’s (Monday, January 9th) game night as a pick of the week in The Boston Globe. I was pleased to see there’s even a link to Exploit Boston at the online version of the story on boston.com. From past experience, they don’t always do a lot of linking within stories. Kudos to whomever made that link possible.

Here are links for the other picks whose tidbits didn’t include any URLs: an Elvis impersonator’s show at Berklee on Saturday, UV Protection’s LP Release Party at Great Scott on Sunday and authors Elliot Perlman and David Crouse at Brookline Booksmith on Tuesday.