Confessions of an Undercover Geek

Many people in college might wander why you should move to a blog. Who beyond your circle of friends would want to hear your opinions on issues? Well if you give it time, thought, and energy, especially as a college kid you can make your voice heard on whatever you want.

I am 21. I am third year student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I have a part time job. I know how as a college kid the world can seem very big. Thinking of how you can leave your mark may be very daunting. That is why the web is so exciting. It brings the world together and puts it at your finger tips. A blog gives you an amazing soap box which too communicate from.

Through this blog I have been able to communicate my thoughts. This has definitely been a pinnacle year for me and blogging. I have spent a lot of time reading the different how-to’s for blog success. I read the works of the many great blog and writing consultants, like my dad, Darren Rowse, Steve Rubel, Amy Gahran, and Debbie Weil. The techniques that they have talked about how have paid off.

In 2005, I have written 461 posts. I have shared with you my views on the World Wide Web, movies, college life, religion, politics, technology, communication, the media, and girls.

Some of my favorite posts are:

• Does Hillary Clinton Think It Is Ok to Shoot Hookers?
• Motorola Apple iTunes Phone…Who Cares!
• Amazon.com Needs To Put Red Cross Donation On Home Page
• Attending a Conference Without Attending a Conference..
• A Casual Gamers Thoughts on the Xbox 360 Launch and Console Gaming
• Howard Dean and His Secret Plan for Iraq
• My Paper - “The Semantic Web - What It Is and How It Will Change the World”

In 2005, we together started a discussion about the topics that were in my head and on my heart. I have had over a hundred comments on my various posts. I have gotten responses from big names in the web and technology industries like web standards queen Molly E. Holzschlag, Flock Director of Experience Chris Messina, and Director of the Yahoo! Developer Network Jeffrey McManus. My blog entry about Tim Berners-Lee starting a blog was picked up by Alex Barnett, the International Program Manager for MSDN and TechNet at Microsoft.

Another thing that blows my mind is when I look at how many different countries have read my blog. We have gotten up to 76 countries. Some of the more fun ones are China, Korea, Croatia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Columbia, and Barbados. 22% of my readers are not from the United States.

I have been able to with time, patience, and some thought, take my ideas and communicate them to the world. I have been able to start discussions on the issues that I care about and I am only a 21 year old college student.

In 2006, I have some big plans and goals for this blog.

• Launch a Redesign of This Blog in the First Week of March 2006
• Move to UndercoverGeek.com
• Get $1,000 in web-advertisement revenue
• Get 10,000 unique visits
• Have 40% of my readership be outside of the United States
• 150 new comments
• Get inside of the Top 5000 Blogs on Technorati

2006 should be exciting.

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I hope that everyone is having a great New Years Eve. For all my friends and readers in Australia, happy 2006! Sounds like they had a pretty kickin celebration in Sydney, Australia. I found a cool photo on Flickr of some Sydney fireworks. There is a whole New Year’s Eve Photo Pool up on Flickr. I am sure come tomorrow there will be a whole wealth of great photos.

I have been in Michigan, on break, for about 2 weeks now. I woke up this morning for the first time and we actually had snow! *Snow* (in a singing voice, like the song in White Christmas.) Without snow, it is just not the same.

I got a $3 bottle of Cold Duck Champagne for tonite. I’ll probably have a Frasier marathon and watch Dick Clark. Party on!

If your bored, try writing a speech for President Bush.

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Mozilla has released some of the planning documents for Firefox 2. It looks like they want to have Firefox 2 out by June of next year. It should be cool.

digg the story - “Preview of the upcoming Firefox 2 browser”

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Seems like all of the cool kids are doing “Best of…” lists for 2005. Check out their lists: Richard MacManus, Dion Hinchcliffe, Andy Clarke, and Molly E. Holzschlag.

Best Web Services

• Digg.com - Digg helps me to explore some of the unexplored caves of the web.
• Bloglines - my portal to the world
• Google Maps - where I find where I am supposed to be
• del.icio.us - organizes all the crazy cool stuff I find on the web

Best Blogs

• Robert Scoble - I wish my blog was as cool as yours.
• Molly E. Holzschlag - I love your passion for the web.
• Roger Johansson - Your blog is this amazing wealth of knowledge.
• Wes Thorp - Dad, together we are changing the world.
• The Unofficial Apple Web Log

Best Companies That Strive to Innovate

• Google
• 37 Signals
• Flock
• Technorati

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I like Dave Shea’s idea of picking out 7 random things that made me happy in 2005. Here is my list. These are in no particular order.

1. Family & Friends - God has blessed me with so many amazing people in my life that love and support me. I don’t have enough room in a blog entry to name you all.

2. the TV series LOST - My friend Sarah offered to make me dinner once and watch an episode of LOST with our friend Eric. Knowing to never pass up the opportunity for a home cooked meal with a pretty girl, I absolutely went. I am now a LOST junkie.

3. Sam Adams Cherry Wheat Ale - There are so many good beers out there. This is absolutely one of my favorites.

4. Panera Bread - This is by far one of my favorite places to eat.

5. Bloglines - There are so many blogs and new feeds that I keep up with. Bloglines has become an integral part of how I get information. Blog readers are going to become more important than newspapers.

6. Extensible Markup Language (XML) - I am taking a grad school class in this. It is pretty wild. It seems like we have been talking just as much about how we see the world as we have been about data. Its pretty mind blowing.

7. Halo 2 - After a long day of work and school, having a beer and blowing off some steam playing Halo 2 with my roommates is a blast. it is a great game.

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According to EmailBattles.com, there are some Microsoft employees that are really unhappy with where things are going with Internet Explorer.

I think all of us in the web development field are anxious to see what is going to happen with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Is it going to end up just like Mozilla Firefox? I think what the guys are doing with Flock, the browser, is pretty cool. I don’t think they have come up with anything amazing yet. I like the idea of them wanting to innovate with the browser and take it new places.

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In March, my dad is going to be doing a missions trip to Mali, West Africa with Francophone Ministries. He is really excited about it. He just got a bunch of immunization shots. Doesn’t getting yellow fever shot into you sound like fun?

Well you can follow his experiences leading up to the trip and while he is in Africa, on his missions trip blog.

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I wish I was this guy.

British college student Alex Tew recently started a web site where he would sell advertising for a dollar a pixel. He was putting up 1,000,000 pixels of space. His goal was to make $ 1 million dollars. He has sold about 911,800 pixels. The best part is the advertisers are getting results.

I love the World Wide Web.

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The Chief TWIT and host of the “This Week in Tech” Podcast Leo Laporte has asked his community of listeners to chime in with the future direction of all of the TWIT podcasts (Security Now, Inside the Net, Triangulation.) Leo wants to know if they should start a subscription or ad-based business model. If they want to continue with further programming development, they need to bring in more revenue.

I am cool with them putting some ads in their show. I really like the way that Patrick Norton and Robert Herron do it on Digital Life TV. They do 10-15 minute segments followed by some commercials. It just makes it more like normal television for me.

I’d love there to be some type of technology programming network. There would be no one to do it better then Leo Laporte.

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I have decided to read the Da Vinci Code By Dan Brown while I am on break. I borrowed it from my co-worker Trevor. I have about a week and a half left before I go back to NY. I am going to see if i can get it done between now and then.

I have heard so much about the Da Vinci Code. So many people I know, think it is a great book. I know a lot of people that think the book is horrible because of it’s inaccuracies regarding Christian doctrine. I am a Christian and I see book as fiction. Fiction is not true, enough said.

One of my favorite directors Ron Howard is working on making a movie of the Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks is the star of the book Robert Langdon. The Apple Quicktime web site has the Da Vinci Code Movie trailer in high definition. The movie looks good.

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