Want to be more productive? Here is a pretty simple technique (one that has been used by everyone from Benjamin Franklin to  Marc Andreessen): Write down your goals for the day on a 3×5 note card (Hipster PDA or Moleskine), and then simply just do them.  At the end of the day, that piece of paper should be full of scratch-outs!

I actually created some customized goal cards (potential promotional items?) that you may find useful (just add a 4 cent binder clip or a $40 Levenger leather folio and you’re good to go).  The mantra: 

As you can see by these cards, I am a big fan of the Roosevelts, the greatest political family in United States history.  This summer I had the pleasure to visit Theodore Roosevelt’s house in Oyster Bay, Long Island.  It was very inspirational just taking in his life and accomplishments (I highly recommend reading Theodore Rex to learn more).  The house itself had the feel of a 20th century Monticello with just as many books.  In this super specialized world, I’m not sure it’s possible to be a Renaissance Man* in the mold of a Jefferson or Roosevelt anymore.  If that is indeed what you’re striving for, you better be productive…

Good segue (can’t get a blog post in without a ButtonALL plug), check out one of our newest search channels…Productivity!  As you know, ButtonALL already makes you more productive by having everything you want on one screen.  This special channel features search buttons to five of the most important productivity websites on the Internet: Lifehacker, 43 Folders, Lifehack.org, Web Worker Daily, and Zen Habits. 

Give it a try.  Enter a search term like “Hipster PDA” or “Get Things Done” and start exploring.  “Life hack” your way to becoming a 21st century Renaissance Person, the next Teddy or Eleanor!

*Update! Renaissance Man? Here are Ted’s accomplishments (as inscribed outside New York’s Museum of Natural History): “Ranchman, Scholar, Explorer, Scientist, Conservationist, Naturalist, Statesman, Author, Historian, Humanitarian, Soldier, Patriot.”

As for TJ, I’ve always loved his epitaph: ”Author of the Declaration of Independence [and] of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.” (didn’t even mention the whole Presidency thing)

Like the all caps “shout”?  Yeah, I know that is annoying, but maybe it grabbed someone’s attention.  So, many of buttonall’s detractors go on and on about how simple buttonall is and how you can replicate the functionality within other tools — especially your browser search engine toolbar.  Well, yes, they are correct.  Buttonall is simple and you could easily maintain your own hotlist of search engines in the toolbar dropdown or within a customized homepage.  However, I think we offer some clear advantages — first off, there is the whole type the text, pick the engine and search which brings up results in the current page.  So, to mimick buttonall you need to open a new tab, type the text and pick the engine, open a new tab and pick another engine, etc.  That is why we are a lifehack, saving folks some clicks.  Secondly, our search channels are steadily growing — we are getting close to 100 now, organized by category.  Umm…. try that out on the toolbar dropdown.  We are making it our business to keep up with the search engines and offering up new channels and giving you a very simple interface to customize your remote control.

However, I was still using the browser search toolbar.  I actually love that thing — it is the quickest way to get a search.  It has been our plan all along to provide access to buttonall via that toolbar.  We just had to wait a little bit and build up our aggregate search data.  Now I have the best of both worlds!  Next time you are on your buttonall homepage (www.buttonall.com), you’ll notice that your browser search toolbar’s dropdown icon is highlighted — this means you can add buttonall search to your list.  Once you do this, you’ll end up only using buttonall search!!  You see, buttonall search taps into our search database (don’t worry, this is all anonymous, “socially” driven) and essentially presents you with a dynamic channel that has been customized based on the search engines previously used for the search keyword.  Sure, you may still end up going to Google for most things and maybe this adds an extra step in your search process.  But, I’m loving this thing cause I’m finding different and very interesting search engines that the “overall buttonall social system” (OBSS) has used for the particular search I am doing.  Think about it for just a second — better yet, just try it out:

http://www.buttonall.com/search/buttonall?q=social+search+aggregator

And what is more exciting is that the more users we get on this very simple system, the more we can transform the OBSS into a social conscious whereby we can all directly (yet passively — no annoying ratings or surveys or thumbs up/thumbs down) contribute to search relevance.  The other interesting thing is that we do show adds for these results.  I am on the fence on this issue.  At this stage for a site, I really hate to introduce ads and start busying up the page, etc.  But, I think we all feel so strongly about this product/service that realistically we need to make sure we *have* a revenue stream.  And, the cool thing is that these ads will pickup on the search term and we will display very relevant sites from Google.  So, it is like having that default short-cut to google no matter which search engines show up in the list.  In fact, I think buttonall is still simple enough that the ads are not overly imposing and I would suggest that more folks turn on ads in the customization since the more folks showing them will give us better relevance on just the homepage.  Furthermore, we are researching different ad affiliates (again, based on the OBSS).

Our good buddies at Xerpi (Manhattan and Virginia based) are looking to hire a part-time computer sciences student with skills.  Here is a taste of the job description:

…What we can offer is an exciting, edgy set of projects and some moolah. So, maybe this isn’t you, but someone you know — we do think a student is a great fit since we offer flexible hours and work from anywhere and we are sure that the experience and mentoring we offer will be invaluable for those just learning about programming languages, data structures, and algorithms analysis…

They’re doing some pretty amazing and cutting edge work over there (Sergey Brin kinds of stuff), especially in the areas of statistical advertising modeling.  It’d be perfect for a student wanting to get some real world experience. For full details, see their blog.

Got this email recently from a ButtonALL user.  It’s basically a cool, unsolicited logo idea. 

Fwd: Please! Use this logo on your buttonall page, it is cooler cause it matches
In a message dated 8/25/2008 4:45:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, webmaster@practicalartifice.com writes:
ButtonAll is my homepage now, good job.

This logo is free of charge, a gift courtesy of:

Practical Artifice
Web & Graphic Solutions 

Practical Artifice did a fantastic job with this (I love how the logo mirrors the look of the site…spot on)!  If you are looking for a logo maker (especially if you’re in the Los Angeles-OC area), this is your man! 

• Resume
• Website: Web & Graphic Designer
• Mobile Phone - (714) 600 - 0267
• Email:  webmaster (–AT–)  practicalartifice.com

We had an incredibly productive meeting last Friday at our Short Pump branch office (ie, Starbucks…LOL, which one?…as Wray pointed out, there are literally FIVE locations within about ONE square mile– TWO in Short Pump Town Center, Lauderdale (our branch office), Barnes and Noble, and Target–that’s not even counting Cox Rd, Gaskins, and Nuckols).

Number one item on our agenda was TechCrunch50 (or rather TechCrunch 53).  Should we accept the demo pit invitation and go in the hole for $5,000?–($3,000 for registration, $1200 for 2 plane tickets, $450 for hotel, $150 for car rental, $100 for meals (that’s underestimating cause it’s me…hell, I’ll eat $100 in San Fran Dim Sum alone), and $100 for shwag)

First off (reading from cue cards ;)), it was an honor to make Second-Team All-American .  Considering this company is only a couple of months old, we couldn’t be more excited about getting a runners-up nod.  It’s like getting external validation (West Coast Tech Gods validation, no less) that we’re on some kind of right track strategically.  More importantly, Wray just shared some recent “stickiness” statistics for August.  People are using ButtonALL.  They are starting to customize.  And they are definitely returning.  Man, if we can just get it into more people’s hands…

So why not just go to TechCrunch50 then?  Look, it might be different in California, but in Virginia, Five Grand is a lot of money for a “garage” startup.  The promotional ROI is difficult to forecast (especially, with the focus of the event being on the 50 debutantes).  As for “venture funding,” honestly, we don’t need it right now for this project, and even if we did…Wray brought up a farcical scenario about our current readiness…

• VC:  “Well, boys, we like your company.  Why don’t we meet up in San Mateo in two weeks?”
• Us: “Uh, could you pay for our plane ticket?”
  n00bie lambs to the slaughter!

When you are a start-up, wise bootstrapping is a must.  Cashflow is king, and all expenses must be prioritized by cashflow potential and probability of immediate financial return.  A tech conference, no matter how sexy, just can’t pass this litmus test, for us, for now.  OK, that’s my final word on TC50* (that is until next year when we make Varsity!)

*Postscript: At the end of the meeting, the guys were giving me a lot of grief over this blog post….Ed’s attempt at edgy, Colbertesque humor on the blog….FAIL!
*Postscript 2: Counterpoint: TechCrunch: What Winning TechCrunch40 Did for Mint.com

ButtonALL is definitely twittering…What a perfect medium to make mini-announcements without committing to a long-winded blog post.

We have been using Twitter to announce new channels as soon as they become live.  Here is a compilation of our channel announcement twitters from this week (misspellings and all!)…

• FAQ-Walkthrough-Cheats Channel is Live!: GameFAQs, Strategy Informer, GameWinners, GamerHelp, GameSpy…
• Video Game News Channel…IGN, GameSpot, Kotaku, Joystiq, 1UP.com…Video Game Walkthrough/FAQ coming next!
• Meme-Slang-Urban Legends Channel…What the heck is Leroy Jenkins, Mudkips, and 1337?…Now you can interpret those damn kids… 
• Meta-Search Channel is Live!: Mamma, Clusty, Search.com, Info.com, Myriad Search…
• Four Otaku channels (not be confused w 4Chan) added courtesy of Laz…Merch, Culture, Blogs, and Figures: http://blog.buttonall.com/?p=62 
• Dude, I am in the channel zone right now…just completed Stock Search Channel…google, yahoo, msn, CNNMoney, Wall Street Journel
• New York Media Chanel 2 (man, lots of papers in the big apple)…Star-Ledger, Newsday, NY Magazine, Gothamist, (and Time Out)
• Charity Search Engines Channel…Longer writeup… http://blog.buttonall.com/?p=56  
• SEO Tools ChanneL: Quantcast, Compete, Whois.net, Arin IP, Network Solutions…Ridiculously Useful!
• Technology 2 Channel ONLINE: ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, O’Reilly Radar, Techmeme, AllThingsD…

Considering we updated the customization navigation (to accommodate all these new channels) and added a neat ButtonALL search toolbar application (I think Wray is going to blog about this), I say this was a pretty darn good productive week.  Kudos to the 4What team!

It has been my pleasure to drill that line from Nekki Basara into Ed-san’s head over the past few weeks and during Otakon weekend. I think it rings true for what we’re trying to do with ButtonAll. In this case ButtonAll is our song. Sure, ButtonAll might not move mountains, defeat Protodevlin’s or even save galactic whales, but we think it’s pretty cool and since we’ve added channel customization into the mix, things got cooler. For example, I’m a pretty big anime/manga fan … some might consider me an Otaku. I spend a great deal of time searching for the latest figures, anime, manga, news and info on the latest in Otaku culture. Typically this is about as much fun as listening to the Jamming Birds. I’ve been able to to create the following Channels on ButtonAll to help me speed my way through the internets toward many wins.

Merchandise - General Otaku Merchandise
Add Chanel

• ShopAnimeDvd
• Anime Castle
• Amazon.us
• This is Anime
• Amazon.co.jp

Figures Merch - Specifically figures and models
Add Channel

• Anime Export
• Hobby Search
• AAA Anime
• Hobby Fan
• Kid Nemo

Otaku Blogs
Add Channel

• That Anime Blog
• RIUVA - Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts
• The-O Network
• Dark Mirage.com
• Danny Choo

Otaku Culture
Add Channel

• Danny Choo
• Akiabanana
• Akihabara Channel
• Japanator
• AkibaBlog.en

These are only the tip of the iceberg for Search Engines within these channels and really, the tip of the iceberg for channels themselves. We have sports related channels, travel channels, etc. … and if you don’t see something that you would really like, just let us know and we’ll get it added We like listening to your song too, to paraphrase Nekki Basara.

Hopefully you got some of the inside otaku references in the blog above. If not, plug them into ButtonAll and click away. While you’re at it … thanks for listening to our song.

See you next deculture,
Laz

In researching “charity search engines” (basically, search engines that donate a portion of ad revenues to charity….usually, these services re-brand one of the Big 4 search engines…), I came across two seminal articles:

• 15 Charity Search Engines that help you give money to charity for free Dosh Dosh Maki March 2007
• How to search for a cause CNET Elsa Wenzel June 13, 2007 

Here is a 2008 update of the Dosh Dosh list after some further drill-down.  Within a year, a number of these have actually shut down.  It appears some of the search engine partners have been skittish with this kind of business model (ie, promotes “beneveloent” click link fraud??)…

4. SearchKindly I could be wrong, but the Google search results seemed uncoded.  I’m not sure how they’re raising money then. 
6. Jikolp is now one of those spam sites you see when a domain expires.
7. Oblatoo via blog 
Oblatoo was set up in 2007 but is not currently operational.

The idea was to establish a charitable search engine. Each time a search was performed 1p would be pledged to charity. The ability to do this was driven by advertising revenue earned from sponsored links in the search results.  Orignally the search results were powered by Google. Unfortunately Google decided that 1p per search was an incentive for users to search. We still refute this claim, but unfortunately Google stopped providing the ads.

The likes of Yahoo! and Ask also refused to partner with Oblatoo due to charitable nature of the search engine. Consequently, the search engine had to be shut down as without advertising revenue it was impossible to meet any pledges to charities…

8. Charity Cafe Ask.com have sadly chosen to withdraw their support for charity based sites such as CharityCafe. As this was at very short notice we are currently considering alternative options to continue to support the good work of our charities. 
9. CooRah Website doesn’t appear to be working
11. Kazazz doesn’t appear to be a charity search engine (at least, they aren’t touting themselves as such)
13. Click4TheCause is now Search&Give Appears to be a Microsoft play

For the final ButtonALL channel selection, we went with GoodSearch, GoodTree, Search&Give, Clicks4Cancer, and EveryClick.  You can now add these to your customized search engine (Look Under “Category :: Search” then “Name :: Charity Search”). OR JUST CLICK HERE!

Pssst…A little secret.  Even though I have been a good soldier and set my home page to ButtonALL, there have been plenty of times when I cheated on her.  Chef not eating his own cooking, if you will. 

You see the problem with Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) results (ButtonALL’s default setting to take advantage of AdSense) is that they are slightly different from classic Google.   CSE fails to include the header search menu of: “Web | Images  | Maps  | News  | Shopping  |  Mail |  more.”  As someone who constantly researches stories (and, recently, press clippings), I am always using the blog and news searches.  Without that classic header, I couldn’t easily access those additional tools, hence, my Google cheating. 

We have since fixed my infidelity problem by creating a new Google Channel for ButtonALL (go to customize | scroll down the drop down box and choose “Search :: Google Channel”).  

See picture below of my personal current setup.  The new Google channel (second row) has a button for news and blogs (as well as images, maps, and products).  This setup is the superior hack.  Say, I’m looking for blog and news stories about ButtonALL.  I am now just two clicks away from what I’m looking for (even tweaked the results to where they are sorted by date as opposed to relevancy).  To complete the picture, I have also added the “Blog Search” channel (third row) to my home page.  Blog search engines like Ice Rocket and Technorati actually pickup stuff and websites that Google ignores (and vice versa).  Try it out! 

Here was our submission:
 Top 10 reasons why we should get a free ticket to Techcrunch50. If we win a ticket, we will…

#10. Post the ticket on StubHub or Oakland Craigslist and split the booty with Jason and Michael
#9. Sneak in a bunch of Whedon fanboys where WE would break out into song during his panel (Janye’s Ballad and something from Buffy the musical episode)
#8. SO we can haz tikitz then proceed to do the demo all in MEME and leetspeak wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
#7. Arrington, Scoble, O’Reilly pillow fight! 
#6. Leverage this opportunity to fulfill life-long dream of touring the Rice-a-Roni museum and visitor’s center.
#5. Hire the Tron Guy as our sexy booth girl.
#4. Use ticket as downpayment and upgrade to luxurious exhibitor package. Get adjustable rate mortgage to gap finance the remainder (that would be so California)
#3. Give the conference badge to a North Beach “dancer” with a heart of gold working her way through community college to start-up a new media company.
#2. Utilize edge of ticket to cut victory cocaine lines after winning TC50 all the way from the demo pit.
#1. Hasn’t our Technorati Authority 2 blog already given you guys enough heat? 

Contest Rules:

• Contest Rules via 1 | 2
  Whoever does best BLOG POST on top10 reasons why they should get free ticket to techcrunch50 gets a free ticket. maybe top 3 will get it 04:50 PM August 15, 2008 from web
• Contest Submission Directions via
  when done send your blog post URL to me with an @jasoncalacanis and @techcrunch reply on twitter. happy hunting folks!!! 04:51 PM August 15, 2008 from web
• Contest Ends Sunday, August 17, 2008, Midnight PST via (update: contest was extended to Monday, Aug 18, 12 PM PST, via): 
  @bradhill that’s classic BH! @techcrunch - contest will run until Sunday midnight. 4every 20 blog posts i’ll pick one winner. got 10-15 now 09:02 PM August 15, 2008 from web in reply to BradHill

This Contest has ended, but since people are still googling here looking for a free ticket, I’ll keep track of other contests:

• Best Mark Cuban Question via  best question for Mark Cuban gets a free ticket to TechCrunch50! @techcrunch please retweet. 41 minutes ago from web
• Mint Contest: Win a Free Pass to TechCrunch50 | How Minty Are You? (hmm, don’t even bother on the “story” contest part…blog guy’s gonna win that one)

More Submissions:

• A little bit here and a little bit there: Top 10 Reasons I should get a free TechCrunch50 Ticket
• Brad Hill Weblog: The epic TC50 contest
• Food Channel: TechCrunch50 and the Food Channel
• Jeff “zmote” O’Hara: 10 reasons why Jason Calacanis should give me a free ticket to Techcrunch50 WINNER via
• Infinitely Media: Top 10 Reasons I should get a free Techcrunch50 invite
• Kansas City Startup: Top 10 reasons why I should get a free ticketed to TechCrunch50  WINNER via
• Learnanyway: 10 reasons I need to go to TechCrunch50
• michelleherrin.com: Top Ten Reasons I Should Get a TechCrunch50
• RXMEDICALEXPERTISE.COM: 10 reasons I need to go to TechCrunch50
• Sexiest Geeks Alive: Top 10 reasons SGA needs a TC50 ticket! (Or more than 1!)
• TheRealBennyLava: TechCrunch50 and the 50 Reasons I should go for Free WINNER via
• uLiken Media: 10 reason not to attend Techcrunch 50 
• Webalytics: Top 10 reasons I should be Jason Calacanis’ guest at Techcrunch50 
  • george @ southernohio.net Google is telling me “This site may harm your computer”…fyi

Update!:

• Amid Conference Halls and Keynote Speakers, a Rivalry Forms Brad Stone, NY Times, April 28, 2008 (response: TechCrunch: Pouring Our Heart Into TechCrunch50 | calacanis.com: A blog post regarding the fact that I’m still retired from blogging)
• My notes: This contest, this “war”…G-E-N-I-U-S…I’m taking furious notes learning from these masters. Chris Shipley is not a dude?
• Next step suggestions: (1) Partner with Mark Burnett on a TC50 reality show (for G4?).  (2) Create an East Coast TC50 (for selfish reasons) in New  York on the weekend of the next Demo. (3) Eventually, make it international (once a quarter)…rotate cities: London, Australia/New Zealand, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Dubai, Tel Aviv, Paris, etc
• Commentary Responses 
  • Adorkable Grrl: Twitter sent me something useful: Demo vs. TechCrunch50
  • The Blog Herald: New York Times examines the rivalry between TechCrunch50 and the …8 hours ago by Matt Craven 
  • CenterNetworks: A Bit of Advice for Startups
  • The Inquisitr: TechCrunch50: $3.5 million x Disingenuous
  • Loïc Le Meur blog: Conferences need revenue too whatever business model they have
  • Spark Effect: The Demise of Demo… by Michael Arrington
  • Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin: TechCrunch50 Rejects Hundreds of Startups
  • Voodoo Ventures: We’re Demoing at TechCrunch 50