Santa was a little upset when he showed up Christmas Eve in the wee hours to find what was once a plate of freshly baked oh-so-good chocolate chip cookies, was now a plate full of crumbs. A tall frosty glass of icy cold milk reduced to mere droplets sat uninvitingly, and I, resplendent with white moustache and typing away at the keyboard obliviously, in order to get the new Blog search done. I let him do his thing and he let me do mine and when I looked up at last, he was long gone. (oh, and in case you’re wondering he left me visual studio and sql server 2005 upgrades).

I must’ve been a good boy this year because I made several breakthroughs that night, and aside from the front end design, I’m pretty much done with it. A bit frustrating since the rest of the office is all busy with other end-of-the-year tasks I’m sure, but if they could just….check….out…what I’ve done, they would drop whatever it is they’re doing because it is simply fabulous. I am pleased, quite frankly, to tell you that I’ve successfully parsed many a stubborn RSS feed format, although there is still plenty of wacky stuff out there that unfortunately will exclude a few otherwise great blogs from the results.

Hopefully we’ll be able to incorporate more and more as time goes on. There are a few feeds that don’t give back any XML whatsoever; just some standard HTML, which I thought was kind of rude. But we actually have a nifty report that shows us what feeds were parsed successfully and what feeds weren’t, so we should be able to follow up with the site/blog later on.

It is quite nice to see the editorial team devoting as much effort to maintaining what is currently in the directories as they do to adding new sites/blogs etc. For those of you who have been anticipating the new search, uh, keep on anticipating! Seriously though, it shouldn’t be long now and I think it will really tie things together on the blog directory side. Especially since you’re not just searching for blogs, you’re actually searching for specific posts within those blogs. If something is being said out there about a specific topic you’re searching for, you’re going to know it. I know its been (and being) done by various others out there, but it’s still pretty cool that we’re doing it.

As our members are keenly aware, we try to run promotions fairly regularly. Contrary to what some view as “frantic offers“, we have always offered existing members semi-regular specials on directory reviews.

In keeping with that theme, we had a BOTW year-end review special for existing members. As the end of the month draws near, we take this opportunity to notify non-members of the special promotion.

From now until January 1, use the following promotional code to receive $10 off all submission reviews:

Simply provide the promo code on Step 2 of the submission process, and you will receive the applicable discount. Nice and easy.

Related – Submit Site

I got my new Apple PowerBook G4 in early September. One of the first things I did was to spend some time learning about iCal, Apple’s calendar application. In an effort to work on my organizational skills, I spent some time adding in important dates and prioritizing my to-do list. One of the initial activities I placed on my to-do was to author a BOTW article on Wikipedia.

After poking around this morning a bit, I noticed that somebody had beaten me to the punch, and created a stub for BOTW. A pretty good job by the initial author, I may add. Initial entry here.

So I spent the majority of the day learning more about using the Wikipedia interface, and familiarizing myself with the guidelines and expectations. I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the experience and despite some of the recent discussions and calls of credibility issues I think that Wikipedia provides a fantastic resource and will be around for the long haul.

Check out the new Wikipedia Best of the Web Directory article. I am happy to be able to check off that task before year’s end.

The Director of Technology at Best of the Web is a daunting post to hold. Yes, you do get to play around with “the latest and greatest”, but that “latest and greatest” just happens to be something that thousands, hundreds of thousands — Nay, millions — of folks like yourself happen to be checking out, relying on, and possibly even paying money for. It’s downright scary. We’ve got editors plugging away entering sites and reviewing submissions. We’ve got people surfing the front-end sites at all hours of the day and night. We’ve got search engines crawling the content and storing it in their vast indexes. We’ve got CEO’s and Presidents and Heads of State demanding satisfaction. On top of all that, we stay on top of industry changes, research, evaluate, recommend, purchase, install, configure, upgrade, maintain, and explain it all, without a lot of mumbo jumbo, to all those Heads of State. Well, some of that we outsource , but it’s true what they say: In cyberspace, nobody can hear you scream.

Oh wait, I did forget one other thing we do. We write posts in blogs like this one. Do we have time to do it? Of course not. But I think there’s something to be said for the Wizard of Oz stepping out from behind the curtain and saying Hi on occasion. (something positive, that is). So my pre-new year’s resolution is to spend a little time here and there providing some insight and witty banter, and just generally goofing off and not working. Wha? Huh? Did I just say that? Perhaps I need a Disclaimer like some of the other guys out there.

It does seem like a fine line between talking shop about various BOTW projects in the works and giving secrets away to the competition. If any slugworths out there would like an everlasting gobstopper, let’s do lunch and talk about it (your treat). However, you’ll have a hard time topping the extraordinary Wolfgang Puck cuisine which we feasted on at our last company outing, at Postrio, his fabulous restaurant in Las Vegas. Until then, mums the word methinks.

Well, without further ado, let’s all give me a hearty welcome to the Botw Blog! Yahmon!

-Dave

With the end of the year approaching rapidly, we take this time to tie up all loose ends, and prepare for the new year. We took time last weekend to upgrade all the equipment in our cages, and last night we upgraded the database. While we experienced some difficulties in pulling it off, things seem to be rolling smoothly now, and technologically we are poised for a blow out year ahead.

Additionally, over the last month we have bulked up on staff, adding editors for building out the BOTW Web Directory and Blog Directory. We have also added some excellent authors for participating in the BOTW Media network.

In the coming year, we will continue to execute on our strategy of providing quality content. Now that we have the foundation built, and have fortified our resources, we should be exceed our goals.

Have a fantastic holiday season, and we look forward to what the new year has to bring. We hope that the new year brings all of us peace, health, and happiness.