First off – FINALLY got moved in to the new #TukeeDevHouse – it’s sooo much nicer than the last house.  Pretty much still living in and out of boxes, but I’m hoping that situation will be resolved soon…really just boils down to “just fucking do it”.  We’ll be having a house-warming party soon…let us get through the boxes and getting everything sorted out first!

On to the next topic – new job.  It was a hard decision to come to, but I finally decided that it was probably time to get a “normal job” with a steady paycheck.  Its not only good for bills and so forth, but its good for Dom & Lexi to not have me so stressed out all the time when I’m worrying about when I’m getting paid next.

I went on a few interviews, but ended up accepting a position as a web developer at 944 Media in Scottsdale.  I actually interviewed with 944 on the Monday after I moved in to the new place, got an offer on Tuesday, and started on Wednesday.  944 Media produces several magazines and 944.com and I get to work on a mix of all of it by working on the intranet that basically contains all the functionality needed to run 944 Media.  I also couldn’t of picked a better time to come on – the NBA All-Star weekend is happening this week and 944 is hosting all the big parties.  If you want to get in on all the cool All-Star parties that 944 is putting on, you can find information about them and purchase tickets over on their 944.com/AllStar site.

I’m still planning on maintaining DateDesigner.com in my off time…so don’t worry…updates and progress will still be made on that site as I am continuing to build traffic & content that will only make it more valuable when Match.com or eHarmony.com offer to buy it from me! HAHAHA

So that’s basically it…new house…new job…good stuff…back to work!

DateDesigner.com, a Phoenix based start-up funded by Gangplank HQ, gives users the ability to build and search for fun date ideas that are local to them.

I have waited 20 years for this:

I remember the first home game I went to with my Dad – it was against the Tampa Bay Bucs when they were still sporting the ugly orange uniforms.  I also got my first Cardinals hat that day when they were the Phoenix Cardinals.

Last night the Arizona Cardinals upset the Carolina Panthers 33-13 in Charlotte – a sureal experience for sure!  I’ve been a fan through the good, the bad, and the Denny Green/Joe Bugel/Buddy Ryan days…you know…the fuckin’ horrible days.  I’ve said “there’s always next year” for as long as I can remember…

…the “next year” is right now!

Cardinals are 1 game away from the Super Bowl…1 game that could be played at home if the Philadelphia Eagles dish out a beating to the New York Giants today…

Like I’ve said all season long…bring it on!!!

DateDesigner.com has been out in the wild now for a few months, and recently, I released a batch of updates to the site to not only make it easier to search for and build awesome date ideas, but I also cleaned it up a little bit as well.

Noticeably, the “ratings” system for all dates have been removed.  The ratings for each venue remained, but until Brent and I can figure out how to make the ratings system fit in better with the site, I just decided to remove them all together (no sense in confusing everyone with ratings that look like crap and don’t make any sense).  I also cleaned up the date detail pages and venue detail pages – they were in desperate need of a revised look from its early beta days!

The builder section was also switched up, completely, primarily due to making it easier to use, but also for the DateDesigner.com revenue model.  I’m actively selling the top 5 listings in each category in each market (segmented by zip codes) for $10 each per month – awesome revenue model eh? LOL  So if you are a venue that’s listed, and you want to be top 5 in that category for a particular market, email me from the DateDesigner.com contact page.  Also added to the builder was an open text box for location search, as well as having results for nearly anywhere you can think of in the United States that could possibly be on the web, and thus being able to be picked up by the DateDesigner.com builder tool…

The next biggest piece that I was working on was for SEO purposes.  Get the titles/descriptions/url’s all working together to create awesome content for web crawlers to index…and so far, its working out great – just ask Chase, he’s the SEO nerd and he’s telling me that the changes are starting to pay off…

So that’s pretty much it…oh…and we’re having a contest – “Build the Best Valentines Day Date” – head on over to the home page of DateDesigner.com for more details.

Love…Peace…and Hair Grease…

I probably shouldn’t be promoting this, since it’s likely to bump the stats that I’m trying to beat, but it’s for Chase, and its for GangPlank HQ, and it’s just good business – give more than you get…right Derek?

Another project out of GangPlank HQ has arrived in full public mode – AuthorityLabs.com – Simple Search Engine Monitoring.  Basically, the jist of the site allows you to track keywords against your domain to see how you are ranking for those keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Live.  I’ve been beta testing it for a few weeks, and so far, I check it just about every morning.  I’m really trying to get my blog ranked first page on Google for keyword “beau”, and I’ve been able to track the rollercoaster so far with all it’s nifty graphs and so forth.

I’ve also been tracking keywords for DateDesigner.com – my project out of the GangPlank HQ Incubator.  So far, I’m loving the results.  Keyword “date ideas” has been yielding nice results in Yahoo & Live – hopefully I’ll see that growing trend in Google soon!

Any way, get on over to AuthorityLabs.com and sign up today!  I am pretty sure you can sign up for a free account to get your feet wet.