News

Don't worry.  I don't think we're going to get in the habit of writing about every job posting we hear about, but being a fan of this particular company and their service, I thought this one was worth passing along.

Aardvark, the company we were first introduced to back in March, is looking for smart, talented people.  The kind of people who read this blog.  People like you.

Here's the jist of the email they just sent out:

I'm writing to let you know that we're hiring, and I thought you might know some exceptionally talented people who would want to build Social Search at Aardvark.

We're specifically looking for software engineers, a mobile lead, and research scientists... and we're always looking for extraordinary people for any other role, as well.

If you know anyone who may be interested, you can send them our job site: http://vark.com/jobs

So go forth and apply, my friends.  Just tell them Justin from Nerdliness.com sent you. 

Last week, I was lucky enough to get an invite to test out a new "Social Search" application called Aardvark that was recently released into the wild.  Well, not completely into the wild (more on that in a sec), but wild enough that a no-talent hack like me managed to get an invitation (thanks again, @marshallk and @davidadewumi).

So here's how it works:

1. You sign up.
2. You tell Aardvark what types of questions you'd like to answer, rough categories like "Technology" or "Seattle."
3. People ask questions through their IM client (Google Talk, AIM, Windows Live Messenger).
4. Aardvark forwards that question along to a user on the network who's registered to answer questions about that topic.

You can tell Aardvark what times of day you're available to answer questions, and you always have the choice to Pass on one you can't answer.

A typical exchange might look something like this:

Asking questions is just as easy as answering them.  You just IM a question to the aardvark.im contact and poof, Aardvark does the rest. 

All in all, it's pretty damn cool, and extremely useful.  I can't wait to see what happens once they get more users with a wider knowledge base onboard.  Other than that, my only Wish List item would be Twitter support.

Now, getting back to that releasing-into-the-wild thing.  Right now, Aardvark isn't open to the public, so there are only a couple ways to get in on the fun:

Just stumbled across this bit o' news that hit the street a little while ago:

Microsoft Offers to Buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion

First of all..  Holy hell, that's a lot of money.  As the Bloomberg folks said:

Steve Ballmer is attempting the biggest-ever technology takeover after failing to compete with Google

I don't use any of Yahoo's services, not since I cured my online cribbage addiction about 10 years ago anyway, so I frankly don't care much about what might happen to their offerings if that acquisition goes through.  And judging by the fact that only 1.2% of our site's visitors** ended up here via Yahoo, well, that tells me y'all aren't exactly on their bandwagon, either. 

My biggest concern is what might happen with Google...  Surely the Google juggernaut couldn't sustain it's current rate of growth for much longer regardless, but a fully armed and operational MS/Yahoo battlestation might throw a bigger kink in things.

Big winners in this are clearly the Yahoo shareholders.  So far today, Yahoo is up 8.35 (43.53%), while Microsoft and Google stock have dropped 2.09 (6.41% and 50.60 (8.97%), respectively.  Those numbers, of course, according to Google Finance. :)

** Nerdliness.com visitors are incredibly Google/Firefox biased.  Since we went live, the break down of our visitors by browser and search engine looks something like this:

Google:  97.6%
Yahoo:  1.2%
MSN/Live: .8%

Firefox: 68.49%
IE: 18.19%
Safari: 6.32%
Opera:  4.03%

Probably means that the ASP.NET articles we've been thinking about won't really go over too well around here, eh?  Oh, well.

Just a little reminder for the Drupalers in the Portland/Vancouver area that the Lullabot folks will be hosting a meet-up this fine evening (Wednesday, January 9) at the Hotel deLuxe.  If bathing in a sea of Drupal experts while eating free cookies isn't enough, Jeremy and I will be there, too.

Couple of events going down in the Portland area over the next week or two that all the cool kids are going to attend (i.e. me and any other nerds who can sneak past their mom/wife/partner/WoW).

PostgreSQL Conference Fall 2007

Ah, PostgreSQL...  The Other White Meat.  Or, at least, the Other Open Source DB.  Those cooky kids are throwing their little conference at Portland State University in the heart of increasingly-less-sunny-as-fall-hits-its-stride Stumptown this coming Saturday, October 20th.  You need to preregister and scrounge up sixty tax-deductible bucks to get in ($10 if you're a student/faculty), but the topics and speakers look worth every penny.  The Rails applications talk sounds interesting, and I have a soft spot for the GIS stuff (PostGIS talk at 2:15 PST).  Oh, and don't forget the morning meet-n-greet and the after-dinner/party.

Read more and register at http://www.postgresqlconference.org, and if you happen to see a goofy blonde guy who bears a striking resemblance to the picture on your right, say "hi."

Ignite Portland

Ignite Portland's goin' down on Thursday, October 25 at Wieden+Kennedy in uber-trendy Northwest Portland.  Free to anyone who decides to browse over to http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/265888/ and get their RSVP on.  Yes, I said "free."  As in, no cost.  Looks like there are currently 181 PDXers on the list right now, should be fun.