V count MACULA from Vaughn Taormina on Vimeo.

“Wordpress bloggers rejoice!
BigTie! have come up with a fiendishly clever tool for your wordpress blog – A simple one-click solution that turns your blog into a Marketing Machine! When a user registers for your WP site, they are immediately added to your Mad Mimi audience. Hooray BigTie!” — From the MadMimi Loud Report Newsletter

It’s been a crazy evening since that newsletter went out.  This has been our busiest sales day yet and I’ve just now finished all of the open support tickets.  An interesting note, all of the support tickets today were caused by hosting companies with either broken installs of the Ioncube loaders or hosts that didn’t have Ioncube installed at all.  In this day and age, how can a company as big as Godaddy have a broken install of Ioncube?

That amazes me.  For the record, BigTie! works best with MediaTemple, Mosso, Dreamhost and VPS.net.

If you are using Godaddy search google for some good howto documents on installing your own Ioncube loaders.

I got started on the garden today. I had 36 seedlings I started in a greenhouse kit last winter.  They all look pretty sickly.  I decided to move the greenhouse outside and let them get some air and more direct sunlight.  In the meantime I decided to plant some heatier seedlings from Lowes… I’m going to get more from the Plymouth farmers market in the next couple weeks.

Above is the sage, rosemary, dill, peppers, and eggplant.

Here is some Thai basil and more japanese eggplant.  In between the eggplant there are a few snowpeas as well.   It’s going to be good eats this summer!

I also modded out the grill today, replacing the old (and rusting) heat exchanger over the burners with a snazzy new ceramic one.

Have I ever written about the incredible mead that comes from the fine folks at B.Nektar Meadery in Ferndale?

This is the most amazing beverage you’ll ever have, and its Michigan made to boot.  My personal favorite is the Wildberry shiraz mead blend (not pictured above).  I bought a case of the Wildberry last year and it went far too fast.  Also, try the bourbon barrel if you have a chance.  It recently won the bronze medal at the World Mead Cup.  Try some of their mead.  It’s nothing short of wonderful.

I was so inspired by this that I’ve decided to slash the price on Headfirst Concepts WordPress mailing list software BigTie! We normally sell BigTie! for $59.99, but until May 1st we’re going to be selling it for only $25.00 a copy. We want to do our part to lower the barriers to online entrepreneurship. All you need to start building your opt-in list is hosting, BigTie! and an idea.

Stop waiting for something to happen. Make something great happen! If you’ve been on the fence about getting into internet marketing now is the time. The barriers to entry in IM have never been lower and with high quality marketing tools like BigTie! and Twitanium available at such a low price, you can get started now with less money than ever.

Eventr - event based social media aggregation site

Eventr.org appears to be a system for collecting social media links, twitter, flickr, vimeo, etc… and applying an event tag and timeline to the data.  This system looks like it could be quite useful. I’m going to keep an eye on this one and start using it as soon as it is functional.

I couldn’t find much info about this project online or in twitter, so I decided to try it out and see if I can figure out what the hook is.  ForkChop.com is a collection of recipes, structered in the familliar blog format. When you open up a recipe, it adds links (auto generated?) to the right sidepanel taking you to a google search for more information about that particular ingredient.  I’m not sure if more features are planned or not, but I’ll check it out again in a week and see if there is more there.

The tagline below their logo sums it up nicely; “We help people find interesting things to do and cool people to do them with anywhere in the world.”  This is an application whose time has come.  Through twitter I have found out about work-in days, parties, gallery openings and more.  When things are happening, they are getting tweeted about and this startup is collecting that info and informing you of whats happening in your area.  I’ve bookmarked this one and will be using it for a few events coming up.  Check this one out, I think its going to work well. 

This is quite possibly my favorite project from any Startup Weekend.  BigHugeWindow.com is a marketplace that allows users to buy and sell window space advertising.  I have a soft spot in my heart for window ads.  In the 90’s, I had an apartment that abutted the Armitage Brown line stop.  Quite a few times we sold space in the windows that faced the El stop to promoters advertising parties and events at bars in the area.  It’s an amazingly successful form of advertising when you look at the cost per viewer.  I’ll be following this one and will possibly use it to buy ad space to promote some of my own projects.

All in all it looks like Startup Weekend Chicago was a success.  It is amazing what can be accomplished in such a short period of time.  I hear that there was also a Startup Weekend event in Columbus (ohio?) this weekend as well. If I find anything about their projects I will post them as well.  

Following these events on twitter gave me an idea for another startup… Any #SWD09 folks want to work with me on a niche social network for the nationwide network of Startup Weekend veterans?

A Startup Weekend Challenge from Andrew on Vimeo.

Thanks much to the fine folks at PitchLabs for this, check out the other pitches from Startup Weekend Detroit at PitchLabsTV