My sister, Natalia, and her boyfriend, Ted, were in New York City for their first time this past week. Ted had bought a week vacation for both my sister’s birthday (Feb 20 - see I remembered!) and for Valentines Day.

On Friday, I get a frantic call from Natalia telling me that the weather in NYC had scuttled their travel plans, and did I mind if they came to Colorado for a couple of days before heading back to California. Without hesitation, I said “hell no!” (Seriously, would I do something like that?) So Friday night at midnight, Natalia and Ted landed at DIA, and have been hanging out all weekend.

It always great to see her, and even though we are 9 years apart in age, she is probably the one person that can 1) handle my “quirks”; 2) and tell me to shut up without fear of reprisal. Two skills that have taken her 27 years to perfect.

Also on Friday, I began my quest to be the #1 douche bag, according to Google. And with the help of a few friends, like Mike Bucks, David Cohen and Jim Halligan I have gone from being below #200 on Google, to now #39. Im getting there, but we need to keep plugging away!

In honor of this effort, I have added a unique icon to any comment I leave. Check it out!

On to the posts:

No, Having a Blog Does NOT Make You A Social Media Guru - I met Erica at StartupWeekend Boulder, and was amazed at her ability to get the word out through social media. I am still often amazed by Erica. This post reminded me of one of the reasons I quit the SEO game. Everyone is an SEO expert now. The noise has drowned out the signal (unless you are one of the major players like Michael Gray or Rand Fishkin). Are they inherently better SEO’s than a newer guy like Dave Winget? Well, except for Rand’s predilection for the fashionable yellow shoes, I would say not at all. So, now I am much happier helping others understand search engine optimization than actually doing it. I hope Erica doesnt follow my lead. She is one of the major Social Media Marketing players, and it would be shame to lose her.

“Say Instead” Part of CSS3 - My friend John spends a lot of time on web standards and access issues. He writes about a new CSS3 property called “say-instead” that can be used to allow screen readers to pronounce words or phrases correctly. Of course, being an SEO guy at heart I think about the potential SEO value of such a property given that most search engines will index and read inline CSS. Could be a much better way of describing images or adding keywords to a keyword less page. Interesting… (yes there is a slight <evil laugh> in there).

Remember, SEO folks, that anything that allows for an easy measure of abuse is easily removed as an important weight. But, given one SEO tactic is to do things that have short term gain with an expected long term reduction in value, I would jump on this now. But you didnt hear from me that there is a potential SEO value to the “say-instead” CSS property.

The power paradox - Seth writes about the perception of power, and that the real paradox is that the truly powerful give away most of their power. Its a bit of a diversion from The 48 Laws of Power whose author, Robert Greene, has a blog which is updated periodically and is extremely interesting.

Thank You, Social Media Club DC - I met Aaron on twitter through a friend, and have enjoyed getting to know Technosailor. Why? well this presentation is just the beginning (really smart, nice dude, and willing to share). His willingness to be on one of our SXSW bowling teams (one is sponsored by VCWear and the other one rocks) even though his company decided at the last minute to have a team as well is certainly awesome, but his interest in history seals it. Even if he lives in Baltimore. Yuck.

Got to get better at this blogging thing - Dave started at Lijit recently, and he and I finally grabbed some time and coffee. Little did we know that we followed much of the same path (I grew up in San Jose, he grew up in San Mateo. I lived in San Diego, so did he. I think he lived in DC as well, as did I), and both ended up in Colorado. Small world.

Strike A Match - Brian is one of the founders of SocialThing, and someone that I have really grown to respect. Ive wanted to include a post of his for awhile, and this one, which has my friend Heather Capri wearing a HamSwords tshirt sealed it. Nice picture Brian, and Happy Birthday!

Whither Entrepreneurship and Visas? - Jenn has written the type of post that I really love. Full of transparency and learnings from successes and mistakes. Yay Jenn! If you havent checked out her project, Yallery, I highly recommend it.