I spent a lot of time over the christmas and new year break thinking about the nine months that had elapsed since launching AustralianBlogs.
We had extended our local directory to include AustralianPodcasts. Added a newspaper-style aggregator of local blog posts in News2. Launched our Wordpress-driven bloghost, Weblogger. Started to experiment with a local wiki, AustralianWiki, and I even dabbled in maintaining a personal blog, RealEstate2. (We also launched the Sydney weblogger meetup, which is looked after by Sara Goldstein, the fantabulous Bargain Queen)
One achievement that I was particular proud of, was that the generous folk at Port80, thought enough of my work to select News2 as a finalist in the 2006 WA Web Awards. Kay Smoljak, of Clever Starfish (Kay + Dave + Anton), thanks so much for your coffee-buddyship, guidance and technical expertise (i.e. “web standards, we’ve got standards?“).
Not too shabby, and of course more work/pruning needs to be done in properly launching and building a successful website. (And I wouldn’t class any of mine in the ’successful’ bucket yet. It’s a nice start, but more blood, sweat and tears required I think.)
So, on to my announcement.
My balcony-time over christmas led me to think that you can’t really be working in the web if you haven’t done ecommerce.
So, the AustralianBlogs group is proud to announce the launch of our first ecommerce store, FLOWERS.org.au. We are an online florist backed up by an international floral network (with a strong local base) offering beautiful fresh flowers and free delivery Australia-wide. All proceeds go to funding AustralianBlogs.
Please keep us in mind (esp. over Valentine’s Day!)
I’ve been doing that Scouta-a-a-a-a-a thing to Richard Giles for the last two weeks of Scouta’s demo. It’s gone terribly well and all concerned have been very impressed.
Like Molly said, do yourself a favour and get in touch with Richard for a ticket to ride.
Clarke Scott, home-grown internet entrepreneur has been hard at work on Whooiz.com, a rapidly growing international website that…oops I shouldn’t get ahead of the interview below:
1. Â Â Â Â Clarke, what is WHOOIZ? Whooiz.com is a People, Podcast and Blog discovery service with Social networking widgets.
2. Â Â Â Â Who are you targetting?Bloggers and podcasts mainly but, I am just about to move into the Myspace area and so I can see more and more comedians and a like getting involved.
3. Â Â Â Â Tell us about how you conceived the idea behind Whooiz.The idea has morphed considerably from the original idea of a Wikipedia for people into more of a social networking/widget site.
4. Â Â Â Â I see you’ve had a great take-up by some high profile bloggers, what sort of feedback have you received?The feedback has been awesome! We had our first 500,000+ pageview day last Friday and so I am already thinking about upgrading the server and or
Adding more of them just to keep up with the growth.
5. Â Â Â Â What’s been the easiest (and conversely, the hardest) thing about launching Whooiz?Easiest thing: Convincing people to signup. Hardest thing: Predicting the rate of growth and therefore the server configuration.
6.     Can you tell us a bit about yourself, Clarke? How did you find yourself on the path of the internet entrepreneur? I’m a software architect and a keen interest in startups. I love the creative aspect of coming up with an idea, building it And seeing it mature into a popular product/site.
7. Â Â Â Â What are your plans for Whooiz? I would like Whooiz.com to be the one place n the internet for people for find other people, blogs and podcasts. Also to have a Whooiz.com build widget on every blog and podcast website.
8.     What do you see as the greatest challenges for Whooiz over the next 12 months? Finding time to implement every idea I’ve had or widget idea I’ve come up with in the past couple of months.
Hey great stuff, Clarke. For those that don’t know, this is not Clarke’s first web venture. Just check out his Whooiz profile…
Sara (aka the Bargain Queen), is my fabulous assistant organiser (who incidentally is featured in Take5 magazine) for the Sydney weblogger meetup and was kind enough to give me a reminder prod:
Dear fellow bloggers
You are receiving this email because your entry in the Australian Blogs database indicated you are Sydney-based blogger who has asked to be kept informed of developments in the blogging community.
Hope that 2007 is off to a good start for you. Like me, you may have a feeling that this will be the year blogging really takes off in Australia. In November 2006, veteran Australian blogger Tim Dunlop (creator of The Road to Surfdom) was recruited by News Ltd. to write for their new big-budget title ‘Blogocracy’. Who knows - could you be next?
With this in mind, I thought you might like to come along to a social meeting of Sydney pro-bloggers, hobbyist bloggers (and their fans) on Thursday evening (18th) at Paddy Maguire’s in Haymarket at 7pm. The details of the meetup and the RSVP list are here: http://blog.meetup.com/371/calendar/5286606/ Â
You may find this to be a good opportunity to mix in an informal setting, and to meet others who share your blogging endeavours.
Hope you can make it, and look forward to meeting you there.
Best wishes
Sara Goldstein
The Bargain Queen
http://www.bargainqueen.org
thebargainqueen@gmail.com
Just a quick heads-up that the first Virtual Weblogger meetup is on this Wed@8pm AEDST (6pm for those on the west coast, like myself).
Just pop into AustralianBlogs chat, get yourself signed-up and either hang around in the lobby OR feel free to create a little private space for those quiet one-on-ones.
There’s no set agenda, just come and go as you please but please pop me an email to let me know what you think (or just blog about it and I’ll pick it up anyway 
)
See you then!
