Yogizilla’s Blankity Blank-Blank

Here are some spiffy links that I particularly enjoy. These are mostly-overlooked sites but I’m sure, one day, they’ll become mainstream and, thus, corrupted.. Teasing, teasing! As I promised months ago, I am going to change this from a mere link or “portal” page for the purposes of creating a more worthwhile page. I hope my teaser descriptions here prove to be as effective as they are informative!

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Events & Local Scene

• http://www.digitallife.com – While DigitalLife 2007 is already over, I invite all of you to check out Ziff-Davis’ event. After just a few years (roughly 4, to be more precise), this event has evolved into something that everyone should check out. Tickets are super-duper cheap and there is something for everyone, whether you are a gamer, gadget fan, multimedia maven, or just into a little bit of everything. The prize-giveaways and swag are definitely worth the trip and, if you’re up to it, there are contests, tournaments, and all sorts of fun events to take part in too! I reckon next year’s event will have even more stuff dedicated to next-generation gaming too!
• http://www.newyorkanimefestival.com – The New York Anime Festival is going to be THE place to be if you like Anime, Manga, Japanese culture, J-Pop, cosplay, or anything of the sort. I recently had the chance to make buddy-buddy with one of the main people driving this event. I’m hoping I can get some comps or at least some reduced tickets for my closest friends and valued clients. Check out the site for all the latest information on guests, sponsors, and events to be featured this coming December 2007!
• http://www.sheckys.com – Shecky’s is not a very well-recognized brand but these folks are behind quite a lot of great events and books. They are based right out of New York City and their main operations revolved around event management; namely, they are the folks that set up Girls Night Out and Beauty At It’s Best, along with other events. Typically, these events are hosted in or around SOHO (The Puck Building) but there are also events in midtown and nationally as well. Be sure to check out the Shecky’s site to get on their newsletter and get the inside scoop on upcoming goodies and good times. <em>Shecky’s events mainly revolve around beauty, fashion, and night life catering primarily to young women in metropolitan areas (NYC, Boston, San Fran, Atlanta, Chicago, etc.).</em>

Gaming & Industry News

• http://www.yugioh-duelpass.net – As Yu-Gi-Oh! Online enters a new era and continues to bring the old-school TCG (with some new surprises) to the masses, the demand for duelpasses continues to grow exponentially. We’re here to spread the word about this great game and make sure that duelists do not have their fun interrupted by lack of Duel Points. Our goal for 2007 is to unite all the small efforts in the Yu-Gi-Oh! community and give our customers a one-stop shop of sorts. We were once customers scouring the Net and retail stores alike to look for duelpasses so we know how frustrating it can be when you cannot find a [trusted] reseller – we hope to make things simpler than ever and look forward to the suggestions you all may have this year to keep us as one of the web’s best sites in our class!
• http://www.younewb.com – The Web can be very overwhelming. Every little site seems to scream for attention or send out some sort of false signal. YouNewb.com enters this rowdy arena and tackles the challenge of getting gamers connected to the real “meats and potatoes” of news and gaming-related content. If you consider yourself a video gamer, this is a great place to go so stop delaying and visit, newb!

Marketing & Public Relations/PR

• http://www.allmarketersareliars.com – Everyone has at least one person they admire and mine is probably Seth Godin at this point in time. His writing style is direct, unpretentious, and compelling. All Marketers Are Liars is one of my favorite books as well so that’s twice the props here for him! Seth is the founder of one of the first online marketing companies, Yoyodyne. This company was sold to Yahoo! in 1995, which landed him a sweet job as VP of Permission Marketing. In a world where strong-armed sales and marketing efforts have desensitized customers, I find Seth inspiring simply because he reminds people what customers really respond to.
• http://www.regis.com – Regis McKenna is considered a god to many people. I think he has an impressive track record and is undeniably one of the big players in modern marketing today; heck, he owns a very good domain (I’m surprised that other Regis did not get it) so that alone has my attention! The real big deal here is that Mr. McKenna has done what few others have done: fully bridged the gap between marketing and technology. With all the hype and buzzwords creating a noise and nonsense, Regis manages to grab his audience and show them the true power of marketing and how they can become a part of the solution rather than the problem.
• http://digitalsymbiosis.wordpress.com – Tomasz has a very impressive topical blog dedicated to mostly marketing and interactive media technologies. Most of his material seems to be rooted deeply in the teachings of Regis McKenna (see the aforementioned for more detail). Tomasz is a nice guy and he knows what he is talking about so check out his site for some great bits on Web 2.0, generating hype, buzz marketing, and more!

Blogosphere

• http://duelpassonline.wordpress.com – Now that DPO and YDP have teamed up, the DPO blog is now the official community hub for Yu-Gi-Oh Duelpass (YDP). There is lots of exciting stuff in the pipelines and, as the YDP-DPO blog readership continues to boom, we’ll be setting up more events, including duels and training sessions. Be sure to check us out often and leave your mark!
• http://electricspoon.blogspot.com -If you visit J!NX or any of their nation-wide affiliates in the US, you may have somehow stumbled upon this blog. It’s still in every early phases but I recommend it to any geek or gamer that suffers from what I call ideastorm overloading (a major symptom of it is procrastinating once you realize you have bitten off too much at once). It seems that Sean and I have both had this issue so we’ve formed a bit of a bond as a result. This year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we work on some join projects and get a lot of our pet projects done as well. Check the blog for the latest haps. Thanks again for the props, J!NX!’
• http://yogizilla.wordpress.com – You’ll have to excuse me for engaging in the practice of recursive linking but it seems that it is all the rave lately, seeing how most web sites showing up at the top of search engine results have linked to themselves more than anyone else.  If you go to this page from another link, please go the main page of my blog for more stuff that may just interest you..  Perhaps.
• http://tatianamasis.wordpress.com – <b>The blog of Tatiana Masis</b> is also a growing community hub for Vaya Spanish.  This a blog dedicated to things of all sorts but mostly matters of culture, local (NYC) scenes, and the Spanish language.  Some of the big items you’ll find there is discussions of Spanish televisions, actors, food, and drink recipes.  Check it out and, please, send Tatiana more suggestions and comments – she loves and welcomes all constructive feedback!
  

Social Media & Data Aggregators

• http://www.digg.com – As RSS creeps up to the foreground and more people plug into web-based news readers, the many news sites and data aggregators seem to be overshadowed and losing their value. Digg answers by providing a great PR channel that is effective both in terms of cost and market outreach. Any serious content manager or online marketer knows that Digg is one of the first stops for bringing visitors to your content.
• http://www.stumbleupon.com – While Digg focuses more on bringing content to the top via more traditional popularity-based throttles, StumbleUpon provides the vital legs that any online marketing campaign will need to be truly effective. SU legs are tag-based and are reinforced by the presence of user-generated comments and popularity. At the heart, it’s a buzz-creating tool like Digg but where SU really shines is at having people randomly find sites based on personal interests or any number of preferences and filters. This allows less popular sites to have a chance to hook people in with what may very well be better content that was lacking good exposure.
• http://www.linkedin.com – People tend to get caught-up in spreading a strong brand or marketing message, not realizing that they are, themselves, a part of that story that they are spreading. What better way to support ongoing marketing efforts than by making your identity well-known. LinkedIn is great for bringing people to you and getting you to the right people. It’s a beautiful thing.
• http://de.licio.us – Yahoo’s contribution to the Web 2.0 movement takes a simple yet effective approach to social media by taking an old computing convention and giving it a modern twist. Now you can bookmark any site on the Internet and share it with the world. If you can get to it via your web browser, you can use De.licio.us to spread the word. This system also uses tags which helps keep data focused for curious web scavengers.

Music Community

• http://www.pandora.com – Imagine not having to worry about clearing up space on your PC to make room for all your favorite songs. Now imagine having a set of universal radio stations customized to your musical tastes and almost completely devoid of advertisements. Excited yet? Well, we’re not talking about satellite radio because we all know that they don’t exactly deliver on the ad-free promise anymore. Pandora is a wonderful web site that let’s you take very loose concepts and make kick-ass radio stations dynamically. Every time you visit Pandora from the same computer, it remembers your stations without having to log back in. What makes me feel even more happy-pappy when using this site is that, if you can’t remember names of songs and artists, Pandora helps you find them – YAY!
• http://www.djheavygrinder.revolutionrave.com – You’ll see that I have very diverse musical tastes but I definitely have a special place for electronic music. DJ Heavy Grinder puts together some mixes that are as sexy as she is. That alone speaks volumes because this gal is quite the looker! What attracts me most to her is the way she takes a song and pumps new life into it by throwing in some insane jungle, acid, ambient, and progressive accents. She’ll have you in a trance, she’ll have you wiggling about.. she’ll make you not want to ever leave.
• http://www.vonyc.com – One of my all-time favorite artists on the ubiquitous electronica circuit (techno, trance, happy hardcore, ambient, house, etc. etc.) is Paul Van Dyk. If you dig his stuff, this is a good site for you to visit. That’s all I have to say. PvD alone should sell this to you; if not, well, you lack good taste!

Humor & Comics

• http://www.engrish.com – Engrish, to me, is the reminder to the world what happens when people don’t put enough importance on marketing. The examples of sheer adulteration of the English language on this site are both sad and funny at the same time. What amazes me is how people can live in the US (or any place where English is the main language) and not master at least the basics of what may very well be the easiest language to learn in the world. Let’s not forget that English is one of the biggest world languages, if not the biggest, yet these Engrish follies continue to appear everywhere. Oh well – more entertainment for the rest of the world!
• http://www.illwillpress.com – Foamy the Squirrel and friends… What else do you need??

Modeling & Self-Marketing

• http://www.amynamachar.com – Amy, I still say you look like Elisha Cuthbert on a few of those photos. Guys, you really have to check it out; unless, of course, you are not into very sexy photos of beautiful women. Don’t worry: no nudies here – this site leaves the undressing to your creative mind (LOL).
• http://www.neesamag.com – I know some of the people behind Neesa Mag and I have to say that, if you are a model looking to work with good, honest people, this is the place to go. The team at Neesa detests the exploitation of women and cheesy, trashy ploys of other mags. If you like hot cars and hot women, you may find something of interest here. The new site is slated for Spring 2007 so check back often for updates!

Honorable Mentions

• http://www.kotaku.com – Kotaku is crazy, yo! My favorite bit from them to date is the Japanese Guide to Wii Safety. This is brilliant. What makes this even funnier is the fact that there are people that actually look at this guide and are shocked to discover that their practices are truly hazardous.
• http://www.gatheringground.com – Buy your Yu-Gi-Oh! cards here, but leave the Duelpasses to us. ‘Nuff said.