Happy New Year, Smojoe in 2010
Lots to talk about, here in January 2010.
Three photo contests ended on Lenzr on January 1st, and are slowly being replaced. The matches were not as dramatic as previous finishes, as the winners established an early lead and maintained it over the entire course of the contest. You can read all the developments on the Lenzr blog including our endeavours to make a better scoring algorithm. 
In the next session, the voting results should more accurately reflect each photographer’s skill, as decided by the people, and be less about his or her ability to promote the page to friends. We are rewarding comments now, and reducing earlier metrics that were set too high. Congratulations to members seguini and ve3bnw
Macro Photos of Life winner (right) was submitted by a prolific member named ve3bnw which sounds like a license plate # and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is, considering he describes himself as a commercial truck driver that’s interested in photography. The image titled Time to BEEHAVE magnifies a shiny wasp.
This member will receive an Eastern Ontario wine and brewery tour set for early next month and there’s more information on Locaboire. Smojoe will almost certainly accompany the winner on this journey and, of course, write lots of travel and wine related content afterward, for your reading pleasure.
New Photo Contests on Lenzr are slowly coming to life, and more challenges will launch next week. Already there is an offering entitled Everday Tangled Web which asks members to upload images of the most beautiful tangles in their life, if possible. Its a difficult assignment.
Sponsored by S.E. Telecom, a business phone systems provider in Toronto Ontario, the challenge hopes to showcase the messes we make, as individuals and as a society, when we run lines and make connections without properly organizing a system. But even an ordered network can look confusing from certain angles. There’s lots of chaos in my home, but none of it is very beautiful.
The Prize is a Plantronics Voyager 510SL+ Bluetooth Headset System with Lifter, retail Value $429.00
Enjoy wireless freedom in the office or on the go with the Plantronics Voyager 510S Bluetooth Headset. Ensuring lightweight, all-day comfort, the Voyager 510S delivers superior sound quality and provides WindSmart technology for clear voice transmission. You can read more about the reasoning and reward in the Everyday Tangled Web photo contest on the Lenzr blog.
Ruth Wilgress Begins Blogging
Ruth Wilgress is starting a business that provides expressive arts therapy in Toronto and will be blogging and updating friends and collegues as she advances in this discipline.
Ruth is working hard to perfect new programs and new methods of helping people through the practice of creating art. Here’s The Rat Race which is one of her best pieces. I absolutely love her colour choices she used. Who would have believed that lime green and pink compliment each other? I also like how the picture is punctuated by computer chips.
Lisa Charleyboy, veteran blogger takes up article marketing
Lisa Charleyboy is Toronto’s most fascinating native girl blogger. Graduating York University this year, she’s already a veteran author that has outgrown a blogspot and has advanced into article marketing as a hired gun for some big name fashion portals. Lisa has a very bright career as a freelance writer ahead of her. It was over a year ago that I profiled Lisa Charleyboy on CanadaBlogFriends.ca
Want to read her latest stuff? Her last year’s Top Five posts. Each of these articles probably got more readership than my Smojoe blog did all year, but I’m not jealous. Its a different audience.
1) Holy Cowichan
2) Native Model in Bazaar Spread
3) Urban Warrior: Anthony Collins (aka Thosh)
4) Could Canada’s Next Top Model be Native?
5) Urban Warrior: Tatanka Means
Abel DaSilva shares a hole lot of secrets with Dumpdiggers
Just after the holidays, I wrote and published two stories about a Sunday Jan 3rd afternoon spent with Abel DaSilva, who is Toronto’s foremost excavation site bottle merchant and also a knowledgeable antiques aficionado on eBay, and power seller and prolific discussion forum participant.
Shopping for Antiques at the Sunday Market in Toronto with Abel DaSilva is an informative article that details the St Lawrence Hall, Sunday Market setting and chronicles the purchases of a wise man leveraging his knowledge of history. Abel understands tricky niche markets for collectibles and how to buy local and sell global using eBay and related Yahoo antiques collecting groups.
Sightseeing with Abel DaSilva in Downtown Toronto sifts through half a dozen stories about four different lots in the downtown core in which historically significant antiques glass bottles were unearthed. There were truckloads of antiques buried under just about every condominium building on the shoreline. What’s even more fascinating, is how Abel befriends the excavation company employees, site supervisors and heavy machinery operators by sharing his knowledge of the specimens they unearth in their digging projects. Abel was very generous sharing tips, but redacted some of the juiciest stuff after reading my first draft. My favourite anecdote is the King City car chase where Abel was followed by other diggers from one landfill site to another.
In closing, let me say the most satisfying metric that any freelance business professional could ever hope to measure is the amount of opportunity that he or she receives per week.
