Keyvan Nayyeri is one hot Iranian stud! I mean that in a purely non-sexual way, of course. This young man of 23 has been impressing me for a while now and he keeps pouring on the .NET gas, which is a pretty good analogy to describe a hot .NET developer from Iran, I suppose. Keyvan was instrumental in the development of BlogML, spearheaded the two Community Server MVP Module Packs, is working on his centralized spam prevention system called Waegis, authored a Wrox book on Visual Studio 2008 Extensibility, has recently written a series for ASP Alliance on creating a Blogging Engine with MVC, and--why he's getting my love tonight--in the process of releasing an Open Source version of a Scheduling Task System for ASP.NET. I use background tasks all the time in my Community Server projects, and having a task scheduler solution for Open Source applications would be Supremo.
Markup Factory is a great concept. I haven't spent a lot of time investigating this service, but Markup Factory is a great concept integrating CMS capabilities, blogging, newsletters, registrations and eCommerce. There are several Online Community packages out there, and over time they will become commoditized. The success of both Open Source and Commercial offerings will depend on how well they support customization, integration of data and resources across the applications, scalability, and the provision of a turnkey approach to get a vanilla community system up and running quickly.
A staple in "Why Blog" resurfaces. This Copyblogger post titled "The Most Powerful Persuasive Element of Blogging" has been done a bunch of times before, but it's always a useful read. Essentials include focusing on relationships, showing passion for the subject, relating to your readers while demonstrating your expertise, and blogging regularly. I thought the author could have used more simple terminology, but he gets a B+ for adding a blogging concept that I haven't considered, having a common enemy. I don't like the negative connotations of that, but I see what he's getting at.
mmmBushed! I heard this news on a Countdown podcast and saw the Huffington posted on it back on April 2nd. Still a great story. Seems San Francisco is going to put an initiative on the November 2008 ballot to rename the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility to the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant." Every sewage plant in every city in America should consider doing the same. Now that would be something.
mmmBushed Bonus. Here's a great video of Bush waving to two guys while getting off his helicopter in Raleigh, North Carolina. The guys don't budge. No response to the president's wave at all. Christian Finnegan, a comedian with VH-1 commented, "What you can't hear is that the two men in the clips are actually saying, don't look, don't lookâoh, I think he saw us. How do you go from being leader of the free world to being the guy who thinks he's invited to your birthday party. Hey, who invited President Bush and why is he playing a Toby Keith CD?"