One great thing about SportsUltra.com is that you can try it out without signing up for an account. You just add all of the teams, players, and sports writers that you want to follow. The site will then pull then show you a list of sources across the web that are saying stuff about what you want to know about. If you register for the site, you can receive updates via email. Filters are provided at the top to filter by team, player, video, etc. A widget can be added to your web site based on a filter as well that will list news on your blog/web page.

This will be great to follow BYU and the Utah Jazz.

There are a few features that I was expecting to see but couldn’t find anywhere.

Where is the blog? I know you’ll can send site news and info but I want to read about how you guys work. Get a blog.

I want to subscribe to my news via an RSS feed. This was key for me. And do you guys just search news sites or do you search blogs as well?

They could also add some other features such as adding images to your customized news page. It is not necessary to be a social network, but the site could use some networking features.

For the most part, when customizing my content, everything was there. A few reporters weren’t listed that I was hoping for. There were a few things that I found odd when adding college alumni.

After reading around a little, I noticed that there are some other sites that offer similar services. I need to take a look at those to do some comparing. SportsUltra fell a little short for me. I’d like to see some improvements in the next few months. I’ll definitely keep my eye on them.

Here are some other reviews:

• SportsUltra Offers Intuitive and Dynamic Custom News
• SportsUltra.com – The Sports News You Want
• New Sport Site Launches Today

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Greg Rewis, an Adobe evangelist, spoke to us about the new features in CS3. Everybody was oohing and aahing. It was all new to me. I have never used any of the Adobe suite of products, including photoshop. If I actually used some of the products, it might make my life easier and my sites may look a lot better.

My goal in going to the meeting was finding out more about Flex and if it is something that I should know more about. I have some ideas that I would like to pursue and would like to create a Rich Internet Application as the final product. I found out that it is definitely worth some of my time to consider. I’ll write more about it as I find out more.

There is a lot to be excited about everything that is happening. When I moved to Seattle 3 months ago, I knew there would be a vibrant tech community. But I have also found there to be way more startups than I expected. It will be great to have the opportunity to meet some of those people as well as others.

There are still seats remaining. If you haven’t signed up, make sure you do. Especially those from Seattle. I’m sure it will be time (and money) well spent.

Tags: gnomedex, gnomedex2007

I’m sick of creating a profile on just about every web site I visit. And then as I am looking for a job, companies want a copy of my resume (to only store, since they never look at it). This has become especially troublesome lately.

What happens if I update my resume? Each site that has my resume will not know about this change. And I realize this isn’t a problem that needs to be addressed immediately (my immediate needs include finding a job). Currently, I will update my resume on a site if I need to and I want a job bad enough from that employer. But if these employers want the best people, is their current solution the best way to go about it?

The same goes for every site wanting me to create a profile. I have created my share of sites where a profile is useful to each user and hopefully the site provided benefits to each of the users that went to the trouble to provide their personal information.

Let me give an example. When I first started my job search, I created a LinkedIn profile. I have been able to edit my profile, add contacts and have my contacts provide recommendations for me to be included on my profile.

Then last week I found Jobster. They have similar features once you create a profile. You are able to network with other users and have them added to your personal network. Although Jobster made it easy for me to import contacts, I noticed most of the contacts in my network on LinkedIn do not have a profile on Jobster.

I have already emailed some people to ask them to create a LinkedIn profile. Some have done so. Some I sure never will. But do you really think I want to do the same thing by emailing these same people to create a profile on Jobster and add me to the network? Not really.

I recognize that both LinkedIn and Jobster have very similar features, while some features are different. They both are trying to get me to use their network primarily.

What I am looking for is one place to be able to accomplish any task on the web. Ideally, it would be great if LinkedIn and/or Jobster provided an API to allow me and others to create a profile on my own web site and allow all the features that are provided on their own sites.

So when somebody is searching for a Java developer in Seattle, they are provided with my profile information that I updated on my own web site. Once they visit my site, they will also be provided with samples of my work, what I think about, perhaps a beautiful picture of myself. The point is I get to provide them with the information I want them to know and keep it updated on one site.

I know that many sites are starting to implement OpenID into their sites. For those who don’t know, OpenID provides a decentralized single sign-on system. This would make it so I don’t have to register on every site I visit. But not a lot sites support OpenID yet.

Back to the resume problem. It might be cool to have some kind of resume API or tagging system to provide to employers. They can then add it to their tools when trying to find somebody to fulfill a current job opening. I would just have to update my resume on my web site and I would still be found by those employers that need somebody with my skills.

Is there an opportunity here? Possibly.

I have heard a lot about people using their own web sites as a resume. I will be blogging more about that in the future.

Let me know what you think. Why does every site want my resume/profile? Why can’t I keep that information on my own web site?

Today, I finally created my profile on the Jobster web site. There are a few things that set it apart from other job-seeking sites. You can set your status to let employers/headhunters know if you are just looking around or if you are seriously looking for work and everything in between.

Another cool feature on the Jobster site is superstar tags. The tags make it convenient for both job hunters and employers. As a job hunter, I can create my tags and prioritize them, and then search for jobs based on the tags that I create.

I understand the video resume is very helpful as well. I might have to create one in the near future.

Jobster also let you create alerts based on specific criteria. I created one for progamming positions in Seattle. You only have the option to get the alert via email. I would love to be able to subscribe using RSS.

It seems they do have lots of tools for employers. I can’t go over those features because I don’t know what they are. After doing a google search, it seems the tools they provide are very useful.

By the way, I also added a Jobster profile button to my sidebar. How many of these buttons will I have by the end of my job search?

Jobster is also a local company. Hmm. Perhaps they will hire me.

I took a look at Seattle Startup Blogs and decided to subscribe to all of them using the OPML file. There seems to be a lot happening. Hopefully I can start getting to some of the events going on around here.

If you know of any event or any company I should know about, please do.

I am a little familiar with a few Seattle startups, such as Redfin and Zillow, but I know there are lots more.

Doing a google search for Seattle startups, I found a blog on the Seattle-PI site that has some good information on it. John Cook is the VC reporter for the Seattle-PI. I’m going to browse the site and see what I can find.

I did subscribe to it and quickly found that it is a partial text feed. Another topic for another day. I don’t like it when blogs do this.

If any of you know of any good startups in Seattle, please let me know. I would love to see what they have available for employment.

Usually, this means going to the corner gas station. Real simple. But apparently not here in Seattle. First, I went to a Shell. I walked over to where “Fountain Drinks” was displayed on the wall. There weren’t any fountain drinks there. Guess what was there? Lots of coffee machines. How many are needed?

I thought no problem. This gas station loves coffee. So I went to the next gas station down the street. Same thing. No fountain drinks and lots of coffee. I thought people went to Starbucks for coffee. I would. There are a lot more of them around here.

After coming to the conclusion that gas stations do not sell fountain drinks, I decided to go to McDonald’s. Can you believe that? I had to go to McDonald’s to get a fountain drink? Only in Seattle. I’m learning.

Although I have been to Seattle lots of times to visit family, and since we are moving there, I thought I would take a few minutes to find out some more about Seattle. For example, every time we are there, I think I ask my wife the population of the area. She has no idea.

I’m a fact guy. I love them. Here are some cool ones that I saw on the wikipedia entry for Seattle for those of you who would like to know more about where we are moving.

• Everybody tells me to enjoy the sun while I am in Utah. In reality, the so-called “rainy city” receives an unremarkable 34.3 inches of precipitation a year, which is much less precipitation than New York City, Atlanta, and Houston and most cities of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Seattle’s inaccurate worldwide reputation for rain derives from the fact that it is cloudy (not rainy) an average of 226 days per year (vs. 132 in New York City).
• As of 2006, the city had an estimated population of 580,000 and a metropolitan population of approximately 4 million.
• Seattle has the highest population of college graduates of any major U.S. city.
• Seattle’s first name was New York, then Duwamps, then finally it was renamed Seattle after Chief Noah Sealth who was chief of the two tribes living in the area.

When you are there, you have to take a trip on the duck. It’s an amphibious vehicle that takes you on a tour of Seattle telling all kinds of facts and stories. And then you get to go on in Lake Union. I think we went there on my first trip ever to Seattle. They give you these annoying duck beak whistles. I need to go again.