Though the public hearing on the issue was already held yesterday, you can still show your support for the South Street Diner by sending an e-mail to the City of Boston Licensing Board. For Boston to truly be a world class city, we need businesses that stay open throughout the night. In a city as diverse as Boston, there are a plethora of night owls who should have the ability to sit down and enjoy a hot meal in a restaurant while the rest of the city sleeps.

Below is my letter to the licensing board. If you care about improving Boston’s nightlife, or at least not worsening it, send an e-mail to the board and let your voice be heard!

Dear Mr. Pokaski,

When making your decision on the South Street Diner, please keep in mind the rights of Bostonians to have at least one 24 hour eatery option. While a large majority of the South Street Diner’s patrons are coming from bars, clubs and other establishments, some of the patrons are also students, workers and tourists who visit the South Street Diner as it is nearly the only option for food at any hour.

While we all have a right to peace and quiet, there are some exceptions. When individuals move into a neighborhood, the responsibility of ensuring the local culture fits their needs and personalities is squarely placed upon the individuals.

The four residents who have complained about the noise at the South Street Diner voided any and all rights to peace and quiet when they decided to move in next to the only 24 hour restaurant in Boston.

There is literally a plethora of options for these four individuals. They can move almost anywhere else in the City of Boston and not have to deal with noise from a 24 hour eatery. Please do not punish the night owls of Boston but forcing the south Street Diner to close at 2AM. The desires of an extremely small minority should not cause the many patrons of the South Street Diner to lose their only 24 hour restaurant option.

The four individuals petitioning the city have options, the patrons of the South Street diner do not.

Forcing the South Street Diner to close at 2 AM would be a great disservice to all Bostonians (except the aforementioned 4), and potentially discriminatory against those of us who keep late hours, whether for business, pleasure, or necessity.

Thank you for your careful consideration of the issue.

Best regards,

Adam Pieniazek

Thanks to Paul Keleher for the photo of the diner.

The Summer of Rain

To anyone not in the Northeast US area, we’ve been hammered by rain for the past month. It might even be longer than that, having only seen the sun once or twice in the past 30 odd days, time has begun to merge into one big rainy mess. It’s gotten so bad, Boston.com posted a how to build an ark guide yesterday.

The ten day forecast predicts ten more gloomy, rain, sun-less days ahead. We must put a stop to this rain marathon. Below are the demands the sun is making in return for its re-emergence into the Boston sky. At this point, it’s time to start listening to the Sun’s demands.

The Sun’s Demands

1. Thursday, Friday and Saturday are to be renamed:
   • Sunday is coming
   • Sunday Sunday, Sunday
   • pre-Sunday
2. The Second born child of every family is to be named/re-named Sunshine.
3. Every 4th of July, all Bostonians must perform a sun dance to the beat of Eddie Vedder’s Hard Sun.
4. Any and all references to deities are to be henceforth replaced with references to the Sun [e.g. OMG becomes OMS, etc.]
5. Promise from the citizens of Earth to never send spaceships directly into the sun. [Battlestar Galactica reference]
6. All forms of non-sunny weather are henceforth to be referred to as #sunfail

Those all seem quite reasonable to me. Quite worth it to get sunshine un-banned in Boston.

Thanks to jalalspages for the picture of the sun. Was starting to forget what it looks like…

You may remember that Pokin’ Holes is the same show which featured Swagger Paris, one of The 42nd Estate’s clients, two weeks ago.

dm Design

Tonight’s episode will feature dm Design, a print and web design company. dm Design was created in 2005. It’ll be interesting to give advice to a company competing in a similar niche as The 42nd Estate (we do web design but with a focus on blog designs for Wordpress, no print design).

Here’s a few questions Dave Deblasio, the founder of dm Design, hopes to have answered on tonight’s Pokin’ Holes podcast:

1. How should he determine the price point of his design services?
2. How can a design company like this scale? Will this be a lifestyle business or a growth start-up with a potential exit?
3. With so many other designers out there how can he differentiate DM Design to be a recognizable quality brand?

I’ll update this post with a link once the post is up. See you at the wrap party at Match!

To that end, come join Aaron Cohen (@UnlikelyWords), Josh Gans (@SportsFan4), and myself (@AdamPieniazek) at Boston’s first ever #BikeUp! We’ll be meeting in Davis Square at 10:45 AM and heading out for the Minuteman Bike Trail at 11AM. While technically not in Boston, we say close enough. Future city rides are being planned for along the Charles and along the beach and shore in Southie and Dorchester, as well as a few other rides.

Minuteman Bike Trail

For this first one, we figured we’d pick one of the easier trails to see how everything goes. For anyone who hasn’t ridden it, the Minuteman Bike trail runs from Cambridge to Bedford, going through Arlington, Lexington, and Concord. It’s relatively flat both ways and a fairly easy trip. We don’t plan on going all the way to Bedford this time out, rather we’ll see how everyone feels at a few rest stops.

It should be a lot of fun and a great way to meet some of the other bicyclists in the Greater Boston area.

Sign up for the Boston #BikeUp on the facebook event page or the eventbrite page. See you there!

That means all your columns from your home computer will also appear on your iPhone. The syncing is done in the background to reduce the processing strain.

Growl Notifications

Upon opening up Tweetdeck, you’re greeted with a few notifications in the top left of the screen, showing you the tally of latest tweets.

Welcome Screen for TweetDeck iPhone

You can access this tally via the updates menu at anytime in the bottom left corner.

Updates menu in Tweetdeck

Columns

You can switch columns via the left and right arrows in the top left and bottom right corners (respectively).

Switch columns from within a column.

Column view lets you flip through columns similar to flipping through windows in Safari.

Use column view to switch columns.

You can add a new column in the iPhone app and sync it to the cloud server to have the same column on your desktop. Create a user group, search, all friends, mentions, or direct messages column.

Add new columns and sync with the cloud

Settings

Both versions of Tweetdeck now come with full support for multiple accounts. It’s a very welcome feature and is implemented via adding more columns. Tweetdeck now supports unlimited columns, allowing you to add tons of accounts and scroll or flick through them.

Multiple accounts!

There’s a few cool general settings in the iPhone app. Settings include auto-correct, growl, choice of twitpic or yfrog, show real names, and option to shake to refresh the screen.

Tweetdeck general settings

Quick Follow

At the bottom of the Tweetdeck screen, there’s a row of icons. They include updates, refresh, add column, settings, and more. The more button pops up a screen with two options, sync columns and quick follow. Clicking sync will check the cloud for updates and allow you to then sync your columns.

Quick follow pops up a screen allowing you to type in someone’s Twitter handle and follow them with a quick click.

Quick Follow (handy for tweetups)

Tweeting and Bios

Creating a new tweet takes you to a relatively standard window allowing you to type up your tweet. There’s options to shorten a link, upload a photo, and update your profile location. You can also send out a map link to your current location. Cool tool for sending out directions.

Update bio location and add a map link (works on non-GPS too)

You can also look at individual tweets, which gives you options to reply, retweet, send a DM, favorite it or email the tweet.

The individual tweet window

From the individual tweet screen, you can also check out the user’s bio. Mostly standard stuff, but if you scroll to the bottom there’s an option to block/unblock the user and add them to a group.

The bio page, add to groups, follow, @, DM, or block

So far, I’m really digging the new Tweetdeck application for the iPhone. Up until today, I’ve been a staunch user of Tweetie and didn’t even bother looking for anything else. Tweetdeck has crashed a few times on my iPhone, but that’s to be expected for a first release (which is also free).

It might be due to my original (non 3G) iPhone or a few bugs they need to work out. But it’s happened rarely enough to not be a huge detriment so far. Aside from the couple of crashes, I love everything about this app. It’s a really intuitive interface for the iPhone and the columns translate really well to the smaller touch screen.

Read more about the new Tweetdeck desktop and iPhone applications on their blog. If you’re all set and ready to try out the update and new app, install Tweetdeck for the iPhone or Tweetdeck for the desktop.

Have given the new Tweetdecks a try? What do you think?

Why I Bike

Shane from Boston Biker approached me about writing a guest post for his awesome blog about bicycling in Boston. I was glad to accept as Boston and bicycling are two of my passions I never get tired of writing about. My guest post for Boston Biker talks about why I choose to ride a bicycle as my main transportation method. Bicycling is economical, environmentally friendlier than driving, and a great form of exercise but that’s not why I bike.

Social Media Roundup from Boston

In a guest post for Boston Young Entreprenuers, I linked to five stories from social media bloggers in Boston, with a little personal opinion mixed in from yours truly. Great way to get some quick info about building a web presence, and how to use that presence effectively and sustainably while getting productivity out of social networks.

Wrap-up of The 42nd Estate’s BYE Presentation

In May, I presented The 42nd Estate’s business model at a Boston Young Entreprenuers meeting. I received tons of great feedback and wrote a post for BYE on what I learned from presenting.

Hope you enjoy them!

I also grabbed a few vanity URLs for some clients and friends. In the end, it doesn’t really affect me much since I use fbadam.com as a short, easy to remember and spell way to tell people about my facebook profile. Still, it’s nice to clean up my facebook URL and get rid of all that profile=”lotsofrandomnumbers” mess.

Did you get the facebook vanity URL you were hoping for?

If you haven’t yet picked out a username, hop on over and give it a try. Quick note, the period does not matter and your address will resolve with or without a period. AKA, facebook.com/adampieniazek and facebook.com/adam.pieniazek and facebook.com/a.d.a.m.p.i.e.n.i.a.z.e.k all take you to my facebook profile.

in the mill building right next to the river, look for the Museum under the smokestack

Love it! We eventually figured out that one girl in our randomly assembled group at the parking lot entrance actually knew where it was, so we followed her lead. Once we got inside, we were all awed by the cool industrial stuff in the museum, from 100 year old bicycles to old engines, watches, and a very old school and very cool fire pump that may or may not have been pulled by horses (note to self, do not touch anything).

As for the actual networking and product showcase event, well it rocked! Met great people and witnessed some very innovative technology products. Without further ado, here’s the three innovative products I enjoyed the most.

Top Three Innovative Products at Mass Innovation 3

In no particular order, here’s three products that I found useful, innovative, or just plain cool and slick.

1. Chatterbox

I met one of the members of Chatterbox at Tuesday’s tweetup event, where I heard a little about Chatterbox, but seeing the software live in person left me even more impressed.

Chatterbox [@ChatterBoxApp] is a “collaboration platform for social media teams and power users”. In essence, it’s a piece of software that allows you to pull information from your social networks, organize it, delegate it and share it easily. Todd Clayton from Chatterbox was nice enough to hook me up with a beta invite so look out for some hands on analysis in the coming days.

2. World Computing Grid

Remember SETI@home? It’s the largest distributed computing system in the world. SETI stands for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence and a few years back I used to run their SETI@home program all the time in the hopes of helping them find some aliens (what self-admitted geek wouldn’t help with that cause?).

Well, IBM’s World Community Grid is also a distributed computing system (meaning it splits up computer tasks and sends them out to computers around the world to crunch the data, then sends it back to the home server). They differ from SETI@home because the WCG is really a platform that allows researchers and organizations to implement a distributed computing system into their projects.

Any research project can submit a request to get free help from IBM setting up a grid to crunch their project’s data (submit a research proposal here). It’s a really cool system and is extremely customizable. You can set it to run in the background and utilize a certain percentage of CPU power, or simply run when your computer is idle as a screensaver.

The list of research projects utilizing the World Community Grid includes:

• Help Conquer Cancer
• The Clean Energy Project
• Nutritious Rice for the World
• FightAIDS@Home
• and more research projects
3. Canson PaperShow

The product that was most likely to make peoples jaws drop. In essence, it’s a piece of paper that you can draw on and it instantly gets transferred to your computer screen. It’s designed for digital flipcharts and interactive presentations.

From the piece of paper, you can select colors, brush styles, and other editing tools. Yes, from the piece of paper. Canson Papershow has tiny microscopic points embedded into each piece of paper. Inside the pen, there is a tiny camera which transmits data via bluetooth to a USB dongle connected to your computer. It’s really quite seamless and needs to be seen to be truly appreciated.

To that end, here’s two videos showing Papershow in action:

Canson Papershow is available now from Staples for $199.99.

Thanks to all the presenters at Mass Innovation Nights #3 for a great time. All your products were innovative and cool, these three just caught my eye and fit my interests the most. And thanks to Bobbie Carlton [@bobbiec] for putting everything together!

Sign up for #MIN4, held on July 8th today. And here’s the wrap-up post from the Mass Innovations blog.

I’ll be attending the Mass Innovation event tonight. It is being held at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, at 154 Moody Street, Waltham, Massachusetts. Registration and networking start at 6 PM, and the main event runs from 6:30 PM until 8:30 PM. There will also be an after-party at Biagio’s on 123 Moody Street, upstairs in the Plush Lounge.

RSVP for tonight’s event here. Check out the list of companies and guest presenters who’ll be in attendance.

#roofup wrapup

Two of the events I blogged about last week have already been held and both were great. The #roofup organized by Sarah Merion was simply epic. I met a ridiculous amount of people there, some whom I already knew via the twittersphere, others I met for the first time. The best way to describe the event is that it was so good that barely anyone tweeted until they left the event. Steve Garfield [@stevegarfield] tweeted out that the #roofup:

rocked. It was the SXSW of Boston, meaning I lost my voice talking to so many great people!

Actually got a little geeky when meeting Steve and said I was a big fan (hate that word), when what I meant was that his video blogging rocks and is a great model of how to do it damn, damn well for others. Luckily, Steve didn’t get too scared off by my fan comment and didn’t call in his bodyguards to escort me away.

Sarah Marion tweeted out another great description:

Boston Social Media people party HARD. #roofup = #bananas.

For more thoughts, comments, and tweets from people who missed the #roofup and are real sad because of it, just pop on over to search.twitter.com and search for #roofup. The results speak for themselves.

Of course, with such an epic event there were lots of photos taken. Here’s three sets of pics from the #roofup:

1. Roof Up Tweet-up from @RobertCollins.
2. Boston Rooftop Tweetup by @AdRants
3. Tweetup @ Rattlesnake by @soutstanding

Here’s a photo from the #roofup by Steve Osemwenkhae (@soutstanding) of the Boston Latin School trio Josh Gans [@SportsFan4], me [@AdamPieniazek], and Thomas Edwards [@URwingman] (left to right).

Sumus Primi at the #roofup

Here’s two more write-ups of the roofup event:

1. Rooftop + Tweetup = Roofup by @stevehall
2. Rattlesnake Rooftop Tweetup by @christocarroll

#bostweetup wrap-up

The #bostweetup event held by @mjcarter and @justingroy was smaller than the epic #roofup but still a great time. Though there were less people in attendance (likely due to the absence of a roof deck), the networking was great and the people there were all solid.

One of The 42nd Estate’s clients and fellow graduate of the Boston Latin School, Sian-Pierre Regis [@sianpierre] connected with Cortland T Johnson [@cortlandt] and will be appearing on the Dart 102 Pokin’ Holes podcast this Thursday, where young entrepreneurs receive feedback from three experts. Sian will be discussing his swagger fashion empire, which includes Swagger Paris and Swagger Reloaded and is expanding. More details on the podcast to come soon over at The 42nd Estate’s blog.

At the Boston Tweetup event, I met some great people and overall had a really good time. It was a nice counter to the madness of the Rooftop Tweetup. Great way to get us all warmed up for the Networking for a Cause Boston event on Thursday June 11th, where The 42nd Estate will give away four free hours of social media consulting (including copywriting) to one local non-profit.

Here’s to another great night at Mass Innovation tonight and back out again for Networking for a Cause on Thursday. Will I see you there?

Well, I’m cool with that. We’ve got a ton of great writers and communicators in the area. Still, hop on over to Scribnia and write up a quick objective review of me. Would love to hear your thoughts on my writing style and content. Feedback is always welcome!

Don’t know what Scribnia is? Check out my post on the awesome online author review community.

Thanks to the team at Scribnia and my readers who’ve already reviewed me. You all walk hard!