Back in December, we launched an iPhone app for a client named WorldLive Mobile. The app was focused around compiling and aggregating the Tweets and MySpace feeds of their favorite HipHop stars. It not only showed you these feeds, but also hooked up to the iTunes Music Store, the artist's web sites, their Facebook and MySpace pages, included their YouTube channels and had concert dates and listings.

The app literally rocks. It has a sweet coverflow like interface with tons of ways to customize the artists you love. It gives you an easy way to stay on top of your favorite Hip Hop artists. You can download it for free and it is named WorldLive Hip Hop.

Since then, we released three more apps that work in a similar fashion but for different areas. For example, we released WorldLive Country, WorldLive Pop and WorldLive Hollywood. So Country and Pop are similar to Hip Hop, but the Hollywood is obviously focused on TV and movie stars.

Here are some pictures of each app:

WorldLive Pop:

WorldLive Hollywood:

WorldLive Country:

WorldLive Hip Hop:

All these apps for free and I would really appreciate it if you would download it and give me feedback.

Download them at:

• WorldLive Hip Hop
• WorldLive Country
• WorldLive Pop
• WorldLive Hollywood

I was pretty good also. Which is why I am writing this blog post. By "pretty good", I base that off being in a pretty popular but yet Jewish school. So although it was top for Jewish basketball, I am sure it was on no level to public school competition. That being said, for my competition in my school, I was pretty up there. Okay, back to the title of this post.

Last night, I was playing basketball - I absolutely stink now, by the way. And I had one of those slow motion moments. You know, where you have the ball, and either see or anticipate a hole opening up (either for a driving lane or a sweet pass). I saw it last night. I don't remember seeing that slow motion moment in years, maybe close to five plus years.

I had the ball at the top of the key (~ foul line for those who don't speak basketball) and I saw some movement amongst the players. Things just slowed down. Ultimately, I did not end up using the hole or lane because one of the players stopped his movements and the opportunity left - but for a brief second, it was there.

Why am I blogging this? Well, I don't know when or even if I will ever see that slow motion effect again in my life. So I figured, as a blogger, I'd blog it and keep it here so I can reference that.

Keep in mind, seeing things in slow motion when I played ball as a teenager was several times a day. After experiencing last night for just a brief second, it reminds me that I miss it. It is hard to describe the feeling, but it made me smile.

Chime in if you know what I am talking about...

Okay, enough about that. When I was there, I was asked if I can meet with a few of the people from the hotel. One was sick and couldn't make it but I did meet with others from the marketing team. We sat in the lobby and talked shop.

Here is a picture of the Online Marketing Manager of the hotel, Pinny after our meeting:

So you are probably asking, why didn't we have the Inbal as the venue for SphinnCon Israel?

(1) Inbal was booked for those two weeks
(2) JCT already said okay
(3) I am sure the Inbal is pricey, but who knows, maybe they will give us SEOs a nice break for next year.

In any event, I highly recommend the Inbal hotel for it's location, accommodations, hospitality and the size of their in-room safes. ;-)

The carpeting was above the bottom of the door so it simply couldn't open. The carpeting guys did not tell a newish home owner that the door had to be trimmed down to allow it to open. It was obvious to them.

Lucky me, I have a brother with power tools and a circular saw. I took the door of its hinges, put the door in my wife's large car and took it to my brother's basement - where he has a workshop type of area.

My brother then showed me how the circular saw worked and I went at it.

I snipped off about an inch from the bottom of the door. Honestly, it wasn't a straight line, so maybe an inch on one side and 1.5 inches on the other, with a small incline as you go across the door. But that is really not noticeable when you look at the door.

The bottom line - the hallway closet door now opens even with the carpeting.

Mission accomplished!

Since I was coming in, I decided to run the SphinnCon Israel conference one of the days. I then also decided to hold some meetings with clients I have in Israel. And while I was at it, I scheduled some meetings and get togethers about SEO related topics.

The first week we arrived was a bit hectic. Two of the first 4 days, I spent in the hotel working. One day catching up from the flight and the second day doing the billing for the company. That wasn't the end of it. Every day, I spent about 2 hours in the morning, an hour in the middle of the day and 2 hours at night working on my laptop from the hotel. Of course, during this time, I had my iPhone and spent way too much time when I was out of the hotel responding to emails and mobile IMs.

I just don't manage vacation and business well.

Thankfully, I have a very understanding and patient wife. But as time goes on, I need to be able to manage this better.

I honestly think I was a bit more relaxed this time. Less nervous about being away. I did not get sick like I sometimes do and I think I was able to unplug at times, when I really did not want to. Overall, I probably spent 65% working and 35% not working, not including sleeping, on this vacation.

At the same time, I was not able to get together with many people who emailed me to meet up while in Israel. This includes both family, friends and business colleagues. So I am sorry if I did not get to spend time with you. Most of the business colleagues I saw at the conference, so that was nice. But there are some really good friends I did not see while I was there.

Anyway, it's something for me to work on.

You can read it over here and here is a picture of it in my hand:

I am flying to Israel soon and one topic that comes up when you fly at certain hours is when can you pray. In fact, there was a story recently about an emergency landing due to praying on a flight. But if you can get away with praying on a plane, the question for a Jew is when can you do so?

When you are standing in a single place, it is simple, because you are not streaming through time and space at 500 miles per hour. You are not jumping from one time zone to another and you are getting a full cycle of sunrise and sunset.

I was recently told about a web site that lets you plug in your departing airport and destination airport, the times, the airline and it then tells you, based on the standard flight path, what times you can pray. The web page is Chai Air Tables and it tells you, based on your take off time (if there is a delay, it accounts for it) when you can pray certain prayers.

This is pretty cool, in my opinion.

When I go to get haircuts, they ask me, "How do you like it?" I typically say, "FAST, please." Typically, I am in and out of a haircut within 7 minutes.

This week, I went to get a haircut and it was a distaster! It may have been one of the best haircuts I ever got - but it took forever! I think it took at least 40 minutes, 40 minutes I'll never get back. And many of you know how obsessed with time I can be.

The whole time, this barber was talking to me. I was being nice the whole time, responding and so on. Trust me, it was hard - he was talking about things that I found to be incredibly inappropriate. For example, he was telling me about how he does wedding parties and what extra stuff he does at those wedding parties. Now, I don't need to hear that from a guy I just met. In any event, I talked to this guy about how many hair cuts he did, all his girlfriends, his girlfriend's fathers, his schooling, education, and so on - heck, I even talked to him about his computer virus.

He then wanted to shave my face. I put my foot down. I said, no thanks. He said, "you really need it." I said, I know, but no thank you. He then cleaned me up, continued chatting and finished up.

I asked him how much. He said $12. I gave him a $20 and said, "keep the change, goodbye." I just walked out and didn't give him a goodbye hug or anything. Heck, I know all about this guys personal life, from his girlfriends, childhood and even his computer viruses and all I said was "keep the change!"

I was rude - but ugh, 40 minutes!

AIM being down is much worse, to me, than Twitter being down. Not as bad as email or phone being down, though.

At first, I thought it was just me. But I checked Twitter and it is many others.

Why am I so confident? Well, the geeks at RustyBrick built an algorithm to predict when exactly the 10 billionth iTunes song will be downloaded. In fact, they built a widget countdown that is updated every hour. We are constantly collecting data to make our predication better, every hour.

Our current best guess is on Tuesday, February 23rd at 11:00:10 AM (EST). That means there are 126.8881 songs downloaded from iTunes every second!

Here is the widget:

Do you think it is about right? I do.

To get the widget on your site, go to the RustyBrick blog and copy the code.

There are people I grew up with and people I spend a lot of time that I would not call a friend. Calling someone a friend, means to me that they are indeed someone you trust, that you share stuff with and that you can talk to about personal stuff.

Random people who email me or meet me once or pick me up in a cab to drive me somewhere - for a fee- are not my friends. They may be nice and we may have a nice conversation for the time we speak - but they are not people I would share my deep dark evil secrets with.

Again, I know it is mostly a cultural thing - where certain cultures use the word "friend" instead of saying "hello." But it still bothers me when I hear it.

Am I totally off here?