On Friday November 2, 2007 at 11am MadWhips.com officially launched. It wasn’t until later that night around 9pm when we were 1 hour out of Toronto on our way to Montreal for BarCampMontreal3 that Vinay and I decided that we had to attend the 1st BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

Our friend and CarZi co-founder Nate Whitehill had continually invited us out to Scottsdale Arizona all summer but unfortunately we were in the middle of developing our new site and had very little time available for anything else other than designing our dream site; we didn’t have to explain this to Nate as he is an extremely focused young man himself.

During our drive to Montreal, we concluded that after 1.5 years of giving MadWhips.com every waking hour we had that we should attend the Blog Expo to celebrate our successful launch, finally meet with Nate and his boys, and learn as much as we could from this inaugural event in a wild city I had never been to.

I have never felt so welcomed by anyone that I have met for the first time in person as I felt when Vinay and I met Nate and his boys (Matt, Josh & David) in Vegas. Vinay and I first came across Nates blog about 8 months ago when it first launched and had a handful of readers. Being business partners with the same focus (cars, money, web development) we followed Nates blogging as he started out from scratch on his entrepreneurial journey in Scottsdale. It wasn’t long until Nate, David Wilkson (the UK’s 13 year old super blogger) of TechZi.net and Vinay & I started up a successful collaborative automotive blog called CarZi.com.

Nate, thank you for the warm welcome, all the introductions and most importantly the inclusion into your family. You are very lucky, as they are lucky to have you as their leader (as I am to have Vinay as a business partner) that you have Matt, Josh and David on your team, they all have mad skills, determination and the vision and passion required for you guys to succeed in everyone of your endeavors. If everything outside of meeting you in Vegas had been a complete disaster and failure, Vinay and I would have still felt that this had been our most successful business trip yet! Cheers to our successful futures, they have only just begun!!

It was evident that the 2 day BlogWorld event was a very successful one for all who attended, participated and showcased their product.

We had the opportunity to listen to some very interesting keynote interviews, panel conversations and speeches by Matt Mullenweg, Jeremy Wright, Tom Frey and Mark Cuban.

Vinay had a chance to ask Mark Cuban 2 questions - see the 1 hour mark!

At night after the Blog Expo, Vinay and I were able to roll in stretch Hummers to hang out and party with Nate, Josh Mullineaux, Matt Blancarte, David Bjorn and their friends Ms. Danielle, Mr. Gary Lee, Chris, Greg, Darin, Prija, Shoemoney, Neil Patel and John Chow.

Bloggers are legit. One thing I kept hearing among the group this weekend was, “This is the most legit group of people I’ve ever hung out with.” I couldn’t agree more. And it has nothing to do with money. I believe a majority of bloggers are like-minded people, regardless of topic or intention. Bloggers are motivated, driven, technical to a degree, inclusive, intelligent (usually), opinionated, and creative. This is why we’re drawn to each other (at least the ones I know), and this is why we’re legit. What bloggers are not are quitters.”

Many thanks to Ms. Danielle who knew DJ Dust @ Tangerine Nightclub who got us escorted to a VIP table despite the club being at capacity and an hour wait for bottle service. Ms. Danielle you ROCK, thank you so much, I can’t believe we had the opportunity to finally meet you!!

You can see more great photos and a writeup of our wicked awesome time at Tangerine thanks to Mr. Gary Lee’s post: BlogWorld Expo Nights. Another super chill intellectual we met and partied with was Mr. Gary Lee. Gary really looking forward to the next time we’re all together, I had a blast thanks for all the drinks!

Other amazing down to earth and super fun individuals we also rolled around Vegas at night included Chris Burdick, the gentle genius behind Egonitron and Automoblog (I think there might be another automotive opportunity here), the confident, calculated, personable and life of the party Darin Carter of DarinCarter.cc (this guy is a serious baller with style and a crazy ass blingy watch), Prija the super creative, ambitious and extremely talented documentor of blogging the movie and the super brilliant SEO rockstar Neil Patel co-founder of ACS and CrazyEgg who sounded more articulate and insightful than Mark Cuban (not joking ask anyone) who I would personally like to thank for the words of wisdom and many SEO tips; hopefully I’ll see you in Orange County soon!

We would also like to send many thanks to Mr. Chow for inviting us to the John Chow Blogger Dinner which took place at Benihanna Japanese Steak House in the Hilton Hotel. The meal was spectacular but the company was tops!

Jeremy Schoemaker aka the notorious internet guru helping you gain “skills to pay the bills” Shoemoney was also in attendance for all of these shenanigans and rolled harder than I anticipated with his own personal sexy female bodyguards borrowed from UBD !! Jeremy, thank you so much for all the drinks and for showing us how you Nebraskin’s really party! I would love to share some of the details about all the crazyness and partying we got ourselves into (willingly or not) but I’m going to have to play the Vegas card right about now ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’. You should be able to estimate the kind of trouble we got into just by the company we were with and the photos I have posted.

All these photos were taken using my trusty Canon SD300; The Unoficial Bloggers Choice For Cameras.

Other great Blog World Articles from these individuals:

• Gary Lee: Blog World Expo Nights
• Ms Danielle: Too Legit to Quit: A BlogWorld Expo Review
• Zac Johnson: John Chow Blogger Dinner
• Darin.cc: Viva Las Vegas
• Blogging The Movie: Blog World Photos
• Shomoney: BlogWorld Wrap Up

Sorry this post was so late, but we wanted to do this post justice and give proper thanks and shout outs to all the people that contributed to our successful visit at the Las Vegas BlogWorld Expo 2007.   See you all soon!

Congratulations (to both) it’s about time ProductWiki finally got featured on TechCrunch in an article by Erick Schonfeld titled: ProductWiki’s Formula For Unbiased Reviews.

Less than a week after getting some love in a CrunchGear post, Schonfeld met Omar at the TechCrunch Boston Meetup and had the following to report in his article.

“The idea behind ProductWiki is to create collaborative product reviews that boil all the judgments about a product into one single review. It avoids revision wars by requiring every reviewer to list both pros and cons, and then every other ProductWiki reader can vote on each pro and each con until a consensus emerges.”

“ProductWiki is another bootstrap startup with three employees (Omar, his sister Amanie, and her husband Erik). It was launched in November, 2005, and has about 15,000 product reviews.”

I find it amazing (but typical of TechCrunch) that these reviews mention nothing about the amazing system software they’ve designed, let alone the 3 major design iterations they have implemented since 2005. It is pretty evident that these writers know nothing about the actual technology. If they did, they would be writing about how amazing their custom Wiki software really is and not about “I know the iPod and the Zune are related products, but what about the more tangential connections, like the toaster oven with the iPodish design? That is what I’d like to see.”

ProductWiki System Facts:

ProductWiki runs on their custom Wiki software platform using a .NET framework from the ground up, MySQL DB, FCKEditor, and Ajax.NET Professional.

ProductWiki got some love from Matt Hickey over at CrunchGear in yesterday’s post ProductWiki: Your guide to gear works great with CrunchGear.

“Meet ProductWiki, a new user-organized and edited resource that is just what it sounds like: a wiki of stuff you can buy. If you want unbiased reviews of a cellphone, for example, by someone who’s actually used it, and you’ve read our thorough reviews, you can use Product Wiki to see if it’s as advertised.”

Matt’s conclusion: “We like gear, and we like Wikis, so we like ProductWiki.”

Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum)

About 2 months ago, The Trump Blog held a contest called Ask Donald J. Trump! Vinay and I submitted about 12 questions and one of Vinay’s 10 questions was chosen among the 10 winners!

You can view Vinay’s Winning post here: Ask Donald Trump Contest Winner: Vinay Menon of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Vinay’s winning question “If you were to give an 8 year old the only reliable financial advice he would ever receive in his life, what would it be?”

And the answer from Donald J. Trump . . . “Learn enough about money and finance so that you could become your own financial adviser. Financial education is the way to financial freedom. Understand how money works, and on a global level as well. That’s a big assignment but it will serve you well.”

Aside from having MadWhips.com mentioned in the winning post, Vinay also wins his choice of a Trump University Course!

This past Saturday, November 3, 2007, Vinay and I recently re-launched MadWhips and were invited to demo at BarcampMontreal3 in beautiful Montreal, Quebec. This event was amazing, and by far the most professionally hosted *.camp we have attended yet! Thanks to all the sponsors for having us, everyone we talked to had an amazing time!While there, Vinay and I had the opportunity to hang out and speak with Kareem Sultan, founder of RaceDV.com for most of the day regarding his awesome product.

RaceDV.com offers an amazing product called “Memoir”, which involves your car and some amazing recording technology that doesn’t just capture the experience. It enhances it. Multiple cameras that can be mounted almost anywhere. Sound so clear you can hear your heart race! All wrapped up with their data acquisition technology in a little black box that never lies so there will never be any doubt about how fast you actually conquered any corner!

Memoir Features

You! - No simulations here. This is your car, your skill, and your real experience.
Real Footage - Two cameras mounted in almost any location on your vehicle.
Real Data - GPS - Accelerometer and vehicle data sampled at more than 5Hz.
Graphic Overlay - Actual performance data overlaid and perfectly synced to video.
DVD - Includes DVD, menu, case and a performance sheet data insert.
Online Presentation - Fastest lap video and all data available online for performance tracking, comparing and sharing.

Finally, videos of amazing cars, where the SOUND is absolutely memorizing… no wind noise, music or jibber jabber from the cockpit, just PURE AWESOME ENGINE MUSICALS..UN REAL!!!!

Check out some of the many Memoirs he has created for race enthusiasts so far!

Vehicle: Ariel Atom 2 2007
Date: September 15, 2007
Track: Autobahn Country Club North

Well, only 9 more hours before Vinay and I (WhipDaddy) jump on a plane to LAS VEGAS to hit the World Blog Expo and meet up with Nate Whitehill and his entourage of .COM ROCKSTARS! SEE YOU THERE!
[Source: RaceDV.com]