OK, OK, sorry for the gratuitous MC Hammer reference, but I just could not help it. I have been using the Lijit search widget on my blog for some time now, and they just recently added several new content providers, most importantly they added Mixx (well, most important to me anyways).

For those of you that are not familiar with Lijit, they “enhance the way your readers search for and discover information on the internet by using the power of people, their content, and their connections. You serve as a filter for all of the results your readers could possibly receive, ensuring they only receive the most relevant results from the source they trust…YOU”.

If you are a blog publisher and do not already have the Lijit widget on your blog, head on over to Lijit and get it set up and installed. Once you do that, anything that you have submitted to Mixx will show up in the search results on your blog. Pretty cool, huh? Say you have submitted a story to Mixx about the recent earthquake in China. When a reader of your blog does a search for China, one of the search results that will be displayed is the story that you submitted to Mixx with a link directly to that story. So now not only do your readers get the benefit of all the goodness you write on a regular basis, they also get the added benefit of all the cool stuff you submit on Mixx, right there on your blog.

Anyways, I wanted to take a minute and shamefully promote Lijit and Mixx, seeing how they are two really cool companies (one more so than the other since I work there, but others may disagree) doing some really cool stuff. That’s it, shameful promotions are over.

</end shameful promotions >

Today has been an especially good day for a few friends of mine who just recently (I do not know if it happened today or a few days ago, but I just read it today so lets go with today) turned their dreams into a reality. What I am talking about are the guys at Goowy Media who just sold their company to AOL. There are excellent write ups on Mashable as well as TechCrunch with all of the details, so I will spare you the rehash of those posts here.

I had the pleasure of meeting Alex and Jeremey (CEO and CTO respectively) this past April at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The circumstances of us meeting each other is a little hazy (there was a decent amount of beers involved), but someone introduced me to Jeremy and we hit it off. He asked what I did, I told him and I asked him what he did and he told me, we exchanged the usual pleasantries when you meet someone for the first time. After hearing what he did, I was intrigued so we began talking more about his company, which at the time was a startup (and I guess technically still is until the sale goes through and then they will be part of the AOL family, of which I am no longer) and one thing led to another and I told him about a startup I was trying to get off the ground. I had actually entered into a startup challenge a few weeks before, and made it to the semi-finalists (did not go on to the finals, but I was completely fine with it, it was not the right time).

Anyways, Jeremy was very intrigued by the idea and introduced me to Alex and he too really dug the idea. These guys were just 2 ordinary guys that had a dream to develop a company that filled a void they saw in the marketplace, and followed their dreams and made it a reality. I too felt like I had developed an idea that filled a void in the marketplace and I was inspired by their success and wanted to do the same thing. They too felt like I was on to something and took time out of their busy trip to sit down with me and review what I was doing and provide suggestions, pointers, and share their experiences and forewarn me of potential pitfalls. They did not have to do that, really they did not know me other than a chance meeting in a bar, but the fact that they did what they did for me speaks volumes of their character, both personally and professionally. They had nothing to gain by meeting with me and helping me along, but they believed in paying it forward (as do I) and they were just doing their part in helping someone else turn their dreams into reality.

So to Alex and Jeremy I say thank you for all of your help, but more importantly congratulations to you and the entire Goowy Media team in fighting the good fight, never giving up and turning your dreams into reality!

A little friendly competition is healthy, after all it is in our human nature to compete. In fact, competition is what drives us to be better, to look at things differently and make them better, in short, competition is good. There are rules to every competition, whether documented, unspoken or just understood. Trouble rears it’s ugly head when people take off the gloves, start breaking the rules and doing things their own way to either get ahead or put their competition down. Now that does not seem cool, does it?

In the event that you are not an avid Crunch head (just coined that term, kind of like it, reminds me of dead head, but completely different) um, I mean read TechCrunch on a regular basis, we at Mixx (let me just say how awesome it feels to say we at Mixx) had the pleasure of a nice write up by Mr. Arrington over the holiday weekend. Of course all the naysayers were out in full effect with their negative comments, but there were a lot of great comments as well, and to all of you I say thanks. There seems to be a good amount of people that are frustrated with the current social news sites for whatever reasons, and Mixx provides them an alternative, and we welcome anyone who leaves those sites or anyone who comes from where ever, we welcome you all. We recognize that all the other social news sites are our competition, and because of that we strive to get better each day, to listen to our users responses and needs and try to fulfill them however possible. This is all within the rules of engagement, and we will stick to it.

The game becomes unfair when your competition does something that is against the spirit of competition. That happened to us today, there was an article surfaced on how to administer a DDOS attack on us, and it was even being voted up. That is not cool in any way, shape or form. The game takes a bad turn with these kinds of actions, but it only stays that way if we or anyone in this situation follows suit. It is safe to say that we will steer things back on course from our side and I just hope that our competition does the same.