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Technorati – the site that everybody loves to hate – has a new feature where you can search for blogs by category, on specific subjects.

I checked out the page, called Blog Finder (in beta), and decided to do a search for Montreal.

It claims that the results are sorted by « authority ».

Result number 1: The guy who shares my house
Result number 2: The guy who takes great care of Yulblog
Result number 3: The guy who takes great photos
Result number 4: The guy who just moved out of Montreal

Nice top line up. All cute Montrealers. Not very many women, as far as I can tell. It works with tags so I guess the girls need to get busy with the tagging business.

Jean-Pierre Cloutier notices that there are no francophone blogs listed and that the method used for choosing the blogs is not explained.

Oh well. At least I know they got the top guy right. ;-)

Edited: There’s actually a bit more information about how Blog Finder works here.

Oh man, my brain is about to explode and I’m sweating from thinking too hard! The day started with a long meeting with a producer and a talented Quebec actor and comedian who had a great idea for a story that I have been hired to write. We’re still at the development stage and the discussion was so intense that we talked for 4 hours non-stop and forgot to have lunch. The story is catchy but somewhat complex, with a fair dose of supernatural and some time traveling involved. I’m very type A when it comes to time traveling and parallel universes. I don’t care that it’s a « special » movie genre. The story has to make sense and be consistent within its own logic, so we drew some pretty complex graphics to elaborate the time line of the movie. The three of us were excited and feeling quite passionate about this, so we were all speaking at the same time, scratching our heads and trying to understand each other’s point while trying to be heard at the same time. Yowser.

We had to end the meeting before everything was resolved and I came home pretty exhausted. You’d think I’d take it easy for the evening but no, I just spent 3 hours describing the movie to my personal chef, who also happens to be fantastic at logic and complex story lines. Another intense discussion took place and now I think we have resolved the plot point that was problematic. It’s 10:30 pm and I’m completely wiped out but wired, as if I had done a lot of physical work. I’m way too tired to go for my daily walk/run. Why can’t thinking hard make you thin and healthy?

I did some research on the Web today, looking for the ultimate quote to show the wild optimism of the dot-com boom of the late nineties. I started reading up on Henry Blodget and some of the famous things he said in 1999.

Strange coincidence: Blodget just published an article in the New York Times today called Irreplaceable Exuberance. It’s worth a read if you are curious about the dot-com era and its impact today:

TEN years ago this month, the initial public offering of the Internet pioneer Netscape set off a dot-com boom that today is usually viewed as a sort of financial kindergarten recess, a regrettable free-for-all of idiocy and greed. Although this view does capture an aspect of the period – the arrogance and punch-drunk frivolity that come with easy money – it misses the big picture. It also implies that had we only been smarter and more disciplined in the late 1990’s, we could have spared ourselves the pain and embarrassment that followed. History suggests otherwise.