Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

A while ago I posted about Meetup.com, an awesome social networking type site where there is actually some social networking and plenty of opportunites to get involved with people who share similar interests. One of the more popular groups on there is run by Terramar Adventures of Philadelphia. They do TONS of stuff from kayaking to laser tag camping, surfing, sky diving and more.

The first event I went on with TerraMar Adventures was a zip line canopy tour at Spring Mountain Ski Resort near Landsdale, PA.

It started out with about 40 people who split off into two groups of 20 people to make it more manageable to get through the course. We were the second group to go and spent about an hour or so on the rock climbing walls before heading off to the zip line tour. It was the first time I had ever done any rock climbing of any sort and it turned out to be a bit challenging and harder than it looks. I got about half way up one wall and then the fingers and wrists just gave out. Maybe next time it’ll be possible to get a little further up the wall. After about an hour of that, it was time to hike up to the start of the zip line tour.

To get started on the zip line you can take the chairlift up or just hike. The rock climbing wall was part way up the hill so we just hiked to the top. The beginning of the tour involves climbing up a rope net/ladder type thing up to the first platform. Throughout the entire canopy tour you are in some way attached to various cables that prevent you from falling off the aparatus so the whole thing is really safe.

Once you get up on top of the first platform, you walk across a little bridge with nothing to hold onto except the tether above you that will catch you if you fall off of it. Once on the second platform you get a little instruction on how to “zip” and what to expect. The whole time you are clipped to a cable to keep you from falling do your demise. When your turn comes, you first test out the cable to make sure it is all set to hold you and you are safely secured to it. Then you hop off the platform and “zip” down through the woods to the next platform. You can turn upside down in your harness, get a little crazy (watch out for the trees), an potentially get up to 30-40mph.

When you get to the next platform you get clipped to another cable to kep from falling off the platform, work your way around to the next “zip” line and repeat this several times. There are several different rope bridges along the way; all relatively easy to get across.

The final zip line is around 300 feet. When you get to the end of it, you end up at the top of the rock climbing tower and then scale down that for one ast little thrill.

Overall it is a fun event. It’s not the adrenaline rush of fling in a glider or tearing down a doubel diamond bump run in Utah but it is fun.

Following that adventure, there is a Tiki Bar where you can grab a drink and get some raw food to cook on the grill. It ranges from alligator to wild boar, tuna steaks and various other things. I got the alligator and it tasted like chicken only leaner. I also got the raw tuna steak which was called sushi quality. The tuna was around 20 bucks and they said it was sushi quality but it sure didn’t taste like sushi quality. It is an interesting concept for a bar but it is over priced. Still the exotic foods are worth a try and it is nice to sit outside and enjoy a drink and some exotic food after a day of zipping and rock climbing.

If you are looking for something different to do, head on over to Spring Mountain Ski resort to give the zip line a try. If you’re looking for other outdoor adventures in the Philadelphia area, check out Terramar adventures for anything from skydiving to white water rafting, flight lessons, camping trips and more!

Social networking is all the rage but for the most part it seems like a bunch of hype. My Space seems like yesterdays news, Facebook and privacy don’t belong in the same sentence and I haven’t found any compelling use for it. If you are going to dump all your personal information in a database somewhere it seems like you should get something for it. Of all the “social networking” sites out there, there seem to be two that are truely useful.

LinkedIn.com provides a great place for social business networking with their Q&A section and an intuitive easy to use interface. If you are looking for a job or business opportunities it’s a great place to be.

Meetup.com is more like a live social networking site. You know, not just somewhere where you dump a person information but where you find like minded people and actually go do things with them instead of just poking them or finding out what they are buying you for Christmas. Meetup puts the social in social networking.

How does Meetup.com work? Well, just like other social networking sites you sign up and create a profile. You don’t have to put in a ton of information but can put in as much as you want. Once you’ve signed up, you join groups. There are groups for just about anything you can imagine. Want to find a local windsurfing group? No sweat, there is one nearby in Wayne, PA. Hollywood Pete puts that one together. It doesn’t cost anything to join Meetup.com and get involved in one or more groups but it there may be an expense to actually go to the activities offered by the different groups.

Meetup makes money by charging people to create and maintian groups on the site. Prices range from $12.00 per month to $19.00 per month depending on how long you pay for the group. The $12.00 rate is for six months in advance, the $19.00 rate is if you pay by the month. Either way it is a social networking site with a business model that gets revenue from its subscibers. What a novel idea! There is some advertising on the site that may generate revenue but I’d bet most of the money they geneate comes from subsciption fees.

In addition to being a useful, social, social networking site, it can be a great place to start a business. When you create a meetup group, you set the price that people pay to attend events. It could be a dollar or two to cover the cost of the meetup group, it could be $1000.00 if you are putting together a group trip to go skiing in Colorado for a week.

So far, I’ve been to the windsurfing meetup and the local Plymouth Meeting Entrepreneurs meetup. Coming up soon are some other more adventurous events including a Zip Line canopy tour at Spring Mountain put together by TerraMar adventures, and a whitewater rafting trip up in the poconos also by Terramar. There are local Philadelphia salsa dance groups and there was a Segway football event last week. Whatever you want, you’ll find it on there!

So if you want to join or invest in (if they should go public) a social networking site that is actually useful and has a real revenue model, hop on over to Meetup.com, have a good time, start a business or make get some decent returns if they decide to go public!

The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing a little bit and it was a great day to get to Marsh Creek Lake the day before Memorial day. Anything outdoors is a great opportunity to get away from work and try to leave it behind at the office. I went windsurfing at Marsh Creek Lake once last year on a rental Mistral Prodigy and had a blast so decided to buy a setup from www.Windsurfing-Direct.com. I got the Bic Nova 180 with a 7.0 sail in January with free shipping for around $1,500 with shipping included. As a relative newbie, I didn’t have much idea about what to get but Glenn Morton up there seems to have provided excellent advice! Had I found this guy to rigging a windsurfer prior to heading out to the lake, it may have made the lesson not necessary but regardless, Jaque at Marsh Creek Lake provided excelent instruction on how to get everything put together and get out on the lake.

I’m about 6 feet, 180 lbs and this was my second time windsurfing. The Bic Nova 180 is a pretty cool board. You can put in a centerboard, it has a fin on the back of it that screws in. The 180 means 180 liters which is a measure of the volume or buoyancy of the board. For me, the Nova 180 was pretty stable but not anywhere near as stable as the Mistral Prodigy. When you first start out windsurfing, you tend to stand with one foot slightly in front of the mast and the other one behind the mast. The Bic Nova 180 is a fairly thin board in the front. When starting out with a more forward stance to get your berings, this aspect of the board proves to be a bit challenging. The front of the board tends to go under water and can throw your balance way off if you put much weight on your front foot. A little more buoyancy in the front of the board would be nice at this point in the learnig curve.

The combination of the Bic Nova 180 and a 7.0 sail makes for a setup that will be a rocket in medium to heavy winds. Today (May 25, 2008) the wind at Marsh Creek lake wasn’t very strong but every once in a while it would pick up and the board would start to leave a wake and that thing would start to haul! It was just enough to get a taste of how powerful this thing will be in strong winds and how challenging (and how much fun) it is going to be to get used to this board and learn to fly.

Today was about a 45 minute rigging overview, 45 minutes of instruction on the lake and then about another 2 hours of cruising around (mostly slowly) on the lake. I probably fell off the board about 10 times into the (very) chilly water and only once ended up under the sail as it smacked me on the head as I went down with the sail. Between the unseasonably cool tempertures and heavy rains lately, the lake water was really cold. Had the sun not been out, it would have been a bit to cold to be out without a wetsuit.

I’m also a big fan of sailing but haven’t had a chance to do to much of it lately. There is a Zuma sailboat that has yet to see water since it was acquired from a guy on Ebay and an old Snark sailboat also from Ebay that has been out a few times. The Snark is a blast and easy to sail. It looks like the same would be true for the Zuma and hopefully there will be an opportunity to find out this summer. It is however, much, MUCH easier to handle a small sailboat like those than windsurfing, at least after the first few windsurfing experiences.

All in all it was a great day to break out the board for the first time. Glenn definitely provided a windsuring setup with room to grow. The Mistral Prodigy with a 5.5 or 6.0 sail was definitely an easier board to learn on that felt a lot more stable. As the summer goes on, there should be a lot more windsurfing days ahead. If it goes really well, it may be time to invest in a wetsuit and continue the adventure into the fall when the weather starts to cool off.

If the weather holds out tomorrow, the wind is supposed to be a little bit stronger and another trip to Marsh Creek lake may be in order. If you’re into windsurfing or small boat sailing and live around here and go to Marsh Creek or are interested, leave a comment or send a note to adam at this domain name. Time to go check on the sail and see if it is dry and can be rolled up and put back in the sail bag.

When heading out to a conference, its nice to head out a few days before the conference to check out the sights, experience the local town and do some exploring. While I had grand ambitions to do a lot in Santa Barbara prior to CJU, I did make it to the Segway dealer and get a chance to explore the novelty that is Segway.

A great guy named Bill welcomed me to the Segway shop out there. His enthusiasm for Segway was contagious. It quickly spread to me as he walked me though the necessary paperwork needed to keep the lawyers happy and he guided me through the mandatory training session prior to taking a Segway out on the roads.

A few years ago I was on an old i67, maybe i70 out at the Google Plex for the Google Dance that goes along with the annual Search Engine Strategies out in San Jose. The brief stint was after a few beers and was relatively easy. Step on, lean a little bit, crank the handlebars and the Segway will go where you want it to go.

The new “gen2″ Segways are just a bit different. Instead of a fixed shaft and handle bar assembly, the new i2 models have the “lean steer” technology. You no longer turn the handles like you would a motorcycle handle, you tilt the entire handle bar assembly and it leans with you as the Segway rotates. It is much more sensitive than I remember the 1st generation Segways being and much more tricky to ride. It’s very intuitive but at first you just need to learn to trust it.

Following the training session, which includes an overview of how the Segway works, learning basic movements, and finally navigating a little course with some cones you go outside and learn to get a feel for how the Segway can over compensate when turning on an inclined surface. The motors in the Segway can move about quarter a ton each, are pretty powerful and sometimes react in strange ways that can make riding a bit of a challenge.

Santa Barbara is a stunningly beautiful area to visit. The weather is beautiful, the ocean is stunning, the skies are a deep blue when there is no forest fire clouding up the sky and it is always a great day to cruise or walk along the beach. This was the first time gliding along the beach.

After the training was complete, it was off to the sidewalks and trails along the Santa Barbara beach and all the way up to Monticello where Oprah and Ty Warner have their luxury estates. The first day during which I spent a couple hours on the Segway, it was a feeling of total freedom. It bought a smile to my face cruising down the trails, through the parks, by the hotels and the smile spread to most everyone else along the way as they looked curiously at this guy on a contraption they had probably heard of but not seen before.

The Segway is an engineering marvel and is a blast to ride, however it does have its kinks. The machine tops out at about 12.5 miles an hour (you can push it up to about 13) but it seems programmed to push back on you and if you tried to go much faster might push back enough to trigger an emergency stop which would send you flying head over heels over the control stick. It cruised over pavement with small cracks, up fairly steep hills, though grass and dirt that was a little bumpy and would even cruise down small curbs (say an inch or two) with no problem.

When riding a Segway, its best not to try to hard to push it past the built in 12.5 mph speed limit even though 12.5 mph seems kinda slow after a while. Another tricky thing is going up ramped curbs. If you don’t hit them straight on, one wheel will apply a little to much power, the Segway will turn quickly and throw you right off like it has a mind of its own.

Take curves and turns slowly when you are first getting the hang of the Segway. If you take them to quickly or force yourself to have to take them to quickly because of an obstacle or a curb, you’re likely to go sailing and the Segway will get confused and try to keep going in some direction that is likely not where you want it to go. On one hand, it would be nice if there was a kill switch on it, on the other hand, if there was a kill switch and you hit it at maximum speed you’d go flying.

Overall, if you are careful, the Segway is a great transportation and recreation device. If you’re in Santa Barbara, be sure to visit the Santa Barbara Segway for an hourly rental or guided tour. If you come across a Segway tour operator or rental place anywhere else you may be traveling, it is a great way to get out and see the sights and have some fun!

Thinking about buying a Segway? I’ve got some thoughts on that too. While I’m by no means a Segway expert, I’ve learned a little about buying them from various places including Ebay, SegwayChat.com & dealers. You’ll find some thoughts on buying a Segway here.

Another good resource for info on buying a Segway or even to find one for sale is the Segway Chat Forums