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06/06/2009 By Jason Bean

A Boy Heartbroken – Bob Sanders Turns Back on Fans

This weekend I took my son to the Hometown Celebrity Softball Challenge here in Indianapolis. I wrote about the event here and who attended, but wanted to share a bit of a personal story about our experience with the event.

My son was so excited about seeing all the players from the Colts that were there. His favorite players are Bob Sanders and Anthony Gonzalez. I should clarify that he absolutely LOVES the Colts and football period, so he was excited about everyone. Anthony Gonzalez wasn’t in attendance, so he really wanted to get Bob Sander’s autograph. Bob wasn’t interested in interacting with any of the "common" fans in the stands though. Dwight Freeney and Melvin Bullitt walked right up to the fans and signed autographs as much as they could between innings, along with a few other celebrities in attendance.

I realize that Bob Sanders and some other Colts players are like rock stars in Indianapolis. I realize that they probably get mobbed just about anywhere they go and I’m sure it gets annoying. If they’re out by themselves trying to have a "normal" life, then I think fans should be respectful and try and leave them alone as much as possible.

However, when you’re participating at an event like this that’s specifically for fans and to raise money for a charity, I believe "celebrities" should consider this part of their job and responsibility. It’s part of what comes with being famous. Am I way off base here? I’m sure I don’t completely understand what it means to have to deal with this type of fame, but I can tell you I sure hope I’d keep that in mind if I were famous.

Now my son isn’t very interested in Bob Sanders. He’s very let down with his experience this weekend. He told me wants me to sell his jersey on eBay.com for him. I’m trying to encourage him to be patient and maybe we’ll have another chance to meet him and get his autograph. We’ll see how it goes.

06/06/2009 By J. Bean

Aardvark – Delivering a Bit More in Social Search

I’ve been playing with a new service the last few days called Aardvark. The service combines the idea of social networking with search to create a social search application. This is something I’ve been wishing for for quite some time. There’s a big difference in my opinion in doing a search and considering the results of a million 10yr olds thinking something is cool in Google‘s algorithms and getting qualified, expert results instead.

What happens is that you register for the site and as part of completing your profile you provide areas in which you consider yourself having some expertise. Someone then asks a question via IM with Aardvark (you can integrate it with a variety of IM clients) and if the question has keywords related to your areas of expertise you’re sent an IM with the question. There’s also opportunities to answer "extra" questions that may not fit your exact expertise.

Here’s a sample conversation of mine with Aardvark via IM:

aardvark:
Hi Jason, I have an Extra Question that’s not related to your profile…
I have a question about *SEO* – can you help?
(Type ‘sure’, ‘pass’, or ‘busy’.)

Sorry I missed you.

Type ‘sure’ to see if you can answer the question, or type ‘help’ to learn more about Aardvark.
(Tip: try asking about a *gift recommendation* for the holidays, or get a *travel tip*…)

There’s a variety of other menu’s you can access via IM to find out what other people are searching for or what talents certain people have that are currently online and available for questions.

I love this service, but I can see how it could get interrupting to you during your day with messages automatically coming into your IM client regularly. I’m going to keep playing with it though because I really like the idea of it. It reminds me of how I enjoy using twitter to bounce questions off of my followers and see the results I get.

Give Aardvark a try yourself and sign-up, maybe you’ve got an answer out there for someone, I’m fairly certain you’ve probably got a question you’d like answered in the meantime.

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