To Heck With The War of The Roses. This is War of The PushPins

Between 1455 and 1487, the English fought a series of wars over the monarchical succession. The wars, between the Houses of Lancaster and York, pitted Lancastrian Henry VI and his followers against Richard, Duke of York. It was a period of tremendous tumult, with uneasy peace broken up dozens of times by bloody battles.

Thanks to Feedjit, a concern that makes free widgets for bloggers, Catalyst:SF has entered into its own internal war -- but our war is over push pins.

And truth be told, it isn't much of a war at all, but I will get into that later.

Back to Feedjit and how much fun their geo widget is. By planting a little piece of code into your blog, you get a world map that shows the locations of the last 100 visitors to your blog. I fully concede it is the penultimate vanity applet -- penultimate because it is second to WhoLinkstoMe? (a chicklet for which you can find still lower in the right hand column of this page.)

The Feedjit geo widget appears on my blog about a third of the way down the page. It is great both for the vanity thing as well as to get constant -- and I mean constant -- proof of how the Internet has broken down borders and the like because of its ability to spread information anywhere at any time.

Get yourself a Feedjit geo widget if you blog. Check out their collaborative filtering and most popular posts widgets as well. I'd add them to this blog if it weren't already so overchickleted that if three people ever load it simultaneously it will crash the entire world wide web.

But back to how Feedjit has transformed life at Catalyst:SF. Those who know our company will be aware that many of our team members were (and indeed are) college and pro athletes, and therefore have a bit of competitiveness woven into their entrails. Virtually everything can become a competition with these guys. And don't EVEN get me started about how much time they spend talking about Fantasy Futbol. The mind reels. When three guys can spend entire minutes talking about players from countries too small to even have been listed in the Iraq War "coalition of the willing," you know a hobby has become obsession.

Well. When my coworkers saw the eye catching little Feedjit widget on my page, they all had to have one. And with the several installs that followed, there grew a lively competition to see who can get the most posts from the most places.

To advertise this competition to the Black Bag Advertising people we share an office with, we now have a 3.5x2 foot world map with pushpins that mimic the locations of our hits.

Out of the goodness of my heart, which you know is all good, I chose clear pushpins as my color. Because clear shows up a lot less than colors, and, frankly, Oldest Living gets more hits than all their blogs combined. This despite the frankly pathetic pandering they are making in their posts -- witness this transparent attempt to score a Botswana hit.

As you know, Oldest Living is above such childish acts. Although we agreed this evening to race for a Kazakhstan "hit", I would never stoop so low as to make a pandering post, making a number of references to a search for Kazakhstan software developers in hopes that software developers in Kazakhstan were using bots to find articles or blog posts on the outsourced software industry in Kazakhstan and individuals looking for outsourced software development in Kazakhstan or indeed companies looking for outsourced software development in Kazakhstan, whether they be LLCs looking for outsourced software development in Kazakhstan or C corps looking for outsourced software development in Kazakhstan. To refer to outsourced software development in Kazakhstan or software development outsourcing specifically in the region of Kazakhstan would be tantamount to pandering. And you, dear reader, deserve to read better than reckless pandering about outsourced software development in Khazakhstan just for the sake of putting a clear pushpin in the region of Kazakhstan.

Just FYI, the words to the Kazakh national anthem are:

Golden sun in heaven,
Golden corn in steppe,
Legend of courage -
It is my land.
In hoary antiquity
Our glory was born,
Proud and strong
Is my Kazakh people

CHORUS
My country, my country,
As your flower I'll grow,
As your song I'll stream, country!
My native land - Kazakhstan!

I've a boundless expanse
And a way, opened in future.
I have an independent,
United people.
Like an ancient friend
Our happy land,
Our happy people
Is welcoming new time

Perhaps surprisingly, our interns, who operate the Culture Catalyst blog, are the
closest thing I have to competition in this so-called war. I liken it more to a Grenada invasion. Perhaps Panama.

So, here it is. The Catalystas may have their pro soccer career memories, their team trophies, their clippings of amazing scores and saves and whatnot. But I have more pushpins. And which, after all, matters more?

And at any rate, it has us all blogging more, which is an excellent development.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.