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ChangeThis, a project started by Seth Godin and a bunch of interns, launched today. The site/project/publication is designed to use “existing tools (like PDF files, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread.”

The idea is that if one feels strongly about something, one can draw up a PDF “Manifesto,” which can then be shared and discussed, etc. The site seems to be using e-mail, trackback, something resembling collaborative filtering, and Amazon-style rankings.

So far, Guy Kawasaki’s riffing on start-ups, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba are talking about customer evangelists, Evan Wolfson’s discussing marriage, Elly Markson exhorts people to learn how to use e-mail, and, finally, Amnesty International and Tyler Lackey are both holding forth about killing children (in very different contexts).

My husband was in town visiting (this bi-coastal thing sucks, I must say) this weekend, so we took the opportunity to splurge on dinner Saturday night. With the magic of OpenTable.com, we discovered just who had tables available in our time frame. We settled on WD-50, a Lower East Side semi-newcomer, and went for the 9-course tasting menu.

The place knows a little about viral marketing (the non-online kind). Our excellent waitress provided us with a helpful list of what we’d had, so I can tell you with full confidence the names of the dishes.

Really great:

Raisin Toast (actually toast-flavored ice cream served over some raisin-flavored croutons, I think). This one took familiar flavors and shifted the textures on you, so you’re eating creamy toast and crunchy raisins. Weird, but very successful.

Beef Tongue, fried mayo, tomato molasses

Scallops, coffee cous cous, pine shoots, licorice

Others were sort of interesting in theory but didn’t do it for me. It was a fantastic dining experience, though, overall. The casual relaxing atmosphere allows you to feel comfortable enough to get adventurous with your selections.

Here I was wondering if the Bay Area had anything Gothamist-like, and Gothamist goes and launches a SF blog. The name, SFist, is a bit unfortunate. “Ess-fist” just doesn’t sound very… pleasant. Anyway, here’s hoping the new site can keep up the standards Gothamist has set. Looks pretty good, thus far. Ok, I guess there’s no excuse to avoid moving over there, now.

UPDATE: SFist’s editor comments (in the comments) on the naming issue:

Jackson, SFist editor here. We’ve caught a lot of the crap for the name. Not to name names, but the naming decision was made by a non-local. It’s pronounced “Esseff.” People and their dirty, dirty minds.

Anyway, look for relevant changes shortly.

Cheers,

Jackson

Fascinating stuff sparked by the eBay/Craigslist deal from Safa Rashtchy at Piper Jaffray in his Silk Road Newsletter:

We note that the large metropolitan areas such as New York or San Francisco have most likely just as much variety of merchants and offerings as you can find online. Searching and finding these merchants, however, is extremely inefficient and nearly impossible (the yellow pages is only efficient for broad categories, while consumers tend to search on a product basis). Thus, a consumer looking for a treadmill may well find the best offering right in his or her neighborhood, if such local business can have the same access to the web as the online business have had so far. In short, we believe we could be seeing an eBay-like phenomenon in the local listings, allowing consumers to easily find and transact with the local business (or other consumers, as Craig’s List provides) through an efficient online platform. How much could this impact Amazon, eBay, or other online merchant’s sales is not clear to us but we will be watching this trend carefully in the coming quarters.

A colleague passed along this tidbit from a discussion list:

Has anyone else noticed a significant drop in the SPAM
volume over the last couple of hours?

Maybe the old saying “some good can be found in everything”
is true. Despite all the flooding and physical damage these
hurricanes’ cause, they tend to stem the flow of SPAM from
Florida.

Thanks “Charley”.

Today we announced the winners of the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards.