My name is Andrew Meyer and this my blog. Unfortunately, I have abandoned it and left it for dead. Buzzyeah was recently attacked by malware and required hospital attention. After cleaning up the malware attack, I decided to write this post in case anyone wants to read the “About” page but is too lazy to go to the “About” page.

I am a coffee drinker/trail runner/entrepreneur living in Sonoma County, California.

Brief reverse chronology of what I’ve been up to

2010: Happening now…

2009: The company I started in 2008 stayed alive.

2008: Started my own company amid economic armageddon. Decoded my genome and a magazine asked me why (last paragraph).

2007: Helped launch CrunchBase while interning for TechCrunch and successfully captured a college degree.

2006: Worked on a microfinance project in India on college summer break.

Oh yeah, this blog has received some other press too.

You can find me blabbering on Twitter and Tumblr.

I no longer update this blog and haven’t for some time. I’m not going to delete it instead I’m going to let it collect dust out in the garage. It was fun while it lasted and received some fun press along the way.

I update Buzzyeah with new posts very infrequently, so I thought I’d point out a few places where I update on a daily basis (if not a multiple-times-a-day basis).

1) @andrwmyr at Twitter. Here you’ll find a diarrhea stream of news links I think are cool, my half-baked opinions and thoughts, what I’m up to on any particular day, and hollow flippant-ness.

2) My FriendFeed stream. It tracks almost everything do on the Internet from YouTube to Flickr to Digg to Twitter and so on and so on.

The John & Ken Show on LA radio station KFI AM-640 covered genetic testing on their Saturday (5/3) broadcast.

Note: I tried to figure out a way to incorporate “100,000 watt blowtorch lighting the LA afternoon skies” into the above paragraph but gave up.

They invited Trish Brown, a VP at DNA Direct, and myself to talk during the segment. I guess someone over at The John and Ken Show found my blog while doing some random Googling.

During the interview, John & Ken were surprisingly quieter and less angry than I thought they were going to be. They asked me basic questions regarding the DNA test I chose, my test results and raising donations on my blog for the DNA test.

You can listen to the genetic testing segment on the podcast below. The genetic testing segment starts at 33:40min and goes to 59:40min (They talk to me at the 45:30min mark):

MP3: John and Ken Show – 5/3/2008 (Click link to listen or right-click, save as)

Read more posts from the ‘My Genome’ category here.

 Subscribe to ‘My Genome’ posts only

Make sure you pick up a copy of Newsweek this week.

The one with this cover (April 21, 2008 Issue):

Claudia Kalb did a great write-up of all the new-fangled personal genome services that have been popping up lately, like deCODEme, Navigenics and 23andMe (that’s the one I did), and how they’re being marketed.

The article is titled “May We Scan Your Genome?”

You can find the article on p.44 in the magazine and you can also read the full article on the Newsweek site here. The blurb from my interview is at the end of the article.

Update: View actual scans of the magazine article here.

Thanks to Hsien over at Eye on DNA for setting this up. She emailed me while I was driving, I answered back and like 5 minutes later Claudia Kalb called.

 Subscribe to ‘My Genome’ posts only

Don’t worry, I put this in the ‘Disgusting Self-Promotion’ category, too. :)

Two really cool things happened today.

First, we joined The DNA Network with our “My Genome” blog category.

The DNA Network is a Feedburner Network that is an aggregation of the latest headlines from blogs documenting the genome revolution.

It was started by two excellent genome-focused bloggers Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei at Eye on DNA and Rick Vidal at My Biotech Life. Both of them blog for fun when they aren’t at their day jobs as a PhD-trained epidemiologist/biotech consultant and a Master’s degree candidate in Biological Engineering, respectively.

The addition of my blog to The DNA Network will bring a perspective of a curious consumer using some of these new personal genomics services. You can see my official The DNA Network badge near the bottom of the left sidebar.

Definitely check out the The DNA Network blogs or join The DNA Network Facebook group.

Explore The DNA Network

Second, 23andMe’s official blog the spittoon recognized our yet-to-be-broken saliva-spitting record and gave our Spit Challenge a shout-out today. You can see their post here.

See the Spit Challenge video below:

Here’s a quick blurb on what they said about our Spit Challenge:

“…23andMe admires the competitive spirit of anyone who feels compelled to make an attempt at Andrew’s record. But don’t look for us to be sponsoring any speedspitting contests any time soon. At 23andMe we believe spitting is something to be savored, like a fine wine or an evening spent perusing old copies of Molecular Biology and Evolution.”

I have to say that I savored each and every one of those 146 seconds. Plus, I didn’t add any phlegm to the tube and kept bubbly spit to a minimum (just like they want). :)

Subscribe to ‘My Genome’ posts only

We here at BUZZYEAH are strong believers in clean, good-looking and highly functional user interfaces. That’s why we are constantly twiddling with things on this blog.

And, that’s why we are posting this quick blog category guide for our readers.

When users come to your site, or blog, they should be able to find what they are looking for in no more than 1-2 clicks

Most sites out there come nowhere near 1-2 clicks.

For instance, have you ever tried to find what you are looking for on a “dot Gov” site?

Why do you think search engines like Google are so popular? (Hint: They reduce your click-to-find-what-you-are-looking-for ratio to around 1-2 clicks.)

Enough with the blah blah blah…

Here is our Official Blog Category Guide:

Disruptors: This category is currently focused on healthcare disruptors. The healthcare industry is a mess and desperately needs to be disrupted by crazy people, innovation, new models for care/performance/payment/business etc etc etc.

Innovative Solutions: Ideas are fun, but solutions are better. This category, and, for that matter, the whole blog, is dedicated to doers not dreamers. Nothing against dreamers but doers actually crank out the innovative solutions. The solutions that make are lives, companies, & industries better.

Low-Cost Laptop: This category covers the development of the ultimate low-cost laptop. We think that low-cost devices with Internet connectivity will bring profound change to the world, especially the “Under $2 Crowd”.

Musicsphere: I love music. Bangers, indie, remixes, hyphy, barnburners… I’m there. So, naturally I have an interest in music on the Internet. Music has a good presence on the web via music blogs, social networks and new distribution channels but it’s still in its undeveloped infancy. This category will be devoted to the above music babble.

My Genome: This category is a window into my journey of exploring, discovering, using, learning etc etc etc my genome. Look forward to plenty of candid/frank/amusing/hilarious DNA-related blurbs.

Real Estate 2.0: The real estate industry is very Luddite. This category will cover the injection of technology, Internet and “2.0″ into the real estate industry. Plus, since its the industry I just jumped into you might find a post here and there of the project I’m currently working on.

Startups: This category is devoted to new startups I’ve discovered (and, probably use). You won’t find posts on people, industries or general “Techsphere” talk here. Just startups.

Techsphere: This category is where I talk about general technology and Internet stuff. For instance, if Google buys both Microsoft & Yahoo in one day I will post about it here.

Under $2 Crowd: This category is passionately devoted to startups, products, services, organizations and people doing interesting things for the the billions of people who make under $2 per day (they make up the world’s largest ignored “market”).

Disgusting Self-Promotion: This category is for when I feel vain and cocky. You will find shout-outs to myself, specifically press coverage & BUZZYEAH stuff.

Hopefully, this guide will help you find good stuff on BUZZYEAH with less clicks. All of the above categories can be found on the left sidebar.

About two weeks ago, I posted a guide to BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar. The guide took you through a quick tour of the widgets on my left sidebar, explaining what they did and why I thought they were useful to you the reader.

Since then I have removed two of the widgets: MyBlogLog & Google Subscribed Links (I explain the reasoning in the “guide” post).

And…

I have added two new widgets to my left sidebar, which I think are great additions to BUZZYEAH’s limited sidebar real estate.

The first widget is Widgetbox’s “Recent Posts” widget. I think this should instead be called the “King of All Blog Widgets” widget.

It’s simply amazing.

Check it out (near the top of BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar):

All widgets could learn a thing or two from the Widgetbox “Recent Posts” widget.

It’s functional, clean and highly viral.

You can click the “Add Widget” button near the widget’s bottom and it gives you the option to add the widget to your MySpace page, Blogger blog, Typepad blog, WordPress blog etc. It also gives you the option to share a specific post on Facebook or email it to a friend.

If you want to manually place the widget’s code on your blog or website, you have the option of grabbing either the javascript code or flash embed code. Also, you have the choice of customizing the widget’s layout, colors etc for your own blog or website.

The second widget I’ve added in the past two weeks: Shared Items on Google Reader

Check it out (near the bottom of BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar):

This widget is really cool because it lets BUZZYEAH readers see what blogs I’m reading and shows what material I find interesting. Feel free to view my Google Reader Shared Items page here.

Hey everyone, maybe you noticed that BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar looks a little cleaner today. Or not. I guess it’s your opinion. Let me know in the comments.

Why does it need a guide?

It doesn’t.

But, I was bored and did some user-interface tweaking and added a few new things. And, I think that gives me an excuse to post this small guide.

We will start from the top and work our way down the BUZZYEAH sidebar widget by widget.

One: “About This Blog” widget. This lets you know who authors this blog, provides a link to an extensive about page and also provides a direct link to my email address.

Two: “RSS Feed” widget. This lets my fancy pants readers subscribe to BUZZYEAH’s feed in their preferred feed reader.

Three: “Email Subscription” widget. This lets my dedicated readers receive email updates the morning after I post new content.

Four & Five: “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments” widgets. These are pretty self-explanatory. They each provide my five most recent posts and comments, respectively.

Six: “Search BUZZYEAH” widget. This is a Google Gadget called Custom Search Engine. It lets you search both my blog and the Internet (I don’t want to limit my readers to my small blog). (Update: I changed this widget to search only my blog. Why? Because it benefits my readers in providing narrower, cleaner results. Most of them already have their preferred search engine added to their browser.)

Seven-Twelve: All these widgets are self-explanatory. Fun game: Click the links and see where they go.

Thirteen: “Popular Pages Today” widget. This is a Feedjit widget that provides the ten most-popular BUZZYEAH posts/pages in the past 24 hours.

Fourteen: “Recent Readers” widget. This is a MyBlogLog widget that shows you the profiles of recent MyBlogLog readers on my site.

It’s great because it lets you discover and connect with other BUZZYEAH readers. When you click on a recent readers’ face it takes you to their profile and shows you other blogs they’ve been reading and other communities they’re apart of. (Update: I removed this widget for now. Will re-add it when BUZZYEAH has more MyBlogLog readers.)

Fifteen: “Add BUZZYEAH Expertise” widget. This is a Google Subscribed Links widget. BUZZYEAH readers can subscribe to it and it will add BUZZYEAH expertise to their searches that BUZZYEAH has expertise in. (Update: I removed this widget for now. Don’t think it really adds that much too reader search results.)

For instance, if one of my readers subscribes to this widget and then searches Google for “personal genomics” they will get normal Google results and the fourth search result will be BUZZYEAH’s expertise on the specific search term.

Note: BUZZYEAH’s Subscribed Link will only show up in your search results if we have expertise on the specific search term.

Check it out, I searched for “health 2.0″ and BUZZYEAH’s Subscribed Link showed up in my Google search results:

Probably because of all my recent posts on Dr. Jay Parkinson and his new “health 2.0″ project.

Hope you enjoyed this small, unneeded guide. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions for BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar.

And tastes good, too.

I have plenty of great things I’m going to be tracking and blogging about in 2008. See my New Year’s post for the gritty details.

I don’t want you to miss any riveting posts, so get a BUZZYEAH email subscription right now. It’s better for you than eating vegetables and will make you feel like a million bucks.

BUZZYEAH email subscription:

And, for you RSS heads here is the BUZZYEAH RSS feed:

Oh yeah, and while we are shamelessly plugging everything why don’t you swing by our Facebook Page and become a fan or add our Facebook App to your profile.

Thanks, hopefully this will help you stay more effectively updated with what we are doing here.