The Best Golf in the Southwest

I’ve probably never mentioned this on my blog, but golfing is one of my favorite passions outside Internet marketing and business. I was fortunate to live in the southwestern United States for the past few years, so I’ve spent a lot of time on some of the best golf course in the southwest.

One of my favorite courses in San Diego is Torrey Pines. Torrey Pines is a beautiful golf course on the shores of La Jolla that has been host to many PGA tournaments over the years, including where Tiger Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open with his broken knee. I’m lucky to have played Torrey Pines in 1999, where I had my first-ever birdie on the 8th hole.

Las Vegas Golf

Las Vegas is another one of the top golf destinations in the southwest. There are many amazing Las Vegas golf courses thanks to its dry climate, excellent weather and the incredible amount of tourists. Some of the most well-known Las Vegas golf courses include Bali Hai Golf Club, Royal Links Golf Club and Desert Pines Golf Club.

The Bali Hai Golf Club is a South Pacific-themed course that sits directly on the Las Vegas Strip. It features spectacular scenery and a challenging layout for golfers of all skill levels.

Arizona Golf

Tucson Golf Another popular southwest golf destination is Arizona. I played Troon Golf Club with my dad about two years ago, when Matt, Josh and I lived in North Scottsdale. It was one of the most fun and challenging courses I’ve ever played.

Tucson is also famous for some of the best golf courses in the southwest. While there are many Tucson golf courses, the one of the nicest is the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain. It was designed by Jack Nicklaus and built in January of 2009. Dove Mountain features three distinct 9-hole courses that all golfers will appreciate.

If you are a golfer and ever get the chance to visit the southwest, I highly recommend checking out the courses in Las Vegas and Tucson. Not only will you experience immaculate scenery, you will get the chance to play some of the most challenging (and rewarding) golf in the entire U.S!

My Top 5 Favorite Seattle Restaurants

In my four years of blogging, I have never once written about food, which happens to be a popular blogging topic for many people. However, since my move to Belltown in February, I have had the privilege of sampling some of Seattle’s best restaurants. I wouldn’t describe myself as a food connoisseur, but I definitely like trying new foods and I like to think I know good food when I try it! That said, let me share with you my top five favorite Seattle restaurants/eateries.

5. Sushi Wave

Sushi Wave is a little sushi restaurant on 2nd and Broadway. Despite it being significantly less expensive than trendier spots such as Umi or Shiro’s, it is much better tasting. I always go for their spicy tuna rolls and spicy chicken teriyaki. Not to mention, the miso soup is by far, the best I’ve had in Seattle. The decor may not be as nice as Umi, but Sushi Wave makes up for it in price, taste and friendly staff.

4. Red Mill Burgers

Next to Dick’s Burgers, Red Mill is probably the most popular burger spot in Seattle. GQ voted Red Mill as one of the top 20 burgers you must eat before you die. So, enough said. There always seems to be a long line outside of Red Mill during lunchtime. Everything about Red Mill is awesome – the burgers, fries, and shakes. Red Mill, located right off Phinney Ridge in Greek Lake, has been voted the best burger in Seattle for 10 years in a row.

3. Petra Mediterranean Bistro

Petra Every time I frequent Petra Mediterranean Bistro, it is completely packed – a good sign when choosing a restaurant. Combining the flavors of Jordan, Lebanon, Greece, Turkey and Northern Africa, Petra has some of the best tasting Mediterranean food I’ve ever eaten, especially the Baba ghanoush, hummus, garlic cheese fries, and garlic lemon chicken. Petra has 106 reviews on Yelp with a 4.5 star average. You can’t go wrong with anything on their menu!

2. Primo Pizzeria

Primo Everyone loves pizza and there are a ton of great pizza spits in Seattle. However, one stands out more than the others – Primo Pizzeria. The Brutus pizza – sausage, onions, and pepperoncini, is ridiculously tasty and spicy. Combine that with a chicken caesar salad and booyah – awesome dinner, lunch or breakfast! Their prices are a little high, but the service is excellent and they have never disappointed. Free delivery to First Hill, Capitol Hill, Belltown, Downtown and Madison Valley when you order online.

1. Zeitoon Cafe

Zeitoon What do I love most about Zeitoon Cafe? Taste, price, and convenience. Not only is Zeitoon a two-minute walk from my place in Belltown, the grilled chicken panino, caesar salad salad and rosemary potatoes is the perfect lunch or dinner. For $10, it will completely satisfy your hunger with some of the tastiest flavors in all of Seattle. Zeitoon, located on 4th and Wall, also has awesome happy hour specials – from 3-7pm, $3 specials for hummus, dolmades, falafel, baba ganoush and $6 pizzas.

Bonus – Bang Bang Cafe

For the best breakfast food, check out Bang Bang Cafe. I first heard about them from my business partner, Josh. Bang Bang is famous for their out-of-this-world breakfast burritos. I prefer the original “Bang Bang” breakfast burrito – eggs, potatoes, beans, verde sauce, wrapped in a tortilla. Damn, I’m hungry now! Not to mention, they have 133 reviews on their Google Places Page with a 4.5 star average.

That’s it for my favorite Seattle restaurants. To all my fellow Seattle-ites, what are your favorite restaurants in the Emerald City?

What’s New So Far In 2011

It’s been quite a while since my last blog post; in fact, this is my first post of 2011, and it is already April! As many of you knew, my last blog post was about our new company, Highlighter. This past five months have been a wild ride of startup madness! Obviously, a lot has happened since my last update, including:

We successfully completed the TechStars seed incubator program with Highlighter
Matt, Josh and I moved to Belltown in February to be closer to booming tech scene that is Seattle
We raised $300,000 as part of our seed round for Highlighter (more on that here)

All of this would not have been possible without TechStars, a program that provides funding and mentorship for startups. Though we had nearly four years of previous business experience and a handful of connections from Unique Blog Designs, it was through our work with TechStars that allowed us to build enough momentum to raise the seed round required to get this new (and much more exciting!) business off the ground.

That said, a lot of hard work, dedication and persistence were also required. Even though the Seattle TechStars program started out with ten (10) companies, only eight (8) of those companies are still in operation – proving that even with great mentorship, hard work, and guidance, there are many difficulties that need to be overcome when starting a new business in the technology space.

Finally, I would like to give a shoutout to the Seattle TechStars companies still in operation, including:

Deal Co-Op, the best white label software for group buying
GoMiles, the best way to manage your frequent flyer miles
ThinkFuse, a startup that is simplifying weekly status reports
Kinizi, an apartment deal finder
Giant ThinkWell, a social gaming company focusing on celebrities
RewardsForce, a startup disrupting the customer loyalty arena
The Shared Web, a site that allows you to discover the best content based on your friends and interests
And of course, us – Highlighter

Even though I haven’t had too much time for blogging over the past few months, it is something I definitely want to get back into as it is a good way to keep track of all of the changes and happenings. I’ve found myself reading over old posts just to see what I was up to a few years ago…If anything, a blog is simply a great personal journal for keeping track of one’s life!

Our Newest Venture – Highlighter.com

For the past six months, Matt, Josh and I have been working on a super-secret new startup. I am happy to finally announce it!

Highlighter is a WordPress plugin that allows authors to actively engage their audience. They can direct readers attention to any part of the post by ‘highlighting’ any word, sentence or image.

Although we are starting with a WordPress plugin, Highlighter will eventually unify what you highlight, comment, and share across all content, platforms and devices, to create a dynamic relationship between publishers and readers.

That means whether you are reading a blog post from your computer or an eBook/PDF on your iPad, the interaction with content will remain the same.

Highlighter will keep those highlights, comments and notes in a centralized location that you can share with others and/or review at a later time.

Readers can now highlight, comment and share any word, sentence, paragraph or image on a blog post as well, giving the audience unprecedented ability to interact with content.

This means that conversations are no longer limited to the just “comments” of the page – now visitor interaction can take place anywhere within the content. Visitors can also share any sentence or piece of text just by highlighting and clicking!

Sound confusing? It’s not. Check this video out to see how it works.

Collect more emails

The rules of “Internet Marketing 101″ say that an email list is the foundation of all internet marketing efforts. Highlighter has built-in email collection tools that will allow you to integrate with Aweber, Mailchimp or GetResponse. This means that you can capture commentor’s email addresses that before would have been lost.

Anyone who knows anything about online marketing knows that emails convert better than Twitter and Facebook combined.

Increased traffic

Highlighter makes sharing remarkably easy. All a reader has to do is highlight any word, sentence, or image and with one click, readers can share via twitter, facebook, or email. This means that instead of just sharing article titles, your audience will now be able to share the specific elements that they find interesting.

The easier it is to share, the more your visitors will do it.

Commenters will also be notified when someone else responds to the conversation, which also increases pageviews.

How does it work?

If you want to comment on something, just highlight it and click the comment button. Highlighter allows the publisher to moderate inline comments just like regular comments. Therefore unless the author has changed the default setting, comments will need to be moderated before they appear.

Once you have made your comment, a little bubble will show up letting all other readers know that someone has made a comment.

You will find that on any previously commented line of text, the text has a slightly grey dashed underline followed by a little comment bubble. Upon hovering over this text, you will see the comment bubble enlarges with a number in it. This is the number of times this text has been commented upon.

What about blogs with mountains of comments?

The guys at Highlighter were aware that with any significant amount of conversation around a topic, it would be less convenient to read via the bubble.

That is why they created the Highlight Box, which displays all of the inline comments in one place for readers to view. However, with the Highlight Box, each comment or conversation is in context to a highlighted word, sentence, paragraph or image on the blog, making the conversations on the blog much more valuable.

Highlighter

Why would readers want to comment inline? Often with a highly commented blog post, the context the comment can be lost after XX number of comments. Highlighter makes it much easier to retain the context of conversations.

Highlighter is also ideal for longer, more in-depth posts.

Inline commenting

For some verticals, there can be many uses for inline commenting, such as:

To reference a particular word or term in the medical or legal fields
To provide peer review/feedback in an academic or enterprise setting
To display a relevant affiliate link or advertisement within any kind of review/promotional blog post (links and images can be easily embedded within inline comments)

A more social web

Imagine how much more ‘social’ web pages will become when ANYTHING within the content can be attached to a specific, in-context conversation or shared with just one-click!

Of course, giving the publisher fully-moderated control over what is and isn’t displayed is paramount. The last thing anyone wants is for a web page to be graffitied up with spam or other nonsense.

Thankfully, Highlighter gives the publisher full moderation control and fights spam using WordPress’s built-in spam tool, Akismet.

Try Highlighter on your blog

Highlighter is still in development. The guys developing it, Matt, Nate and Josh are running a few case studies and wanted feedback from me, you and my readers!

If you are interested in running Highlighter on your blog, you can download it now. Highlighter is currently just a WordPress plugin, but the guys have plans to expand it to all blogging platforms via a Javascript snippet soon.

What do you think of this new way to interact with content? Let me know in the comments, or better yet, comment on any word, sentence, paragraph or image in this blog post!

Pay $25 for $50 Worth of Gear & Apparel at GiantNerd

Hey guys! I’ve got a quick favor to ask. One of our fellow TechStars teams is working on daily deal marketing, and launched a store today for one of the TechStars founders (Brad Feld). On the store you can purchase a $50 voucher for $25 that can be used at a website that has lots of great outdoor clothing, shoes and gear. It doesn’t matter where you live… they can ship anywhere!

Please support these guys on their big launch today at www.dealcoop.com/bradfeld

IMCoach.com – the Internet Marketing Training Community

A few months ago, we acquired the fantastic domain name, IMCoach.com. We knew this would be the perfect web address to launch our new Internet marketing training community and blog.

Everything on IMCoach.com is completely free – there is nothing to purchase. We created this blog as a “thank you” to our customers and to give back to the Internet marketing community.

The writing/managing team includes professional bloggers and online marketers such as John Chow, Zac Johnson and Michael Kwan.

You can go there right now and read a ton of cool articles, including some very useful blog posts, such as:

IMCoach.com is so brand new that it doesn’t even have any comments yet! You are literally one of the first people to learn about this new site.

In the coming months, IMCoach.com will become a major hub for online marketers and those who want to learn to become better marketers. We have a ton of cool stuff planned, including the first launch contest (details below)…

IMCoach.com Launch Contest: WIN a $100 Best Buy Gift Card

We are having an IMCoach Launch contest and you can win a $100 Best Buy Gift Card! Here’s how…

Go checkout IMCoach.com
Leave a comment on any of the posts
You will will automatically be entered to win!
OPTIONAL: For an additional entry, re-tweet one of the posts using the
hashtag #imcoach
OPTIONAL: For another additional entry, “like” our Facebook page

The contest runs for the next two weeks – until Friday, August 6th. Check out IMCoach.com and let me know what you think!

If you are looking for strategic internet marketing, take a look at The College Startup where you can get some of the best tips and tricks on how to leverage your business, such as how to rock Google+ and get more conversions from your social media.

Boating through the Puget Sound

Over the weekend, I headed over to my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s birthday. We decided it would be fun to spend some time outdoors, so we headed down to the Gig Harbor Marina and rented an 8-person motor boat (even though it was only the four of us). The Puget Sound is a beautiful place, so I ended up taking a bunch of photos with my iPhone 4 including some interesting photos of the new Narrows Bridge which was finished just a few years ago. Here are some of the best ones…

Blog Profit Camp Now Live (Closes Friday, July 9th)

I have been working with John Chow over the past few months on his new program, Blog Profit Camp. I am happy to report that it has finally gone live and will be open until Friday, July 9th at midnight.

Blog Profit Camp is a 12-week interactive course that will show you step by step how to make big money with blogging. John started blogging in December 2005 and within two years, took his blog from making zero to making over $40,000 per month!

Today, he run one of the biggest and most profitable blogs in the world, with over 100,000 RSS readers and over 56,000
people following me on Twitter.

Squeeze Theme, Sales Page Theme and Squeeze Camp are being integrated into the top two packages to make it even easier for novices to both learn and pursue an Internet marketing strategy with all of the tools they need.

You can learn more here (no affiliate link): http://www.blogprofitcamp.com

Congratulations to John for launching this incredible new program!

Interesting (and Weird) Facts About the Internet (Infographic)

Quite a few interesting facts about the Internet and its current state. Some of them seem a little hard to believe, but it is the Internet, and it in of itself is hard to believe, such as the fact that Google has indexed only .004% of the Web, despite being the largest search engine.

Also, does anyone believe the human brain can actually hold 1-10 terabytes? That would seem immeasurable.

What do you think is the weirdest or most hard to believe fact?

The Internet!!
Via: Medical Coding Certification

Hello, world

This is the first blog post I have written in over a year. For anyone who is still reading my blog, hello and thanks for being a loyal NateWhitehill.com reader!

If any of you personally know me, you know that I moved down to Arizona in 2006 to begin my business/Internet moneymaking journey. That ended up going quite well when I started this blog in January 2007 and then Unique Blog Designs in August 2007. Continue reading →

Nate Whitehill dot Com

Business, Technology & Life in Seattle