Lijit

Jill writes a food blog about eating gluten-free, Hey, that tastes good!, and as soon as I saw that she had a recipe for making marshmallows from scratch, I was hooked. In addition to beautiful photography, Jill posts gluten-free product reviews, recommendations for gluten-free restaurants in both Europe and America, and instructions on how to make her favorite rice flour mix. And don’t even get me started on the recipes: jalapeno poppers, pizza, spring rolls, and, my favorite, chocolate overload cookies.

(Plus, she has a cupcake tattoo on her foot. Can you argue with that?)

When I saw her on the recent sign-up list, I wanted to know more about Jill and her passion for food blogging. She was kind enough to take time out from her cooking adventures to answer some questions I had for her.

How long have you been blogging and what got you started?

I started my food blog 2 years ago. Originally I started it because I was bored at work all day (although I couldn’t access the blogger page from my work computer, I could type posts at work and then post them when I got home) and because I was relatively new to being gluten-free. It was around then that I figured out how to bake/cook a lot of things that I’d had pre-gluten-free that I missed, and I had been calling my mom (who is also gluten-free) every day to tell her what I was eating because I was so excited. I stumbled upon a few other gluten-free blogs, and decided that was a good way to share with my mom what I ate, and anyone else who might be interested.

What’s the greatest thing you’ve received or the best lesson learned from blogging?

I think the greatest thing I’ve received are comments from people who say thank you for the recipes I post, that they never thought they would be able to taste whatever it was I was writing about again. Getting a comment like that makes me feel that I’m helping people realize that being gluten-free isn’t terrible, it’s just a different approach to thinking about your food. It’s a challenge!

I know it’s a hard question to answer, but do you have a favorite post?

I think maybe my Thanksgiving post from last year. It was the first year I hosted a Thanksgiving party, and my sister, my roommate and I did all the cooking ourselves. Everything was gluten-free, except for some bread that we got for cheese and pates. My sister did the photography, it has a number of recipes, and I think it really captured the spirit of the party.

What tips do you have for people looking to go gluten-free?

First, and most important, DON’T PANIC. Don’t spend a lot of time dwelling over the things you can’t eat anymore (I’ll never have pizza! I’ll never have cake! I’ll never have lasagna!) and instead think about the things you eat every day that you can still eat. Fruits, vegetables, meats, and many grains are naturally gluten-free.

Also, don’t settle for something you don’t like. If you buy a loaf of gluten-free bread that’s gross (and chances are you will), grind it up in the food processor and use it for bread crumbs, and don’t buy it again. Read gluten-free blogs (I have a big list on the side of my site) and get a good gluten-free cookbook or two. Read the introduction, most have a chapter or two about how to be gluten-free, and tips, and flour mixes and ideas. Also, read Shauna’s book. And, contact me or any other gf blogger, we’re (probably) happy to help.

How has Lijit helped you as a food blogger?

I’m new to Lijit, but hopefully it will give me a sense of what people are interested in so I can focus more on those topics (or ingredients!)

I appreciate all the hard work that Jill puts into her blog and the fact that she has chosen Lijit as her trusted search tool. Be sure to visit Jill’s blog to find out more about eating gluten-free and to read about her delicious kitchen experiences!

[All photos are from Jill's blog.]

We are excited to be one of the sponsors for the upcoming Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash, taking place on Thursday, next week in downtown Denver. In addition to having the usual suspects gang of bloggers from the area, because of a certain little event that will be taking place at the same time (ahem, the DNC, cough, cough), there will be MANY more bloggers in attendance that night. The response from attendees has been overwhelming and it’s shaping up to be a bash to remember.

If you’re interested in joining us, you can find out more details and RSVP here.

And if you’re worried about missing Obama’s speech, don’t. The RMBB has reserved the only room in the bar with a TV.

Finally, if thinking about the parking in Denver stresses you out, don’t. (As in don’t even think of driving!) The organizers of the RMBB have put together a useful guide to help you navigate Denver’s public transport system.

We look forward to seeing you in the Mile High city and yes, there will be many comfy Lijit t-shirts at the party as well. So, whatever your political leanings, remember that this party is for the bloggers, by the bloggers, and booze has no party affiliations.

Big thanks to the organizers, Shannon and David, for making this happen and thinking of Lijit as a worthy sponsor. (Funny that they asked around the same time we got our recent funding…)

**The RMBB numbering scheme is as mysterious as the recent sightings of Sasquatch. Less hairy, but still unexplainable.

Once the gauntlet was thrown, there was no looking back. Micah pulled off a friendly competition that brought together all those with big appetites in the local tech community. 12 guys showed up to compete and after deciding on the rules together, the contest began. But not before the spectators put their predictions in for who they thought would win. Jenny from Boston thought that Danny Newman was the one to pick, mainly based on the fact that he came dressed to play…

Brad Feld was honest when he said that he would stop eating when he was full…because Amy, his wife, told him to and we all know what a good husband he is. (Additionally, Brad kept making the competition harder by adding in his own rules, like drinking a beer between each round and attempting push-ups as well.)

Spectators took turn ordering the rounds of sushi so that the competitors didn’t have any unfair advantages. The first few rounds were easy, but the sushi got progressively worse as the night wore on. Plates of the hard stuff (quail eggs, smelt roe, fermented soybean, and the like) began appearing in the later rounds, knocking out weak-stomached competitors along the way.

After 14 rounds of sushi, one competitor puking, and many others looking like they were going to puke, the first Sushi Regurge champion was crowned. To the surprise of no one, the same guy who organized the entire event (and talked the most trash) was the one who was left standing at the end of it all.

Many thanks to the employees of Hapa, who put up with our screaming and cheering, and to everyone who showed up to support the competitors. And of course, thanks to Micah…

without whom, none of this disgusting gorging would be possible. Thanks for pulling it together, calling everyone out, and putting your best stomach forward! We look forward to another equally unappetizing gathering like this again next year.

This Wednesday, Frank Gruber and Eric Olson bring their traveling techie road show to Boulder for a second appearance. If you’ve never been to a TECH cocktail before, you’re in for an evening of fun. Imagine a bunch of tech enthusiasts, VCs, bloggers, and entrepreneurs drinking together, watching demos, and sending the geek quotient of the Boulder Theater through the roof. Yes, it really is that good. (And I’m not just saying that because Lijit is a sponsor…)

• Where? The esteemed Boulder Theater
• When? August 20th, from 6:30-9:00 PM (although the TC site says that it’s taking place EST, I wouldn’t bet on that, or we’re all going to be early…)
• Why? Duh…because geeks and beer are a great combination.
• How much? Totally free, but you must RSVP

Last time the boys brought the show to town, we found out that as a sponsor, Lijit was supposed to be one of the demos. We hadn’t really thought about that and, at the last moment, grabbed our homemade widget to bring with us to the party. People loved being turned into widgets, as Frank Gruber can attest…

While we’re not sure if the widget will make an appearance this time, the TechStars are coming out to play and they will be demoing their wares. TECH cocktail will be the conclusion to their day-long investor presentations, so you can imagine the relief these teams will be feeling. The TechStars have been working hard all summer and honestly…the least you can do is to come out and support your local tech community by drinking some beer. Is that too much to ask?

In conclusion…

What more could you want? (Unfortunately, due to the limited supply of Lychee liqueur, there will probably NOT be any Lijitos made at this event.) You can RSVP here and we hope to see you on Wednesday night!

After a lot of work, we are proud to introduce something new for our WordPress.org users. If you like the Lijit search and want it to be integrated on your site in a more, how shall we put it, hijacked fashion, then this plugin is for you.

As everyone knows, you can currently install the Lijit widget on your blog in the traditional, add-the-code-to-your-sidebar kind of way. But now, with this new Wordpress plugin, you can keep the current search bar you have on your WordPress blog, but have Lijit power the search results. It’s like magic.

It looks like a normal search bar, but when you do a search, BAM! Search results brought to you courtesy of Lijit.

Like any other Wordpress plugin, you can find the Lijit Search (version 1.0) in the plugin directory. Or HERE.

Once you download the widget, simply log into your WordPress dashboard, go to the plugin page and activate it. Upon activation, you get to choose whether you want to use your existing Lijit account or you can create a new one inside the WordPress admin console.

You can also choose between the classic widget install option OR hijack the existing WordPress search box and make it Lijit-enabled.

But wait! That’s not all. We’ve also included another super-cool feature…integrated statistics. You love the stats that Lijit gives and now you can see those from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard. Simply click on your Lijit stats and you’ll see all that detailed goodness, telling you exactly what you need in order to keep your readers happy.

Many of you asked for a better way to integrate Lijit search on your WordPress blog and here it is. With a cleaner and tighter feel, Lijit and Wordpress.org are playing even better together than ever.

***This plug-in is only available for those WordPress users with versions 2.3-2.6.***

We would like to thank the great team at Crowd Favorite for helping us to make this happen. And by all means, let us know what you think of the plugin. We think it rocks, but are more excited to hear your thoughts.

Happy hijacking!

The following is a guest post by Bill, a software developer here at Lijit who is leading the search engine team. I thought his post was a great follow-up to the one from our CEO on the company’s recent funding and appreciate Bill taking the time to share his thoughts on how we should spend that cash.

As you may know, Lijit recently received 7.1 million dollars in venture capital funding. This means different things to different people. To the investors, it means they see promise in the company and are willing to take a calculated risk. To the executives, it’s a significant milestone in building a successful company. To the employees, it means we still have jobs, and it keeps alive the stock-option dream. But to the engineering team, it signifies a new phase.

Prior to this, Lijit has been a true startup. Everybody has worn multiple hats: the VP of Engineering does systems administration, the senior architect does configuration management, and everybody doubles as the QA team. This early phase can be very exciting and very satisfying. You get to do a little bit of everything, and the urgency to ‘just get it done’ means that you’re rarely constrained by bureaucracy or red tape. But it’s also a difficult time. Everybody is overworked, you often have to do tasks outside of your comfort zone, priorities and direction can change daily, and progress is often constricted by a lack of resources.

I only joined Lijit a few months ago, so I missed a lot of the early pains. But I got here in time to experience some of it, and I worked with many of the Lijit staff at a previous gig where we went through all these phases.

With the funding, it all begins to change. From an engineering perspective, this can be a very exciting time. In the past couple of months we’ve hired a QA team, built a dedicated Test Environment which mirrors the production system, and instituted a bug tracking process. We’ve brought additional developers on board with specialized skillsets, and organized into teams dedicated to each of our primary products (website, search platform, adserving platform). Not only have we built a talented IT team, we’re hiring a configuration management engineer. We’re adopting agile development methods, and we’re building a product roadmap and release timeline that give us direction months into the future. Across the board, we’re transitioning from a small team with limited process to a larger, more specialized team, with greater resources, and naturally, more process.

If we do this right, we become a more productive and higher quality organization which can quickly respond to business needs. If we do it wrong, we can become mired in process and overhead.

And that, really, is the exciting part–we get to define ‘doing this right’. The trick is to integrate these processes and resources while still remaining nimble. We get to pick and choose the parts that make sense. If it doesn’t make sense, if it doesn’t make us faster and improve our quality, then we don’t do it. It’s easy to get bogged down in all this stuff. But we won’t because we’ve been here before.

Photo credit: noahwesley

Rewind six months.  Lijit just moved into its downtown Boulder offices.   It’s December 31st, 2007 and I was sitting at home in my subterranean office thinking, wow – how are we going to make our 2008 numbers… Hmmm.

Then, almost like magic, an incredible publisher signed up – that, at the time, was HUGE.  I remember thinking, what a blue bird.  But how are we going to make the February numbers!  Well, we did make the February numbers and every month between then and now.

As a result of our success we decided to pour more gasoline on the fire.  Now we have a genuine Burning Man going on here.

Thanks to Foundry Group, who led our investment round.  If you’re going to do something in the online publisher space, get these guys onboard.  Nuff said.  In fact, all our investors are amazingly supportive and at one time or another have been instrumental in building what we are doing.

Lookout, there is no stopping us now.

This is another in our ongoing series of guest posts written by different employees around the office. Charlie was kind enough to help out this time and in case you couldn’t figure it out, he loves his bike. And now, with his bionic knee, he’s an even better rider.

Sure, that sounds too much like a box of chocolates, but, well, nobody would ever accuse me of being original.

1. The more skill you have, the more fun you have. The more challenging a trail, the more satisfying it is. If search was easy, it wouldn’t be fun.
2. You don’t always know *exactly* where you’re going.
3. Sometimes there are crashes, and you have to fix your bike or the web servers:
4. You have to keep moving and be able to improvise to get through the most difficult bits.
5. You have to suck it up for some long, brutal climbs sometimes.
6. Beer is good at the end of the day.

I’ve been riding seriously for 7 or 8 years or so, and over the years have fallen in with a group of people that are great riders, and great friends. We all ride regularly and go on weekend trips together, with different combinations of people every time. I’m not the best rider in the group, but we all like the same kind of difficulty, and are willing to work on the technical sections until we ride them clean.

I’ve known some of the people at Lijit for 15 years. These are among the most technically competent people I’ve ever worked with. We’ve worked together for a variety of different companies, in different product domains and different combinations. We all like to have a tough problem that’s worth solving, and are willing to work on it until we get it done.

That is why I ride with those guys, and that’s why I’m at Lijit.

Sure, that’s a pretty short post, but, well, nobody would ever accuse me of being too vocal. And beer is good at the end of the day.