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Oooh you're back! Lookin good. Have you lost weight? Yes, that was a compliment designed to butter you up for my next question. Subscribed to my feed yet? :-)

Today marks a milestone for me.

On behalf of the Canterbury Development Corporation, I presented a 3 hour SEO workshop to a group of small to medium business owners based in Christchurch. Nothing too unusual about that, I’ve run workshops before and have presented at conferences and seminars quite a few times over the years.

But what made today different was that it was the very first time I can remember NOT being nervous prior to the event.

Let me explain. I HATE public speaking. Ok, so most people hate it. But the idea of speaking in public makes me sweaty palms anxious and physically ill.  My legs wobble while I’m up on stage, I develop a deer-in-the-headlights stare and I tend to mumble or speak too fast in the hope that the whole ordeal will be over faster. Consequently, I’m not very good at it. Think Bridget Jones without the amusing vocabulary.

But I continue to accept speaking opportunities and MAKE myself go through it. Why? Because I don’t like things that scare me and I want to conquer the fear. I’ve had other people tell me that the more you speak in public, the better you get and the less it intimidates you, so I’ve followed their advice and keep saying YES to situations requiring me to address an audience.

Today, that persistence seems to have paid off. It’s true I was a little jittery yesterday as it dawned on me I would be speaking in front of an audience in a few hours, but that initial fear lasted about 20 minutes. I slept well last night and today, I woke up feeling great. A gym class in the morning got my adrenalin flowing and by the time 1pm rolled around I was feeling confident and, (for the very first time), actually excited about the idea of getting up in front of an audience. I kept waiting for the butterflies to announce themselves in my stomach but they never came!

I spoke more confidently than ever before, had fun with the attendees and enjoyed myself from start to finish. It helped that I had prepared really well, made my slides interesting and interactive, plus I had a very responsive audience. I’m sure all these things contributed, but after 10 years of public speaking terror,  today felt like a huge personal milestone and I’m very proud to have passed it.

Now, if I could just conquer my fear of clowns.

No doubt you’ve heard by now of the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti this week.

If you’ve visited Google.com since then you’ll see they’ve given up some home page real estate to highlight the tragic event. The home page now features the following sentence:

“Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.”

The sentence links to an information page about how the public can help disaster relief in Haiti, complete with donate buttons for UNICEF and CARE, processed by Google checkout.

As well as using their popularity to spread the word, Google has announced they will be donating $1 million to the relief fund.

Not to be outdone, Yahoo and Bing also feature Haiti on their home pages. Yahoo highlights an article about texting to support Haiti as their lead story and also includes a small link for donation options. Bing features two small links labeled “How you can help Haiti” and “Get the latest earthquake news” below the fold, at the very bottom of the page.

If you want to donate to Haiti disaster relief, you can visit the Google link above or contact one of the many charitable organizations in the region directly.

If you’re a Twitter fan, you probably already know that the second annual Shorty Awards are underway. If not, then let me explain.

The Shorty Awards are a celebration of excellent Twitter content, as voted by the community. Voting is now open in 27 official categories such as tech, humor, weird, government, news and art, but votes are also being accepted in unofficial, crowd-sourced categories.

To vote, send a tweet like this:

“I nominate @TwitterUser for a Shorty Award in #category because… (add reason here).”

You can do this on Twitter.com, with any Twitter client, or using the voting box on the Shorty Award site.

In February, the nominees will be narrowed down to five finalists in each category, with winners determined by a combination of popular vote and by the members of the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. In March, an awards ceremony, complete with 140-character acceptance speeches, will be held in New York City and live streamed on the web.

If you missed out on a Shorty last year, never fear. You’ve got the whole of January to garner votes and topple the early leaders.

Google is no longer a search company.

That’s right – the launch of an online mobile store yesterday to sell their new smart phone means Google has crossed the threshold from search company to consumer electronics retailer.

The Nexus One was officially revealed at a press conference at Google headquarters in Mountain View yesterday, but details about the handset had already been leaked and available on the web for weeks. Referred to by Google staff as a *Super Phone*, the Nexus One is being touted as an iPhone killer and has been designed specifically for Google’s Open Source Android operating system.

While the Nexus One does look very much like an iPhone, the first difference that strikes me is the trackball. How very IBM ThinkPad. It also features a thinner profile at 11.5mm, a 5 megapixel camera, 2 microphones (one for noise cancellation), a 3.7″ OLED touchscreen display and the handset weighs in at a tiny 130 grams. Comparisons to the HTC Droid Eris phone are no coincidence – HTC manufactured the Nexus One.

Another gloatworthy, geek-pleasing feature that the Nexus has over the iPhone is the voice-activated keyboard, which I noticed a few launch attendees testing today on Twitter, with amusing results. For more details about the launch I recommend Danny Sullivan’s live blog coverage.

To coincide with the launch, Google installed the world’s largest Nexus One in their foyer (see photo). While it’s not an actual working phone, it’s still pretty impressive.

US customers can now buy the Nexus One directly from Google’s web store with a two-year contract with T-Mobile USA for US $179 or the unlocked handset for $529. Vodafone will supply Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore with the Nexus soon.

Google expects it to roll out to other countries and carriers within the coming months.

*Photo courtesy of Search Engine Land

Using a special animated logo, Google has paid tribute today to the English physicist, mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton who was born on this day in 1643.

It’s widely recorded that Newton *discovered* the concept of gravity (and the resulting science of physics) as a result of observing apples falling from a tree. In tribute, the drop apple theme is mimicked on Google’s global Home Page today.

The Google logo is partly obscured by the branch of an apple tree. After a second or so, an apple drops from the branch to the bottom of the home page. It’s unusual for Google to create an animated tribute Doodle and it makes a nice change from the static images. See the logo in action below:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Clicking on the logo takes you to SERPs for the search query “Isaac Newton”.

Apart from his wide influence on modern physical science, Newton also made great strides in mathematical research, chemistry, history and theology.