I was happy to see Josh’s tweet earlier that Coolspotters won the Mashable Blogger’s Choice Open Web Award in the fashion category. This award, unlike the People’s Choice edition, is given based on the votes from the Open Web Award’s partner blogs. It’s a pretty nice endorsement of the platform and the product.

Very cool! Congrats, Fanzter team!

There’s still time to vote in the People’s Choice Open Web Award. Please consider voting for Coolspotters. Every vote helps!

One of the things I love about Coolspotters is that it’s pretty easy to quickly create pages for people or products that give people a quick background on a celebrity’s tastes and personal story. In one way, it’s a research tool where you can record the things you read about people in the public eye so that someone else can benefit from that too.

I’m also a political news nut on top of being a music and TV geek (or at least, music and TV geek wanna be). With the political conventions upon us, I know we’re going to see a lot of people in the news that I want to know more about. I’m sure I’m not alone. For example, I didn’t know much about Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother, so I started filling his profile out. (I didn’t know how much her brother has accomplished, by the way.)

If you see anything interesting about the convention speakers, including video, photos, or links (we call this “media” for simplicity), I’d appreciate it if you could add them to the 2008 Democratic National Convention profile on Coolspotters. Add the people, sponsors, etc. as spots to that profile. I’m a fan of the 2008 DNC profile, so I’ll see any spots or any media you add in my news feed. If you become a fan of that profile, too, you’ll see any media I or others add in your feed.

Keep in mind that this is Coolspotters and not a news site, so I’m interested in the personal stories of these folks, not the straight news. If you read anything interesting, like their musical tastes, any sports they played in high school or college, or any charities they work with, for example, add them as spots. Anything you find cool, add it.

Just go to the 2008 DNC page at Coolspotters and start adding spots to the profile. If we don’t have a page for the folks, sponsors, or other things you’re entering, the site will guide you through a simple process to create a page for them.

Adding media to profiles is also really easy. You can find a link on the left of every profile page that says “Add” (see the image below):

Click the word “Add” and it will walk you through adding web pages, videos, or photos to the profiles. That link is on Spot pages as well, though on the right as blue link.

We’ll be doing the same thing for the 2008 Republican National Convention speakers too, so feel free to add those. The same idea applies to any other celebrity or product you love. That’s the essence of the Coolspotters community, after all. We’re trying to create a place where people share info about the celebrities, products, and things they love.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

Thanks for helping out!

(crossposted at the Coolspotters blog)

The startup I work at, Fanzter, Inc., is looking for interns. These positions can be full- or part-time, paid. If you know anyone who loves celebrities, fashion, and products and wants to get paid to read People, Us Weekly, TMZ, and PopSugar and help out Coolspotters, have them send their resume in to jobs@fanzter.com. All we ask for is enthusiasm and someone that enjoys being online.

You can find more information on all the available positions at the Fanzter jobs page and on the post I just put up at the Coolspotters blog.

Also, though it’s not part of the official job description, we’re willing to consider more flexible opportunities for high school students who might not have a car or whatever. For example, we could do unpaid but include a letter/recommendation for college apps, etc. If you have an idea, propose it, too. No guarantees, but we can be flexible.

Email resumes and a short note to jobs -at- fanzter -dot- com. Fanzter is located in Collinsville, CT, which is west of Hartford.

I was asked recently by a former colleague why I “ended up” working on a site like Coolspotters when anyone looking at this blog would put “celebrities” at the bottom of my list of interests. I never write about them, right?

The fact of the matter is that, it’s true I don’t really care about what Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson are up to today, nor do I have any particular interest in what sunglasses Paris Hilton owns. Like most Americans, however, I do pay attention when celebrities and things I do have an interest in connect, because I’m a fan like most everyone else, and, as most of you know, I do watch movies and TV and have favorite stars, bands, etc.

So, Coolspotters to me is about more than fashion and celebrities, even though that’s a big, big part of it. I save links to it when I see things like the charity work Angelina Jolie is doing or the fact that Barack Obama drives an SUV (though a hybrid) and a gas guzzling Chrysler (come on, Barack!). I’ve also been keeping an eye on the Tesla Roadster and who’s buying or test driving it. I want one, and it will be the only extravagant thing I splurge on if I make it rich one day. Gotta see what the folks who can afford it today are saying in case I should wait for the cheaper Fisker Karma.

The technology vision behind Coolspotters is also a big draw for me. We haven’t really talked about it much on the Fanzter blog, but there’s a lot of details going on behind the scenes that go toward building a good, open site like Coolspotters. I’ll write more about this on the Fanzter blog soon, so keep an eye out. There’s more to the site than what you see today, and hopefully in a month or two, you’ll start seeing the next iteration of our tools and technology on the site. (odd factoid: I’m tracking the word ‘coolspotters’ in blogs and the news and only one site so far has even touched on the technical dream here…)

One last random thing: as some of you know, finding out about the music behind the commercials, TV, and movies you see are a particular passion of mine. It’s no accident that commercials and music are categories on Coolspotters.

That’s the great thing about the platform we’re building. There’s a lot of things it can do, and where it ends up going is up to the users who show up and shape the site. Stop on by.

I missed this at the time, but apparently LG made a custom version of the Shine to promote Iron Man. Jishman, you need one… cut back a little on the wedding and splurge!

You’re going to be hearing about us more and more, but today we had our first TV exposure:

Of course, the site blipped from the surge in traffic. Sorry about that. We’ll be better as more of the performance improvements get rolled out.

That’s all I got right now. More on the official Fanzter/Coolspotters blog later today, including the video.

Coolspotters is live to the world! Check it out, add some content, give us some feedback in the forums (link at the bottom of the page).

So far, things are going well. We’ve got lots of people signing up, adding content, and even more just browsing around checking stuff out.

The “for most of you” in the title is just that we pointed “coolspotters.com” at our actual site instead of the placeholder site we had. That change takes a little time to show up at your ISP, so for some of you, it may not have flipped over. It should by tonight.

Their album, Vampire Weekend, is available via Amazon’s MP3 store. Love Mansard Roof and A-Punk.

Loving this song right now, and loving the fact that I found it via Coolspotters. It’s not really what our site is about, but it’s this sort of serendipitous discovery that makes our site fun. You can get in on the fun soon!

Newsweek and Budget Travel have included Collinsville among their 10 coolest small towns. Collinsville is the home of Fanzter, Inc, and the ax factory mentioned in the article is our building. We’re in one of those commercial lofts. I’ll have photos of our space up later today.

Our DNS for Fanzter.com is hosted at DreamHost. This is my last test:

Needless to say, DNS is moving away from DreamHost. I’ve already moved it, and we should be up as soon as DNS expires.

Update: We’re back up.