We’re adding lots of new features and functionality to DriverSide, and making them all easier to find and use, which is why we’re looking for a couple more passionate and talented front end web developers to join our team full-time in San Francisco.

See the job posting here - http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/904439016.html

I had lunch yesterday with a smart entrepreneur who recently had a very successful exit for his popular consumer destination web site.  He was clearly relaxed, well-rested and loving life.

I’m having a great time making our vision for DriverSide come to fruition and am swimming in long hours, caffeine and product meetings … but part of me couldn’t help but envy his peaceful disposition.  One of the things he said that really stuck with me throughout the day was that he’s recognized that every brilliant and creative idea he’s ever come up with was born from a quiet and chilled-out state - no stress, striffe or meanial tasks weighing him down.  I remembered coming to the same realization when I’d come up with business plans for MarketSquare and DriverSide.

It’s good to slow down, be quiet and think sometimes.

Good friend and cofounder of DriverSide, Trevor Traina, and I are driving in the Gumball Rally this year.  We leave in 2 days for a road rally from San Francisco to LA to San Diego to Las Vegas then airlift to North Korea and on to 3 cities in China, ending in Beijing where we attend the summer olympics.

We’ll be broadcasting live video and will be blogging w/ pictures from the car on every leg of the trip.  All media from the car will go to www.DriverSideGumball.com.  We take off Saturday @ 1pm PST (will be broadcasting live from the car).

Also, I’ll be on NBC11 painfully early tomorrow morning (5am, rerun at 6:50am) talking about how we’ve dorked out the Audi R8 for this trip and hopefully I’ll get a plug in for DriverSide.  It’s live TV - I’ll get the plug in

AutoBlog.com was also cool enough to agree to cover us throughout the trip as well!  I promised them the exclusive if we get thrown into a Chinese or N Korean detention center.

We’re hiring again. Here is the req: http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=561784&trk=

DriverSide (www.driverside.com) is a new service that 2 good friends and former business partners, Jad Dunning and Trevor Traina, and I came up with a little over a year ago. Over the last 9 months or so we’ve raised some money, built an excellent team and created the first version of what we think is a very innovative new service in the online automotive space.

DriverSide’s aim is to not only help consumers find a new (or used) car and sell their old car online more efficiently, but to help during the ownership process as well. Car owners get nervous about how much to pay for routine or unplanned service or repairs to their car. People need to know what their used car is really worth on the open market and how quickly it is depreciating so they know better about when to sell. People need a place to turn when it comes time to make modifications or upgrades to their car. We’ve built DriverSide to solve those issues and many others that everyday car owners experience. We like to say, love it or hate it, everyone has a relationship with their car. We’re here to make that relationship go more smoothly.

So, our public beta starts today. We’ll be working out a few bugs and vigorously improving/adding new features throughout the summer.

I also want to thank my family and friends being so supportive through this busy time … and our wonderfully talented employees for bringing it all to fruition.