Mr. Moritz... Guy's quiz says you're not cut out for the VC business

So Guy Kawasaki, who is "by no means “proven” as a venture capitalist" (by his own admission) has put together a quiz about what it takes to be a VC. 

Guy thinks that , "When you’re young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world. You should not sit in board meetings listening to an entrepreneur explaining why she missed her numbers while you read email on a Blackberry and intermittently spew forth gems like, “You should partner with MySpace; I can also introduce you to a few of the losers in our portfolio.”

Furthermore, entrepreneurs should view any young person who opted for venture capital over “real world” experience with contempt."

Well, Guy, I started out on the financing side, first at an insitutional LP where I listened to a lot of VCs and then on the VC side where I listened to a lot of entreprenuers and the VCs I got to work with.  It took me a while at each place before I started contributing my own two cents, and I tried to do it where I felt I had some relevent insight.  Listening, in my opinion, is a skill in short demand and I feel like I learned a lot.  Now I'm taking what I learned to the "real world" on the operational side, but I don't think that any of the entrepreneurs I met looked at me with contempt before I joined Oddcast.  I'm glad they didn't.   

Here's my advice to young people trying to get into the field.  Don't let anyone tell you how to get to Mecca.  There are many ways, and one thing I remembered at my time at GM was that the VCs I met came from lots of different backgrounds.   Some were former entreprenuers. Others were technologists.  A few came from journalism and media... others... sales.   

And, to debunk Guy's quiz, I'll give the example of Mike Moritz.  Moritz is a partner at Sequoia.  You may know the startups he's funded:  Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, eGroups, Agile...   Most people consider him to be somewhat good at his job.

If Mike were to take Guy's quiz, here's what he would score:

Part I: Work Background

What is your background?

• Engineering (add 5 points) 
• Sales (add 5 points)
• Management consulting (subtract 5 points)
• Investment banking (subtract 5 points)
• Accounting (subtract 5 points)
• MBA (subtract 5 points)

Mike would get -5 points here, because he joined Sequoia after reporting for Time Magazine and starting a newsletter and conference business. In other words, he was a media guy.  Then, he made the mistake of getting an MBA.

"The ideal venture capitalist has an engineering or a sales background."  Sorry, Mike.

 

Part II: First-Hand Experiences

You may have been in the right places, but you also need the right experiences in those places. Specifically, have you gone through these? 

• Been kicked in the groin by a major, long-lasting economic downturn, so that you know how powerless you are. (add 1 point)

Hmm...  since Mike has been part of a successful firm for 20 years, and he invested in Google during the bubble, I'd say this is a no.  His track record seems to have left his groin intact.  No points.

• Worked at a successful startup, so that you can speak first-hand about the ecstasy of entrepreneurship. (add 1 point)

Nope.  No points.

• Worked at a failed startup, so that you understand three things: first, how hard it is to achieve success; second, that the world doesn’t owe you a thing; and third, what it’s like to be fired or laid off. (add 3 points)

No failures, no points.

• Worked at a public company, so that you know what the end goal looks like, warts and all. (add 1 point)

Reporter for Time.  Time was public.  Um....  1 point I guess.

• Held a CEO position, so that you have this fantasy experience out of your system and will not try to run the startup from a board position. (add 2 points)

Was he the CEO of the conference company he co-founded?  Maybe... 2 points.

• Been an angel investor with your own money, so that you understand the fiduciary responsibility of investing other people’s money. (add 2 points)

I don't think he can angel invest while working at a VC, so I'd say no.  No points.

Part III: Necessary Knowledge

Finally, can you answer these questions for entrepreneurs? Because this is the kind of advice that entrepreneurs need. (Don’t worry: many current venture capitalists would fail this part.)

• How do I introduce a product with no budget? (add 2 points)

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on most of these, b/c he seems pretty smart... never met him (would like to, of course), but I'll assume.  2 points

• How do I determine whether there’s really a market demand for my product? (add 1 point)

1 point.  (Seems like this should get more weight, but ok..whatever...)

• What do I do if customers hate our first product? (add 1 point)

1 point...  [shrugs]

• How do I get Walt Mossberg to return my call? (add 2 points)

This is one of those, "The way to be a successful VC is to be a successful VC before" things...  I imagine Walt would answer Mike's call.  2 pts.

• How do I get to the folks who run Demo? (add 1 point)

See above.  1 point.

• How do I get a plug in TechCrunch? (add 1 point)

I have an issue with this one.  I don't think TechCrunch has made or broken any companies (the products may have broken themselves...  Arrington just calls 'em as he sees 'em).   Plus, I don't really think a VC making a call to Arrington would really influence him... maybe a VC who blogs or anyone who blogs, but otherwise I really think its just create something worthwhile and submit.  0 points.

• How do I get the folks at Fox Interactive to return my call? (add 1 point)

Hmm... if you're investing in a B2B company, I'm not sure how this is relevent.... but, I imagine they'd return Mike's call.  A point, I guess.

• How do I dominate a segment when there are five other companies doing essentially the same thing? (add 2 points)

2 Points... see Google.

• How much time, energy, and money should I spend on patent protection? (add 1 point)

1 Point...  a patent lawyer would know this, too.

• We bet on the wrong architecture for our product; what do I do now? (add 2 points)

Since MM isn't a technical guy, but he probably has connections to lots of great CTO's, I'm going to give him 1 point here.

• What kind of people should I hire: young, old, unproven, proven, cheap, expensive, local, remote? (add 1 point)

As if there was a right answer to this... whatever... 1 point.

• How do I get them to leave their current jobs without throwing a lot of money at them? (add 2 points)

Benefit of the doubt... 2 points.

• How do I tell my best friend that he can’t be chief technical officer just because he was a cofounder? (add 2 points)

2 points.

• How do I get to the buyer at BestBuy to return my call? (add 1 point)

1 point... b/c anyone with a clue will say, "Make a product people demand at the store."

• How do I handle a customer who wants to send back his purchase for a full refund? (add 1 point)

1 point.

• How do I fire people? (add 2 points)

2 points.

• How do I lay people off? (add 2 points)

2 points.

So, on experience, I gave him most of the points, assuming that anyone with a 20 year career in VC should know this stuff.

So, that makes his total...21.

According to the results chart:

24 points or less: Work until you can score higher and keep flying on Southwest Airlines.

:)

links for 2006-11-30

• This is going to be BIG! - 5 Funny things I know now, but didn't know then...
  (tags: funny)
• Go GenX - Trendy Urban Clothing Store
  (tags: myoddcast clothing)
• Design View / Andy Rutledge - Anti-Social Media
  I don't agree, but it's always good to hear the arguments of the other side
  (tags: socialmedia social media community news wemedia mevertising marketing business wisdomofthecrowds)
• Manifest Destiny Part I
  (tags: wireless cellphones carriers mobile)

Better than ActiveSync?

Does anyone use anything better than ActiveSync... like... I dunno... something that works?   ActiveSync is being really difficult.  I'm trying to sync a PocketPC-6700 using Windows Mobile 5 to Win XP.... everything is in Outlook...   actually... it's just calendar and contacts.  

5 Funny things I know now, but didn't know then...

If no one ever tells you about something, you're likely not going to find out about it until after you probably should know better.  It happens.  You'll get what I mean when you read this...   Please feel free to add your own!

1. When I used to hear marathon times when I was younger, I'd always thing, "Wow...  4 hours.. that's way longer than I could ever run."  But, I knew that logic dictated that if you ran faster, it would take less time.  Time being the bottleneck there, I imagined that if you just ran the marathon really really fast... like as fast as you could, it would be a lot easier to finish, because it would take so much less time.  Why was everyone just jogging?  How come no one has ever tried this??
2. One time my mom noticed my hands at dinner when I was like eight.  She said, "Wow, you have really slender fingers!  You should be a pianist!"   If you say pianist too quickly to an eight year old boy who had never heard the word, they think it has something to do with their little boy parts.   I was so embarrassed...   What could my mom be thinking of at the dinner table that slender fingers could be an advantage for?   "A what!?!"   Oh...  pi-an-ist.
3. There are no male cows.   There are no female bulls.  I thought that cows and bulls were seperate animals until my senior year of high schoool.  Male and female cows.  Male and female bulls.  Makes perfect sense to a city kid.
4. My first grade teacher, Sister Ann, told us that you couldn't digest gum and fingernails, so you shouldn't swallow either.  Wow... couldn't digest it at all?  Jeez.  I imagined that if you didn't know better, eventually, they'd have to surgically remove this big gum and fingernail ball from your stomach, and that the gum and fingernail ball was the most disgusting object I could ever conceive of.
5. When I was like 10 or 11 and dating and liking girls started to become a topic of conversation, I was really confused about something.  In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, people used to call making out "going with."   No, not like the 50's version of dating or seeing each other as in "they're going with each other"...  I mean, literally the act of making out was "going with".   A boy and a girl would take a walk around the block and we'd be all dying to know if they "went with each other."   The problem was that I didn't really know what exactly we were referring to.  I mean, I knew about a kiss and I had some loose conception of what sex was... but anything that fell anywhere in between... no clue.   Where the hell were all these people going?  Where they having sex?  The funniest thing was that, in the seventh grade, the first time I ever really went with someone (which turned out to just be some open mouth and a bit of tongue) I told my friend about it and he goes, "And you guys were naked!?"    Apparently I wasn't the only one that didn't know what the deal was either.

From the "WTF is my data plan good for then?" files...

So YouTube is going mobile on Verizon phones.  You'll be able to subscribe to videos from YouTube for an extra $15 a month on top of your existing data plans.

So... wait...  Let me see if I have this straight.  Carriers want to resell me what I get on the web for free over and above what I already pay extra to get the web in the first place?  On top of that it's on a smaller screen and bound to be slower.

As it is, most people are already paying $50-100 a month for their phone plans.  Where does that break?  $150?  $200? 

At the point where my phonebill becomes more expensive than insurance on the 'Stang, I will run my phone over with the car and take a video of it.  I will then upload it to YouTube so you can all have it Vcasted to your Verizon phones.

When do the phones break wide open and we have enough WiFi or Wimax or whatever to just walk around with an unlocked VOIP phone and just download freely from the web?

Carriers are making my phone experience about as good as my online experience was with Prodigy...     in 1992.

Talk amongst yourselves... I'll give you a widget

I just installed an Incircles widget that enables live group chat on my blog.   I found it on TechCrunch and I think it's pretty cool for an alpha.   

Here's what's great about it:

• Easiest install of any widget I've ever used.   I think I picked a color, told it where it was going... then boom, I was done.
• It's built in flash and the embed code is flash, which means it will pretty much work anywhere.
• Slick interface.  It's very easy to message other users and join in.
• Links to popular pages.  I can easily check out other pages where people are chatting with InCircle widgets.

Here's what needs some work:

• Notification and popping out of the page.  I don't want to keep my blog open all day, but I wouldn't mind an extra window that blinks when new people join or new messages are played.  I'd probably even download a little notifier for this.   An html link that opens a new popped out window of the chat I'm on would be great.
• Chat isn't visable until you start chatting yourself.   Outsiders can't see what's going on in the chat or that it's even live until you jump in.  This makes them look dead at first.
• Archiving and user reports.  Not registering made it easy to get started, but that also means I have no backend interface for getting reports, seeing what was discussed, etc. 
  I also can't block certain words or users.  The user thing is hard b/c no one registers to join a chat, so it's hard to ban people, but you could do it with a cookie at least temporarily.
• I'm not cookied with the same identity.   Once I create a screename, it should be mine... so maybe I do want to register...  or make registration optional, but what I get for registering is the ability to own my screename... b/c I don't want anyone else being ceonyc.  That would allow me to be ceonyc in any chat I walked into.
• Feedflare...   Allow me to put something in my RSS feed that says "X number of people chatted on this page in the last hour) that encourages clickthroughs.

All in all, nice work...   I wonder how much traffic a blog needs to have for this to reach a critical mass.

Not bad for a grocery bagger...

I hear the Sox are going to give JD Drew $15 million a year.

That makes Carlos Beltran's $13 look like a steal, considering Beltran has more power, more speed, plays better defense at a more important position, and, oh yeah, is good for more than 130 games a season.  Out of Drew's 8 full seasons, he's only played more than 130 games 4 times.

Then again, if Gary Matthews, Jr. can get $10 million a year for five years at 32, after only playing fulltime the last two seasons...    The guy's never hit more than 19 homers, never driven in more than 79 and he's a career .263 hitter. 

Put it this way...  Jay Payton is two years older than Matthews, but his career stats per 162 are .284-17-70 with a .439 slugging.  Matthews?  .263-14-58 and a .419.  

I think Jay needs a new agent, because he's only making $4 million.

We All Live in a Camden Submarine

Looks like the Mets just lost Chad Bradford to the Orioles.   That really stinks.  Bradford was a double play waiting to happen every time he came out of the bullpen.  I loved watching him pitch, since I throw a little bit of sidearm myself.  In fact, my one and only career pitching win in little league (the only game that I really ever found the plate) was a complete game throwing sidearm.  It's also how I pitch in wiffleball.

Wiffleball...      sigh.   Boy, do I miss wiffleball.

Anyway, this is a big loss, since Mota will miss the first 50 games of the season due to his roid suspension.  They also traded away Henry Owens.  I guess the return of Duaner Sanchez made a righty in the pen expendable, but it was nice to have someone who keeps the ball in the park.

links for 2006-11-28

• The Quoter :: Mitch Hedberg Random Quote Generator
  (tags: cool funny quotes mitchhedberg)
• nextNY Holiday Gathering! December 13th
  Feel free to join us!
  (tags: events nextNY)

Blogging Quote of the Day

"I feel like I... have nothing to conclude, despite having tons to say..." - K.S.

links for 2006-11-27

• 7 tricks to Viral Web Marketing - Baekdal.com
  (tags: marketing viral)
• Micro Persuasion: Media Enter Second Life But Its Potential Still Untapped
  (tags: avatars secondlife)
• Web 2.0 and Tim O'Reilly as Marshal Tito | The Register
  Throught provoking... I thought this was pretty good... brings everyone down to earth a bit.
  (tags: web2.0 technology ajax fordhamclass)
• 10 Reasons to Go Short on Second Life
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds marketing pr)
• Kaneva. The social entertainment network.
  (tags: socialsoftware virtualworlds socialnetworking secondlife)

10 Reasons to Go Short on Second Life

Preface:   I think what Linden Labs has built is amazing...  its an interesting social experiment, an amazing business, an PR phenomenon...   and I give it kudos for making us all think differently about the way the digital world might move forward.   That being said, to anyone that has been involved with Second Life, please don't take this as a knock, but more as a healthy and perhaps, if I'm lucky, conversation provoking dose of skepticism not on the product itself, but on the approach to it by PR folks, marketers, brands, pundits, etc.  EDIT: (Based on comment #1... I'm not making any sort of direct comparison between SL and the avatars that Oddcast makes, because SL is an immersive world...  Oddcast makes talking avatars that live in the web... they're very different animals used for very different purposes.)

The PR buzz around SecondLife is amazing... (Nice job, Lewis PR...)  and I think it's causing a lot of businesses to wonder if they should be participating.    Consider the following list the "grain of salt" you might want to take Second Life with:

1. Second Life is not, and probably will never be, mobile.   From cellphones, to the iPod, portable gaming...   the consumer has clearly voted with their wallet that they want to pick up their digital life and take it with them, getting out from behind the PC and the laptop.  SL, because it needs to be online and it requires powerful and complex 3-D rendering, will not wind up on your cellphones anytime soon.  In a world where I can blog and read blogs, take and send pictures, play games, consume and even download music and videos wherever I am, how appealing is a technology going to be if it forces me to sit home behind my PC?
2. There are no microchunks of a virtual world.  CDs got broken up into tracks.  Movies and TV shows became YouTube clips.  Websites make sure everything has a permalink so that URLs can be tagged and passed along easily.  This is the viral fuel for a short attention span world...  small and bitesized.   SecondLife can't easily be consumed in small bits.  You can't link to an event that already happened, or tag a place, or share it with someone who doesn't have the software.  That also makes it hard to discover things in Second Life when you're not looking for them.  You can't stumble upon it through Google or by browsing social networking profiles.
3. Second Life is a benevolant dictatorship. If you were doing corporate business development in emerging markets, political stability would be a key factor in measuring the attractiveness of a potential new market.  I think, if given the choice, you'd rather invest in a place with a representative government that has proven to support smooth transition of power in the past.  To me, the fact that a very small group of people basically dictates what goes and what doesn't in this market... a group of people that is not beholden to the residents by law, is a political risk. 
4. Second Life is a business.  Linden Labs has taken venture capital investment and those firms are going to look for an "exit" at some point over the next four years or so.  Maybe Linden Labs will be profitable enough to go public.  In that case, the founders could remain at the helm, but they'd still have the pressure to grow revenues which may be at odds with the authenticity of the service.  Contrast that with Craigslist, which makes its team enough money to be comfortable and not feel pressure to do anything that it's users might not like... no quarterly numbers to meet and no pressure to grow the business. 
5.  Diminishing returns for brand participation.  Darren came up with this one and I thought it was very astute.  Right now, you can gain a lot of PR buzz by participating in Second Life... probably enough buzz to justify the investment in development for whatever you build to put in there.  But, how long will that last?  Will you get any buzz for being the 25th retailer in Second Life?   The 50th?  Plus, are you gaining buzz with the right crowd?   If I'm Major League Baseball and American Apparel, I think I'd be doing more in MySpace and Facebook right now because they represent a broader audience.
6. Requires 100% attention.   I think we all agree that attention is finite.  We just don't have the time to do everything we want to do.   With more and more content and services available to us on a regular basis, consumers are looking for things that either coexist well with other things they spend their time on, or save them time.  I'm generally short on anything that requires my full attention and a lot of time.  You can't casually browse Second Life... you're watching it.. it's full screen on your machine... your character needs to walk around to experience more.  It's very different than an IM window you can put away in the background when you're doing other things.
7. Lack of context.   The idea that you can be anyone you want and do anything is really cool... conceptually... but with no guidence, no schedule... no context, users find themselves lost over overwhelmed.  That's what happens with blogging sometimes.  A blog with no theme is difficult to keep up with.  When you're in a 3-D game, you have a goal...  the game has rules.  Hardcore SLers might find this constricting, but the more casual mainstream appreciate knowing what to do from the second the game starts.
8. Digital world with an analog business model.  In Second Life, people make stuff and sell it.  Goods are exchanged for digital items, but because of their digital nature, SL has experienced problems lately with users copying digital items that would otherwise be sold.  The music and movie industry has been fighting this kind of thing for years and still hasn't stamped it out... and that's with big entertainment money behind them.  When you have a world where all of the items are user created, I just can't imagine that the future will offer adequate protection against the free distribution of these items.  DRMing of user created digital goods just seems very counter to the nature of user created works anywhere else on the web.
9. Reach.   No matter how many registered users you have, getting less than 20K simultaneous users online really isn't very much.  By comparison, many of the online MMOGs get more users than this on a regular basis, with World of Warcraft peaking at half a million users online at the same time.   Yes, it's growing, but interestingly, the number of registration is far outpacing the active usage of the site.  A number of sites I found analyizing the usage on the site showed that online/active as a percent of the total is trending down, meaning that more people are coming to check it out, but they're not sticking around.
10. Escapism vs. Reality.   The promise of social networks is that you've got digital self expression going on in unprecidented volume.  That makes them interesting to both users and marketers alike...   because of their ability to connect you with real people based on real and authentic things about themselves.  Throw blogs in that category, too.   Second Life is more of a fantasy.  Even the name says it.  This is not your life... it's your other life.  You cannot be yourself.. .you have to change your name.  It's not me and it's not other really other people, either.  I thought the blog/Web 2.0/Cluetrain revolution was all about authenticity and living online the way I do in real life...  my digital world as a reflection of my real interests and real personality?  So far, that seems a lot more compelling for people than fantasy... otherwise, wouldn't most of the profiles on MySpace be roleplaying profiles... fake people created and maintained by real humans behind them?   If I'm a business, I want to make sure I'm connecting in a sincere way with real people as well.... not sponsoring a fantasy.  That's the way I personally want to live online as well.

Saddest Song Ever

This song has been featured on a Gears of War commercial and it's hard not to stop and listen.  I found the video for it on YouTube.

The Prestige, good, but with a plot hole... WARNING... SPOILER

In case you didn't see Christian Bale and Wolverine... um...   Hugh Jackman in The Prestige yet, stop reading.    I am going to give away a major plotline here.   Don't blame me if you keep reading... you've been warned.

As far as I can tell there are only two scenarios that make sense with this movie.... two explanations that neither of which are entirely satisfying.

1)  Christian Bale has a natural twin that he has grown up with all his life.  He makes "Telsa" the key to his book because Telsa is attempting a cloning machine that doesn't work, sending Hugh Jackman on a wild goose chace.  (Because, if he was aware of it working, he would have essentially given his one advantage, being a twin, over to his arch rival.)   By sheer dumb luck, the machine actually turns out to work.  Now, actually, I believe Tesla was more likely trying to invent a transporting machine... and that happens to be the wackiest glitch in the world... that it doubles you.  But, either way, Bale could have never thought it to work.

2)  Telsa actually did make the machine work for Bale and he used it once, to clone himself a twin.  The second Bale doesn't seem to exist very early on in the movie, like when he's a stagehand.  Where was he all those years if they weren't doing the magic act routine?  Plus, it's just too random that the key to the diary is Tesla, a man that, in reality, has nothing to do with his trick, b/c Bale already has a twin and doesn't need a transporting or cloning machine...   of which Telsa actually winds up, ironically and accidently, creating a cloning machine that works.  Of course, this doesn't make sense either, b/c Telsa doesn't even know his machine works until Hugh Jackman comes to visit him.  If that was the case, though...  why would Bale have anything to do with Tesla?   

links for 2006-11-25

• Group chat on the page
  I think I'm going to try this out.
  (tags: chat)

links for 2006-11-24

• This is going to be BIG! - I'm Thankful For...
  (tags: thanksgivinglist)
• A VC: Things I Am Thankful For
  (tags: thanksgivinglist)

More to be thankful for... :)

More to be thankful for... :), originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I'm Thankful For...

In my family, Thanksgiving is pretty much about eating...    but we're Italian, so that's to be expected.  Still, it's nice to actually stop stuffing your face for a second and think about what you're thankful for.   Here's my list.   If you blog a list of what you're thankful for, tag it "thanksgivinglist" on del.icio.us...    I'd love to see what everyone else appreciates...  and when you write the list, don't forget to tell others to tag it as well.

1. Most importantly, I'm thankful for my family...  My parents got through their new home purchase and renovation ok, my grandmothers are still going pretty strong at 88 (89 in February), and my brothers, who I know I need to call more often, are doing well, too.



2. I'm thankful for the opportunities that my job at Union Square Ventures afforded me, and the challenge that I know have at Oddcast.   It's been a really pivotal (and exciting) year for me professionally and next year looks to be even better!  *hopefully*
3. I'm thankful for great friends--some really special people in my life.  My schedule is always crazy, but a handful of people have managed to hold on for the ride...   some are new and some are old, and some are old friends that have become new in a way... coming back from college or grad school to continue and strengthen friendships from the past...     To Brian, Adrianna, Suzie,  Allison, Deirdre, Pastore, Tommy, Alicia, Kristin... thanks for sticking around.

 

4. I'm thankful for my health...  no major softball, kayaking, dodgeball, football, biking, skiing, or driving injuries quite yet...    *knocks on wood*.
5. I'm thankful for the Downtown Boathouse... not just the buildings or the activities, but for the community.  It's my second home five months out of the year and I've made some terriffic friends through it.  More importantly, it's given me a new appreciation for the conservation of nature in this city and a new perspective on New York.



6. I'm thankful for this city...   the only place I've ever really wanted to live and ever have.  There's no place like it anywhere else, and I couldn't ask for anything more than to always be able to put a roof over my head here and to be happy with my life here.



7. I'm thankful for the success of nextNY....  or rather...  I'm thankful that it's success has enabled me to meet so many fantastic people that I can relate to and who have a vested interested in developing the NYC technology community.  That's really what has been the most fun for me...    the people are great.   I can't wait to see what we do next year.
8. And lastly...  I'm thankful for this blog.  Seriously.  Blogging has led me to two jobs, a wonderful relationship, an adjunct gig, countless connections with really interesting people, on time furniture delivery and an elementary school reunion.  It's been a great sounding board for my ideas and a lightning rod for people with similar interests.  Thanks for reading... thanks for commenting, thanks for sharing on your own blogs and linking over...    Your attention is much appreciated.

links for 2006-11-23

• An API for Google Image Search - The Code Project - C# Libraries
  (tags: images search google api myoddcast)

Group Blog Claiming on Technorati

We want to claim the nextNY blog, but we have numerous authors.  There doesn't appear to be a way to do this on the site...   what's the right protocall for this?  I don't want to claim it by myself and hog it... because others will certainly contribute more.   Ideas?

My mom the avatar... plus some neat voice tools, GotVoice and WavePad

So I started using GotVoice, which checks my cellphone voicemail and sends the files to me in an MP3 files.  I love GotVoice because I really find it a pain to dial my voicemail and navigate menus to hear my voicemails.  Actually, I pretty much hate the phone in general.  Converting voicemail to MP3 can be a dangerous tool in the hands of anyone who works for a talking avatar company.  :)

Combine that with this really powerful free audio tool I just found, WavePad, and you have my mom the avatar... live on my blog.  Wavepad is like SoundRecorder on steroids.

 

Here she is.  Click the play button on the right side of the box to hear her speak.  I'm so going to get in trouble for this.  Love you mom!

 

Infringement... Copyright Infringement

Sony has yanked all of the Casino Royale  trailers from YouTube.

Huh?

We're not talking the whole movie here...  we're talking the advertsing trailer.

Aren't they incentivized to get this thing playing in as many places as possible??

I had this playing on my blog and my MySpace profile for months leading up to the opening. 

If you're in charge of movie trailers, no matter how big or small your movie is, and you don't have them uploaded to YouTube, you're an idiot.  That's it.  You're just an idiot. 

Click to Devolve

Am I the only one that doesn't get "click to call"?

Isn't one of the great promises of the web the fact that I don't have to deal with salespeople, customer service reps, plumbers, etc. over the phone?   When's the last time that was a good experience?

I just want "click to schedule an appointment" or "click to get my question answered promptly".   Click.  Click.   T-o-i-l-e-t... l-e-a-k-i-n-g...   3-4-5-6PM.   Today.  Click.   Why do I need to get on the phone?   Are phone directories that bad?  Plus, with some click to call systems, I click for "random plumber who outbids the other guy for my call".  Is that really the way I want to shop for those services. 

Hmm... who's the guy who paid the most to find me who also now has the highest overhead to pass on to me?

Plus, now I've got to give the interweb my phone number.  I'm sure a lot of people don't trust that either. 

I'm way short click to call as a service...  maybe I'm missing something?

links for 2006-11-22

• MMOGCHART.COM
  (tags: MMOG Gaming Online multiplayer)

Avatar... Shaken, not Stirred

I changed my avatar's look to something a little more...suave and sophisticated.  Click the play button to hear him introduce himself.  :)

Last.fm Friends?

Hey, if anyone else uses Last.fm, please feel free to add me as a friend.  I'm curious as to what everyone else is out there listening to.

Of course, I'm ceonyc on it.

Taze me once, shame on me... Taze me twice, shame on you

I had only heard a little bit about the UCLA Tazer incident...   Student fails to produce ID, gets Tazed.

At first I was pretty ready to defend the police, b/c, as a former resident assistant in a dorm, I'm a big believer in strict security regulations on campuses concerning who should be there and who shouldn't.   I remember when Fordham students used to complain when security guards wouldn't let them into dorms they didn't belong in late at night, particularly after they were out drinking.  Some of the altercations definitely got pretty heated, but usually, the security guards stood pretty firm.

To the students, it was an annoyance... but I also saw the other side of it.  What if you let one someone slip by and someone gets beat up or raped?   Now you wish the security wasn't so lax.

But then I saw the video on YouTube...   it's pretty disturbing.

It made me stop and think.  Video is a powerful medium, but it's also a bit misleading.  We only see the Tazer incident.  We never saw the kid being asked to leave before the cops came or how he acted that made someone at the library call the cops.

It's hard not to have an emotional reaction to this.   The kid is yelling and screaming in agony and you immediately have a sympathetic reaction to him.

But then I thought about what he was screaming...  "Here's your Patriot Act..."    Lots of political messages....   I dunno... me personally, I think I'd just be crying my eyes out from the pain.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be making it into a political issue on the spot.  To me, here's a guy with a bone to pick with authority.

Ever got stopped by a cop?   Most of us are usually a little bit nervous.  I got stopped in September for allegedly doing (I hate to admit how lame this is, b/c I drive a Mustang with 300HP)... 49 in a 30.  (go ahead, giggle)    But yeah, I was nervous.  The LAST thing I was going to do would be to give the cop a hard time and not show my ID.  I listened carefully and complied.   I did not get Tazed.  That's the way most of us act.

Let's say this kid is there up to no good.  Let's say he's a kid with a history of violence who has been banned from campus who is there to mess with someone... if you're a cop... you just don't know without an ID.   When someone starts resisting, you get suspicious.  

So, I have to be honest, I think I'm ok with the initial Tazing.  If you are somewhere that requires ID, you don't show it, and you do not leave upon immediately being asked to, in today's world, I think you're really rolling the dice.  With all the school shootings and terrorism we have to live with, I think that's just common sense, really.  So, cops, if I'm somewhere I shouldn't be, and I don't listen to you when you ask for me ID, please Taze me. 

And yes, Tazing seems violent, but what are the alternatives?  Should the cops have hit him?  Pointed a gun?  How do you get someone who is resisting to leave?  Should they dress up in those goofy Sumo suits and belly bounce him out the door? 

That being said, I think the cops definitely got trigger happy.   Unless this kid was on steroids, I tend to think that one Taze should do it... and I'm not surprised he couldn't stand up.  That's like kicking them in the shins and threatening to kick them again if they won't stand up.  When you Taze someone, you should be able to yank them out right away and arrest them or kick them out of wherever they are or do what you need to do.  Threatening to Taze them again or threatening to Taze others isn't the right way to do it.  You Taze when you need to, not as part of a "negotiation". 

So, at the end of the day, I think this was a kid with an obvious bone to pick that acted in a way that got him on the wrong side of the law.  Add that to some Tazer happy cops who don't know the appropriate use of a dangerous weapon, mix in some YouTube, and you've got yourselves a mess.

The student should be suspended and so should the cops.  If I were this kid's parents, I'd be pissed at the police for not training their officers properly but also pissed at my kid for not listening to authorities from the start.

 

links for 2006-11-21

• Jaduka Virtual Host Powered by Oddcast
  Record your own story... fun stuff!
  (tags: funny jadukatv politics bush)

links for 2006-11-20

• appfrm.pdf (application/pdf Object)
  (tags: parkingticket appeal nyc)
• This is going to be BIG! - Please Don't Sell MyBlogLog
  (tags: mybloglog yahoo web2.0)

Please Don't Sell MyBlogLog

Dear Eric and Scott:

     Please do not sell MyBlogLog to Yahoo! or to anyone else at the moment, without taking at least one shot to build this into something bigger.   I don't want to tell anyone else how to live their life and it's easy for me to say this, because no one is offering me millions of dollars for anything, but I think if you sell now, we will have all collectively missed a big opportunity.

     Current social offerings fall way short.  They neither represent how I socialize in real life, nor do they come close to representing my network of connections on the web.  What I love about MyBlogLog is that it forms naturally...  organically...   and it follows me around in most of the places that I spend my time online.   It has connected me with my readers and has so much potential at this early stage.

     I really believe there is little chance at it reaching this potential within the confines of a company that is obviously internally conflicted.

      There are a lot of things in the Web 2.0 world that are features and not companies... that won't ever grow past 50, 000 users.   I believe MyBlogLog is different and I hope you do, too.   I can see a future where every place I visit on the web is socially enabled by MBL and that my network is a true representation of who I share interests with.  I want to go to ESPN and see who the other Bill Simmons readers are...   and see who else is checking out kayaking pages and the nextNY blog.   Most of the people on the web are lurking and MBL shines a light on the audience.  That is valuable to both to the publishers and to the audience.   There are so many ways to go here, it would just be a real shame for it to become a zombY!

Thanks,

Charlie

****

Readers:
If you believe that Web 2.0 companies driven by great ideas have the potential to be more than just misplaced or forgotten cogs in someone else's machine, tag this post, share it, blog about it, link to it, etc...   Send a supportive  message to the creators of the services you love that their community is behind their quest to make a bigger dent in the online world.

links for 2006-11-19

• The 'Peanut Butter Manifesto' - WSJ.com
  (tags: yahoo)

links for 2006-11-18

• Wired News: Think Before Pinging Your Ex
  Breakups in a digital world are so hard...
  (tags: relationships dating)
• Get 'em while they're hot: Lead Generation with Avatars
  (tags: leadgen leadgeneration smb business sales)

Casino Royale Rocks

Saw a sneak preview of the new Bond movie, Casino Royale, last night.  I'm a huge 007 fan, so I've been looking forward to this movie for just about after the credits of the last one started rolling.

Well worth the wait.

I saw in the paper that Daniel Craig brings the franchise back, but I don't want to say that because I think Pierce Brosnan was the one who actually did that... bringing it back from License to Kill, which was, in my opinion, the worst Bond ever.  (A View to a Kill can't be the worst, because it has Christopher Walken.)

Casino Royale starts out with Bond even before he was a "00" agent...  resetting the story just like they did with Batman Begins.

Daniel Craig reminds me of Connery's Goldfinger performance.  Rough around the edges, but every now and then he flashes a smile without being cheesy.  

The story, and their actually is one, is well thought out and not predictable at all.  Just go see it... even if you're not a Bond fan... it's a great action movie for anyone.

What if this didn't happen on Etsy?

Team Etsy:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

Etsy User Community:  Yay!  We love you.

Seriously, what other site could you imagine this happening on?  Check out the comments left on their company blog. 

 

Here's how it would look if some other sites went down for two days:

 

MySpace Tom:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

MySpace Users:  Fuck this... we're taking our thong pics to Friendster.

 

Facebook Mark:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

Facebook Users:  Fuck this... we're taking our drunken pics to Friendster.

 

Friendster Jonathan:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

Friendster Users:  *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click*  Ah, lunchbreak...    Back to work, *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click*

 

YouTube:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

YouTube Users:  Fuck this... now we're going to have to figure out how to use BitTorrent to get our illegally posted television clips.

 

Pincus:  Fuck it.  We're taking the site down for two days to make it fuckin' better.  Fuck our site and everything else.

Tribe members:  Why does this guy keep cursing at us and what was with the blood on the logo?  Can't we just talk about sushi and Burning Man in peace?

 

Craig:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

Craiglist Users:  Do you ski?

 

Linden Labs:  We're taking the site down for two days to make it better.

Second Life Residents:  Run for your virtual lives!  Hide in the American Apparel store!  They're going to unplug us!  Let us live! Let us live! 

 

Jeff Jarvis:  I'm taking Buzzmachine down for two days because old media sucks and they don't get it.

Buzzmachine readers:  Death to old media!  Death to old media!

 

NJGuido.com Webmaster:  We're taking NJGuido down for two days to make it better.

Guidos:  You think you're better then us?  Huh?  You think you're fuckin' better than us?

 

Fred Wilson: I'm taking the site down for two days to make it better.

AVC Readers:  That's fine... we'll just listen to the Arctic Monkeys in the meantime.

 

Me: I'm taking the site down for two days to make it better.

Thisisgoingtobebig Readers:  Just promise us you won't go back to the gray on black.. that was awful!

links for 2006-11-16

• CAPTCHAs on MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster Shut Out Blind Users - AFB's Blog
  (tags: accessibility afb blind facebook Friendster linkedin myspace socialnetworking)
• nextNY - nextNY Blog - Can NYC compete with the Valley? Find out November 20th.
  (tags: events nyc vc web2.0)

Web 2.0 Whac-a-Mole sucks

The great thing about being a Web 2.0 entpreneur is that you could build something usable and more importantly, noticeable, on your own dime (or a few friends and family dimes) and get it bought by confused old web media companies playing Whac-a-Mole with startups.

 
From what I can tell, Google actually has a vision for their acquisitions: Total digital domination from every angle.  Hey, at least it's a goal, or a loose collection of many goals.  Regardless, when they bought Writely and Jotspot, you could at least say, "Ah... I see, that makes sense.  They're building an office suite."   Or, when they bought Dmarc, you could say, "Ah... they want to dominate radio ads, too."  In fact, that strategy has so much logic, you could even make the connection and ask, "How long before they buy Spotrunner?" 

Try asking yourself who Yahoo! or NewsCorp will buy next... or CondeNast.  Who the hell knows, really?  There are a lot of acquisitive players out there that I think are making bad homes for startups.

What's worse is that, post-acquisition, some very good ideas are showing very little of the inginuity and continuous product development that made them great in the first place.  It's not surprising either.  If you are independent, you're trying to run for the gold, beat out your competitors, win the game.   Within a big company with a little money in the pockets of the founders, it's highly unlikely the push to innovate will continue.  Does anyone think Reddit is going to become any more disruptive or gamechanging at Wired?  Sure, it might be more users, but expect any innovation to slow to a crawl.

And that really sucks for users.  For some of these startups, we only got to see a taste of what they could have been with a little more development.  What ever happened to Konfabulator anyway?  Did the end users really fair much better with that company in the hands of Yahoo! than the would have had they gotten some VC funding and tried to build a bigger company?  The acquisition environment we have now is really killing innovation and cutting companies off at the pass before they have a chance to make a much bigger impact on the web.

Don't get me wrong.  It's hard to turn down these offers...   but I was talking to an entreprenuer the other day who said to me, "Listen, I've never had the check put in front of me, but to be honest, I want to do something bigger.  That's the reason why I got into this in the first place.  I sort of feel like I should go big or go home."  I'd like to think I'd have the same sentiment, especially seeing what seems to happen to these startups after acquisition. 

At what point does anyone start wondering whether or not some of these companies are acquiring just to crush these startups? 

What's your list of companies that are currently private that you hope take a shot at something bigger before getting assimmilated?

links for 2006-11-15

• nextNY - nextNY Blog - Hello NYC.
  nextNY's new blog on NYC tech
  (tags: nyc tech web2.0 vc startup technology)
• YouTube - Craig Ferguson with a Rumsfeld Remembrance
  (tags: funny politics rumsfeld)

2006 ZogSports Fall Dodgeball Champs: Dodge This!

Last night, after 2 kickball seasons, 3 other dodgeball seasons,  3 softball seasons and a football season, on my 10th try, I finally won my first ZogSports Championship!   After going 18-6 in the regular season and finishing in second place, Dodge This! edged out Chico's Bail Bonds for it's rightful place in obscure sports history.

Pictured (L to R): Allison Auman, Rebecca May, Alex Lunney, Nancy Kish (seated), James Pastore, Charlie O'Donnell (me, seated), Abby King, Evan Timbie, Erick Bond, Courtney Bongiolatti.   Not pictured: Doug Miller (injured reserve)

nextNY Blog about NYC Tech

The group at nextNY decided that NYC tech could use another voice... or 400 of them... so we started blogging.   Go take a look.  We're going to profile NYC companies, people, cover events, etc...   

links for 2006-11-14

• Artwork.Not.Available
  (tags: fordhamclass 2020 consumers revenge)

links for 2006-11-11

• this is by us >> Guidelines for Platonic Friendship, by moreanonymous
  (tags: funny sex relationships)
• This is going to be BIG! - Getting into this online stuff: Part II - A better way to bookmark and favorite links on the web using del.icio.us
  (tags: del.icio.us howto fordhamclass bookmarks favorites)

Getting into this online stuff: Part II - A better way to bookmark and favorite links on the web using del.icio.us

This is the second installment of posts I plan to use for the class I'm teaching at Fordham.  It's probably a little remedial for hardcore techies, but it might be the kind of things you send to friends who might not be as tech savvy.   See the prior post at the bottom...

So, you've been surfing the web for 10+ years now.

How many bookmarks or favorites do you have?  5? 10? 50?  So in 10 years you've only seen 25 things on the web worth saving?

What about discovering new things?  Are you one of those people who gets stuff sent to them or are you always the first to find something? 

I want to share a really useful tool I use called del.icio.us.  It has a screwy name because it's actually at the "icio.us" domain...  You can get to it from delicious.com, but that just takes all the novelty out of it.

del.icio.us is a better way to remember, discover, and share URLs.  It may not seem compelling at first, but I guarantee once you use it a few times, particulalry the first time you retrieve or discover a new link, you'll be hooked.

What is it? 

del.icio.us is a way to store your links online.  So, right off the bat, anything you save can be easily retrieved from other computers that you use?  New computer?  Home computer.  No problem.  And no searching through e-mails for links anymore either.  Welcome to 2006. 

All of the del.icio.us links are saved with your own keywords.  No more trying to figure out if the Barry Bonds story goes in the sports folder or the steroids folder.  (If you even have folders for links.)  Just "tag" it (attach keywords) using words that will help you retrieve it later...  Just "jerk" or "jerk, baseball, juice, BALCO, SFGiants, and Bonds."  You'll never lose a link again, because you stored it using any and all of your own words.  I never lose the Central Park softball field finder because I have it tagged "central park, maps, and softball".

By default, links in del.icio.us are public. You might freak out at first, but keep in mind the following...  You don't have to have any personally identifyable information displayed in your account.  If you want to be metsfan06 in del.icio.us, no one will really know who you are.  Also, you can make any of your links private.  In my year and a half of using del.icio.us, I think I've done this twice, and I actually set my name to be viewable in my del.icio.us account.  Look at most of your bookmarks.  Would it matter if any of them were public?  Maybe a handful, but I doubt that's the case for most.

The value of the public default in del.icio.us is that you can discover new links tagged by the community of other users, and there are over a million.  You can check out the most popular links tagged PHP at del.icio.us/popular/php or the most popular things tagged funny at del.icio.us/popular/funny.  Because there are over a million del.icio.us users, most of these tags are pretty deep in their content.  You can also check out combinations (but just a chronology...it doesn't do popular for combos) of tags.   Check out links tagged nyc and food at del.icio.us/tag/food+nyc for a good restaurant recommendation.  There's no rating system on del.icio.us, because, as the founder put it, links only have two settings... "stuff worth saving" and "everything else".  Plus, you can discover other users who have similar interests.  I found a guy who was tagging cool Brooklyn restaurants and places "naveen" at del.icio.us/naveen/hangout.  I didn't even know who he was, but followed what he was tagging hangout.

One last thing and then we'll get to the how.  You can tag links for specific people right at the moment you save it for yourself.  If you find a link you want me to see, just tag it as usual, but also add the tag for:ceonyc.  When I want to tag something for Shaival, our biz dev guy here, its for:sshah06 or for Kristina, our Oddcast intern, its for:kw11.  You have to know your friend's screenname...there's no user search.

Oh, you can also subscribe to any person's links, any tag, any combo, or the popular lists, by RSS.

Here's how to use it:

First off, it's much easier to use it in Firefox, because they've built a really nice little extension.  Plus, you should be using Firefox anyway....less bugs and holes, plus webpages pretty much display the way the auther intended.  IE does screwy things to the web.

1) Register here.

2) Get the firefox extension.

3) Restart your browser.

4) Now you've got these two buttons on your toolbar.  One for tagging pages and one for retreiving your tagged pages. 

5) When you tag a page, use space seperated keywords that make sense to you. For me, I always use a combination of general subject tags and ones that intidcate to me why I tagged them.  So, this post might be tagged "del.icio.us howto web bookmarks favorites fordhamclass".  You can use as many or as few as you like and it doesn't matter if they make sense to anyone else but you.  So, someone looking for better ways to manage bookmarks would find this post through the "bookmarks" tag, but no one would ever care about or look for something tagged "fordhamclass".  That tag is for my purposes.  The neat thing about tagging is that I just did something for myself...tagged a link so I can find later, and others still benefit.

There are lots of other neat features of del.icio.us, like creating linkrolls for your blog or automatic once a day blog posts of all your links from that day.  Take some time to explore it.  I guarantee that if you get into the habit of using it, you'll find it really useful and you'll never forget anything you saw on the web.

Other "Getting into this online stuff posts":

Getting into this online stuff: Part I - Blogging as the Industry Cocktail Party

links for 2006-11-10

• GigaOM » Social Networking by the Numbers
  (tags: facebook myspace socialnetworking stats cyworld)
• Talkin' Avatars with Oddcast: Whoa... Artificial Intelligence
  (tags: ai avatars cool matrix oddcast technology)

My ride this morning... beautiful day in NYC

IMG_0397, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Over the Brooklyn Bridge....

Artificially intelligent avatar: And he's even local!

So we just blogged about our new AI skin on the Oddcast blog.  I'm so impressed, b/c when I just asked him where he lives, he answered and returned the question.

I answered "New York City."

He responded, "Which borough?"

I'm proud to say that Oddcast is hiring local avatars who know their way around NYC!

 

Technorati tags: avatars, AI

Bicycles do not fit with the kind of image New York Sports Club is trying to project... WTF?

It is beautiful out in New York City today...  currently 58 and expected to get up to 67.  It will probably be 22 by Monday, but what can you do.

Anyway, I biked in this morning and made my usual stop at the gym first, to workout and and cleanup.   The NYSC on 35th and Madison, unlike the other ones I've been to, has no poles in front of it... no parking meter, streetlamp... anything.  The only place to lock my bike is on the corner of 36th against the walk/don't walk sign... which is a little ways down.  I'm not totally comfortable with that, and so I asked at the gym about a place to put it inside.

So, the woman at the desk said that I couldn't bring it in because they couldn't be responsible.  I wasn't asking for that...  I just felt safer if it was inside.  And, actually, if they had a bike rack inside, and someone came in with some clippers, I'd imagine she'd at least call the cops or something, just to be nice.  She suggested I talk to the manager.

The manager said there were some places around the corner, which of course, defeats the purpose.  He also said they tried to get the city to put in some bike racks across the street, but they didn't get anywhere.  "What about a rack in the club here?"   The club has a double entrence and in between the inner and outer doors, there's a perfect space for a small bike rack.

This is where it gets ridiculous. 

"Oh, we can't have that because this is a high visability club."

I knew what he meant, but I just wanted to get him to say it.

"High visability?"

"Well, it's a nice location that a lot of people come to so we can't go messing it up with a bunch of bikes that people can see."

"Umm...  doesn't biking sort of fit with the whole gym concept?  You know...  exercise.  Just seems to me a gym, of all places, should be bike friendly?"

"I see how that might make sense, but I don't think that's something we're going to do here."

The ironic thing is that, every year, New York Sports Club sponsors a team in the Five Borough Bike Tour. 

They're all about biking, so long as it's not near one of their clubs, because bikes are aestheticly displeasing.  Let me tell you, bikes are pretty far down the list of aestheticly displeasing things I've seen at the gym...   I wish they would ban the hairy naked guy that towels off next to me with one foot up on the bench. 

links for 2006-11-09

• Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Thoughts on Community || November || 2006
  (tags: community socialnetworking postonmelater)
• Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Sharing || November || 2006
  (tags: sharing, socialnetworking)
• Paid Search Has Only Slight Edge in Conversion Rates over Organic Search, According to New WebSideStory Study
  (tags: marketing onlinemarketing conversion search)

Virtual Sales or Virtual Advertising?

Soon, you'll be able to buy Coke in Cyworld.

Good for Cyworld, but is it good for Coke?

Now that I'm in the virtual biz, I've been thinking a lot about the promise of virtual goods.

It's certainly a very attractive idea...   put something up there that cost you peanuts to create, get lots of people to buy it, and voila....  99% margains.

But let's think about it for the brand.   Cyworld has 20 million users worldwide.  Let's say that half of these are active users, as oppossed to people like me that check out a lot of stuff and come back to very little.

Also, let's say that they could get 3% conversion rates on the Coke bottle, which even then is very generous, because not all of these people are active users.   

So, that's 300,000 Cokes.  Now, unlike regular Coke, you only need to buy one digital Coke, assuming the technology isn't there for you to drink it and need another.   300,000 virtual Cokes at what?   Fifty cents?   $150,000 in revenue for Coke plus the branding awareness within a closed network.

For a company that made $23 billion in revenue in 2005, I don't really think that's going to move the needle.

What if, instead of trying to sell these things, they paid Cyworld that money at a $10 CPM to put Coke vending machines in Cyworld for free. 

That would be 15,000,000 impressions of Coke among a lot more than 150k users.

Personally, I think Coke would benefit more by spending the money to push (or have users pull for free) their way into these virtual worlds than trying to get into the business of selling virtual goods.  Coke's business is to sell real drinkable soda, not 1's and 0's.   If you're a brand thinking of selling virtual stuff, I think you're going to be sort of underwhelmed with the results compared to the buzz you could generate by freeing up your brands within these virtual spaces and letting them play.

links for 2006-11-08

• FeedBurner - Feed 101
  (tags: fordhamclass rss)

Radar Love: Newsgator Go!

"When I get lonely, and I'm sure I've had enough
She sends her comfort, comin' in from above
Don't need no radio at all
We've got a thing that's called radar love
We’ve got a line in the sky, radar love"

I just installed Newsgator Go! on my Pocket PC-6700 and I love it.  I had been falling behind a bit in my feed consumption and I definitely caught up this morning.   I sync on my walk to the subway, read underground, and sync up again so that the web version knows which posts I've read.  Very easy... very fast.

I do have a couple of feature requests, though:

• When I'm done reading posts in a feed, I can hit "Mark all" with a thumb button, but then I have to it OK in the corner to close out of a feed.  I want a "Mark all and close" or a "next feed" button. 
• I'd like to sort my feeds (and this is Newsgator-wide) by number of unread posts.
• Clipping doesn't really do anything for me.  Its an extra step.  I clip stuff, then I have to go back to the web to either tag it in del.icio.us or blog about it or get rid of it.  I'd love to tag and/or blog about it right from my phone. 

Do you brush your teeth on the way to class?: Always being ready for luck

When I was in college, my roommate and I got into a discussion about brushing our teeth before we walked across campus for class, whether we even needed to.

In our stupid male brains, we thought there was some chance, no matter how remote, that someone might want to makeout with us on the way...    I mean, it was highly unlikely, but what if that hot girl in our English class caught up to one of us and just couldn't resist herself from planting one?  Hey, you never know.

But if it ever did happen, wouldn't you want to have the freshest breath possible?  How awful would it be if she pulled back because she tasted garlic from your lunchtime chicken roll.   The small incremental cost of brushing our teeth far outweighed the huge, but infintessimally unlikely, downside of that awkward moment.

That's what I think about when I manage my digital self.  You might think it's sort of unlikely that anyone might want to hire you from your blog, Facebook profile, etc...  but I just encountered a situation the other day where a friend's personal blog actually went a long way to helping her connect with her potential employer, b/c of shared music tastes and just her overall familiarity with technology.

So, if you ha