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Mets up, Yanks down... See how everything evens out for me?
The Mets are in first and the Yanks are in last.
Really, would you have it any other way?
The Yanks have already had nine different pitchers start games, including Darrel Rasner, Jeff Karstans, and Chase Wright.
haha
(Sorry.)
You know what the best part of this is? The Yankee MVP and frankly, the MVP of the whole baseball universe was A-Rod. He's batting .355 with 14HR and 35 RBI after 23 games. In 1968, I think that might have qualified for the Triple Crown.
Everyone makes such a big deal about Captain Derek Jeter, but for my money, A-Rod is the best shortstop on the team. Captain Derek wouldn't come to A-Rod's side last year when Rodriguez was struggling and he added to preseason controversy by saying a chilly "We get along on the field" or some garbage like that. Derek, I think it's time for you to embrace the guy who is carrying your patchwork overpaid team on his shoulders.
Jeez... How's that Kris Benson trade looking now? John Maine is 4-0 with a 1.35ERA. In fact, the Mets have a team ERA of 2.74.
No Bradford? No problem. Submariner Joe Smith hasn't given up a run yet.
Ya gotta believe... in April.
April 30, 2007 in Baseball and Other Sports | Comments (3) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-28
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Hey... I love three blocks down from here and pass this house everytime I walk to the train!
April 28, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Cool NYC Apartment for Sale
No, not mine... this place belongs to a friend. Tell him I sent you...
April 27, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Twitter Strikes Again
So last night, I had a late meeting and I wound up in Union Square at 10PM having not quite eaten yet. I really don't like eating alone and so I figured I'd just give Twitter a shot.
Me: Anyone hungry near union sq?
Avi Karnani, two minutes later: I'm walking back from the office, through union sq right now actually, looking for food.
The most bizzare thing is that its the second time that Avi and I have met up this way... and it's the only two times we've met. We meant to try to connect at SXSW and it didn't happen... but not too long after, I twittered that I was going to a nextNY bar outing and he just happened to be in the area. I bumped into him in the bar, only to find out later that it was my Twitter that brought him there.
I think the key to Twitter's geolocation capability is the broadcast model and its simplicity. I didn't need to have GPS going or post cross streets or anything... and Avi didn't need to identify his location either. Twitter doesn't know the difference between "union sq" and "peanut butter" but an actual human in NYC clearly knew where I was.
Twitter still needs to figure out group features and ways to market this to localized groups of people, which this works best for, but b/c I'm lucky enough to have lots of techy friends using it in the same area, I'm finding it very useful.
April 27, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-27
April 27, 2007 | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Web 2.0 LolCat
Andrew made this based on #5 of the Web 2.0 Sucks List... Hilarious! I love LolCats.
April 26, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextNY Social this Friday at Coppersmith's
If you're looking to meet up with other up and comers in the NYC digital media and tech scene, drop by Coppersmith's after work this Friday.
April 27th… Coppersmith’s 6PM-9PM
793 9th Avenue (bet 52nd/53rd).
Tell us to look for you by RSVPing here.
April 26, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-26
April 26, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Top Ten Reasons Why Web 2.0 Sucks
- The finger pointing culture of fear will always dominate a culture of openness. Media
thrives on taking people down and creating a general fear of the worst
possible outcome. Whether it's trying enact anti-MySpace laws or
firing everyone who says a dirty word or two, until we hold our noses
and fully embrace freedom of expression in this country, we're going to
hold back the real potential of the internet as a medium of
conversation and open exchange. Everyone will be too scared to publish
anything thought provoking for fear of being stoned by glass house
dwellers.
- The thinking, not just the building, has gotten small and lightweight... Too many people building features, not applications, or, gasp, companies. People are confusing design with innovation. Just because you add AJAX and rounded boxes to something does mean you have innovated.
- Web 2.0 hasn't even come close to breaking open the carrier choked mobile world. E-mail and WAP? That's what I'm paying unlimited data for? Come on. We can do better than this.
- Web 2.0 is a conversational vacuum. I'll prove it. Unless you live in the Valley, walk outside your door and try to find a Twitter user... You've got six hours. Go. Trust me, we're talking to ourselves. (Don't get me wrong... I really like Twitter... We just need to remind ourselves about how close to the edge we all are out here.)
- Spelling and grammr (beta) have gone to hell in a handbasket. I'm in ur domainz, droppin' ur vowelz.
- M&A Wack-a-mole stopping innovation in its tracks... Dodgeball, del.icio.us, MyBlogLog... Some of the most innovative startups have been swallowed into the black holes of big companies, abruptly halting their innovation paths. Unless we get some more robust business models, some more risk seeking entrepreneurs, maybe a real IPO market, most of Web 2.0 is going to wind up becoming the corporate walking dead of long forgotten or poorly understood acquisitions. Consumers suffer when entrepreneurs won't make a go of it on their own and make a bigger impact on their online experience. (Pleasant exceptions being the Office-like apps at Google...)
- Content licensing is still a bottleneck. Web 2.0 is all about people and sharing, two things that music and video content owners don't seem to be big fans of. For now, much of what we share is illegal or user generated. Freely shareable stuff probably makes up about 2% of the millions of hours of content ever created professionally. I'd like to blog a clip from the A-Team... Not only can I not access it easily, I can't clip it easily, and I sure as hell can't publish it legally. Yet, no one current monetizes it on the web, so it just sits and collects digital dust.
- The really juicy data will always remain locked up... I'd very much like to be able to share my purchases, particularly restaurants, at my own discretion. Of course, that data is at Mastercard, and I think I'll start wearing "I love the RIAA" shirts before Mastercard starts creating personal RSS feeds or APIs for users to take their own financial data to various applications. The same with my credit history. I need to sign up for lots of junk mail to get a credit report... and don't even get me started on my own medical history.
- A lot of powerful people don't participate. How many VC's out there fund widget companies without having a blog or a MySpace profile? Any Sony bloggers out there? What about brand managers that want to do Second Life campaigns without ever having been inside. How about my elected representatives? They get out there and kiss babies during election time, but how many blogging elected officials are there? (And not watered down campaign blogs... actual blogs written by the actual people.) We could do great things if we weren't so segregated into a small group of people punch drunk on Kool Aid and a great deal of people who've never even heard of Kool Aid.
- MySpace is the most popular social network. Seriously, is this the best we can do? Spam, hacking, viruses, one song at a time, and no developer network or API? Facebook is such a better product, but it's really pretty limited as a self expression tool. Plus, neither really comes close to being able to be my digital home on the web as much as my blog is.
April 25, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (34) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
This fucking blog will now be blocked by ScanSafe
Think of ScanSafe as a kind of enterprise NetNanny for Web 2.0. They just came out with a report that paints the blog world as a seedy hangout for foul-mouthed pornmongers.
"ScanSafe's Monthly "Global Threat Report" for March 2007 says that up to 80 percent of blogs host offensive content, ranging from "adult language" to pornographic images. The company suggests that businesses should be aggressive about preventing users from accessing some or all of this material. And of course, they'd hope that you'd use their products to do so. ScanSafe says that it discovered the "offensive" nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers."
I don't think professional people need a piece of technology to prevent them from seeing a dirty word here and there. If your employees are accessing truly inappropriate content at work, perhaps you should beef up your screening not in the web browser, but in your HR department. Just a thought...
April 25, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-25
April 25, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
iPod Killed the Radio Star
It's really interesting to see how Arbitron is positioning the statistics on digital radio it just came out with, specific to the effect of portable media devices.
So here's the first stat:
Fewer than one in ten report less over-the-air radio listening specifically due to time spent with their iPod/portable MP3 player.
Phew! Ok radio execs... you can all rest easy and breath a collective sigh of relief... oh... wait...
While 70 percent of Americans age 12 and older do not own an iPod/portable MP3 player, and an additional 15 percent report the device has had no impact on radio listening, nine percent say they are listening to less over-the-air radio... Radio sees the most impact on listening from iPod/digital audio player owners age 12-24.
Ok, hold on a sec. So, if I'm reading this correctly, 30% of the people who own portable devices are listening to the radio less, and that impact is largest among the 12-24 crowd?
Well, that's kind of a different animal isn't it? What happens when these 12-24 year olds grow up and get replaced by another generation listening to the radio less?
To me, this represents a clear trend that should make radio execs worry.
Terrestrial radio is that it isn't net native, and frankly, neither is the iPod. In other words, neither really takes advantage of all the things the web enables you to do... discover music, connect to others with the same interest, observe, remember, and publish your own interests. That's what creates the opportunity for services like last.fm.
The big advantage that the iPod/iTunes combo has is that iTunes gets right in the stream of your consumption with monetization. You're listening on iTunes, you want more music, and its just a click away. Have you ever heard a song on the radio and wanted to own it. It's nearly impossible. You either need to wait for the DJ to come on to tell you what was playing or you start playing "guess that tune" with your friends. Clearly, radio needs a compelling reason to bring you to their site to do more than just listen to a webcast... There's a really interesting opportunity for radio stations to leverage the brand they have created on air, the personalities they promote, and their ability to monetize music to encourage music related engagement on their sites... but what does that look like?
I'd be interested to hear from anyone involved with the broadcast radio industry on this.
April 24, 2007 in Music | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-24
April 24, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Green NYC?
So Mayor Mike is trying to get the city to go green by instituting the same kind of anti-congestion tax that is currently in place in London, where cars are charged for entrance into the heart of the city during peak hours.
Why?
Try driving in the city during rush hour. That's why.
Hey, I'm a car owner in the city and I'm the first one to say that this is a great idea. We all need to be using public transportation more... cars are bad for the environment... and the city is too crowded. Some people are saying that this tax will hit the working class, but you know what? The working class takes the subway. The only people I know who drive into the city during rush hour are the rich suburbanites. Stand outside a midtown parking lot during rush hour in the morning and look at the cars... they're Porches, Mercedes, etc... No family Trucksters here. I'm all for it. Bike to work!
Also, friends of mine who work for various political campaigns are saying on good authority that Bloomberg has decided to run for President in 2008. I hope so. I love anti-politicians, and he's not some old money rich guy... he's an entrepreneur... a self made guy. What he lacks in personality, he makes up for in business savvy and I think its about time someone starts running this country with a little logic and practicality. I'd vote for him.
April 23, 2007 in Politics | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Doritos Fight... Killer Online Advergame
This new Fight for the Flavor Campaign from Doritos has a fantastic two-player boxing game with bags of Doritos.
Check it out and feel free to challenge me... I'm ceonyc.
Does anyone know who built this? What agency?
April 23, 2007 in MeVertising | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Kill Them with Kindness
I had an interesting encounter Saturday night. I ran into friend of mine that I was once closer to, but had long since told me that they didn't have enough time to still be my friend. This person was at an alumni event.
When I saw her, I came up to her, gave her a big hug and asked about her life and what she was up to and shared my stories. She had broken up with a boyfriend and I told her that she'd meet the right person someday.
At one point, she stopped me and said, "Why are you being so nice to me?"
She knew she ditched me as a friend and she couldn't figure out why I was bothering to see how she was. I just said simply, "What would be the point of being any other way?"
I wound up driving her and her friend back to Queens... it was a beautiful night and I had the top down. She was pretty worse for wear by the end of the night and I really didn't want our mutual friend to have to deal with dragging her around the subway. Turns out that she lost her keys and I even had to turn around after driving 8 blocks away to help her look for them in the car and make sure she was ok.
Why bother? Why not just ignore this person and let any negative feelings I had for them just fester...
And incredibly smart person summed this up better than I could:
"I just don't see the point in wasting time or energy on
maintaining -- actively nurturing, in most cases -- sustained negativity
toward someone or about something. It mostly harms YOU, makes YOU less
happy, makes YOUR whole emotional world smaller, narrower, less enjoyable...
and it definitely doesn't, as you point out, do anything to inspire better
treatment from others either."
The fact that this former friend probably woke up maybe realizing that she had lost a good guy as a friend and probably didn't deserve the concern I showed her as a friend the night before is surely much more effective than whatever reaction she might have had to a dirty look or me telling her off.
And frankly, it felt very good to be the good person. Not the bigger person, but just the good person all around.
April 23, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Add my PPC-6700 to Charlie's list of things lost, stolen, or broken
Ok, since I joined USV in February 2005, I've...
Broken two Treo 650's.
Had a Canon S500 stolen.
Dropped a Fisher C-1 in the Hudson River.
Had my bike stolen.
Had my car roof and one tire slashed.
Had a power source blow out on my new computer HP Media Center.
Finally had my old computer die out on me.
Lost my baseball glove.
Had my first PPC 6700's USB port break, rendering it unchargable.
Well, today, add my replacement PPC 6700 to that list. It was stolen, along with several other phones of ZogSports football players, from Riverbank State Park on 138th/Riverside Drive. When I went back to tell the ref, she already had two or three other phones on her list. Later on, I called my phone, and some guy picks up and says he wants 100 bucks for the phone back. Right, like I'm going back up to 138th street with a 100 bucks cash at night to buy my own phone back from a guy who won't just return it. I told him to drop it off at the police station, leave his contact info, and I'll make sure he gets a $100 reward. He wasn't up for that, and so I wasn't up for showing up to get my phone. I'll talk the loss, thanks.
So, tomorrow, I'll be going back to my slightly glued together Treo 650, quite unhappily.
April 22, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-21
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That's hot. :)
April 21, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Oddcast Office E-mail Hilarity
Officewide e-mail from our office manager...
From: Deborah L. [mailto:name@oddcast.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 12:05 PM
To: nyoffice@oddcast.com
Subject: Cookies in the kitchen :)
Response from our CFO re: someone on her staff...
From: Gally P. [mailto:name@oddcast.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 12:24 PM
To: 'Deborah L.'; nyoffice@oddcast.com
Subject: RE: Cookies in the kitchen :)
Except for the Peanut Butter one, which is in Riv
________________________________________
April 20, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Alternate Side...Time to Move the Car
April 20, 2007 | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-20
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To Air or Not to Air: The Cho Multimedia Manifesto
In 1975, Squeaky Fromme tried to assassinate Gerald Ford. A Manson follower, she wanted to give old Charlie the opportunity to testify at her trial and spread his message to the world, knowing that it would be covered by the global media community.
If only she had a digital camera and the address of NBC... that would have made mass distribution of hate much easier.
"After much debate", NBC decided to run clips (of course, spread out over time to get ratings) of the Virginia Tech killer's "Multimedia Manifesto" on national and online broadcasts.
Right... As if there was even a chance that NBC wouldn't have posted as much of this "news" as possible. The twisted reality of human nature is that I'm sure NBC execs can't help but feel a just a little bit lucky it was them that got the video, not Fox, or *gasp* YouTube. (We all probably would have if we worked there, despite the obviously tragic nature of the events.) Score one for the peacock. Because whereas 30 unfortunate students at VT accidently stepped on a landmine, NBC accidently fell into a goldmine.
Explain this logic to me. If NBC Sports covered a baseball or football game, and someone ran out onto the field naked, they would go out of their way not to record the idiot so as not to encourage that kind of behavior.
Yet, the ravings of a lunatic who clearly references the Columbine killers by name that he learned, that we all learned, through the media... that goes right up into the ether for mass consumption.
How can we justify the airing of this video as news? Is this informative? It's hard to argue that this won't encourage other troubled kids looking to lash out against the world.
Kill as many people as you can, send the video to NBC, and become an insta-martyr. It's that simple.
This is becoming a multimedia car-accident in the worst way... and onlookers of car accidents often get into accidents of their own as they watch.
Does the media encourage people to kill? No... but does the behavior of the media and borderline glorification of killers 'cause people to want to make a bigger splash--to go out in a blaze of glory killing off as many people as possible... I gotta say its an awfully compelling argument.
Isn't this kind of hate poisoning our airwaves worse than what Imus said... or hey, at least as bad?
This kid committed this act knowing full well the scope of media attention this would draw. He didn't kill 30 people out of blind rage. He did it as a calculated statement to the world that he knew we'd all jump at the chance to broadcast. It's not just NBC. It's all of us. Everyone who sticks to NBC over the next few days to see more clips. Everyone, including myself, who publishes about it. We are a media machine and Cho Seung-Hui is playing us like a violin.
April 19, 2007 in Politics | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-19
April 19, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I just really hate the phone...
I had two conversations today with really fantastic and interesting people. (No, I'm not buttering them up...I really think that.) One of them took place in person over breakfast and the other was on the phone at the end of the day. My behavior during each couldn't have been any more different. In person, I'd like to think I have a clear train of thought, I'm focused, responsive. Visual communication, to me, represents a safe set of boundries... you can't really go wandering off phyisically or mentally because you are bound by not only the propreity of locking up with someone face to face, but by the constraints of real observation. There is a face in front of you...its a constant throughout your conversation and it acts as an anchor. A good chunk of your brain focuses on that face and nothing else. On the phone, you are cast off into the churning sea of the day's images and soundbites...unteathered by an opposing face, free to drift. I feel like I make less sense when I can't look at a face. My mouth is moving, but I hear myself drowning. Someone throw me an eyebrow or a chin! Anything to hold me in place! Text is fine. I've always loved text. Even as far back as Prodigy chat rooms, I always found text to be a focused and expressive form of communication. There are words on the screen and I'm supposed to look at them. It's like a track...one of those hand trigger car racing games. Very easy to play as long as you don't go too fast. So, if you ever ask to get on the phone with me, just know that you're probably going to get the short end of the stick in terms of all the possible ways to communicate with me.
April 17, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
MySpace Add Friends from Your Contacts Finally Working
Because more friends make us feel more loved... Finally, you can now upload your webmail contacts to find all those people who previously didn't want to admit to having a MySpace profile.
Sah-weet.... stalker features.
However, it's painfully slow... I mean, like Friendster 2004 slow.
April 17, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Who are you people? Part 45
One question I ask every now and then on this blog is, "Who are all you people?"
Through a combination of reporting improvements and overall growth, my subscriber count now stands at 1679... and, I probably know about 100 people that I think subscribe... Other than that, the other 1500 or so of you are anyone's guess.
I find myself asking this question even more with Twitter and MyBlogLog. Little heads pop up on my blog and people twitterfriend me and I have no clue who they are, how they got here, or why they read.
So, as I've done in the past, if you are a new reader and you're pretty sure I don't know you, feel free to introduce yourself to me and everyone else in the comments.
April 17, 2007 in The Blogosphere | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms... Which is the easiest to buy? Ask Cho Seung-Hui...
The interweb did a fantastic job of fingering the wrong killer yesterday in the tragic events at Virginia Tech, due in much part to another Asian VT student's web presence containing photos and notes about guns. For a day, he became the Richard Jewell of this incident and yesterday, the unfortunate victim turned gun lobbyist issued the following statement:
"I will be available for interview by a news agency to clear my name, talk about the experience, and give my opinion on how the situation could have turned out better if other students were allowed to be armed."
Right... that's what would have made this situation better: More guns. I hope no one interviews this guy, because I'd rather not have his 15 minutes of fame remixed and rebroadcast everywhere if he's going to be all gun crazy. Because, really, the Walther .22-caliber semi-automatic and a 9 mm Glock that made their appearence weren't really enough. These guns apparently had the serial numbers etched off, meaning that they were probably not purchased at the local Walmart. Its this kind of thinking that makes people want to arm passengers on planes to fight terrorism, too. A gun for everyone and no one will get shot, right?
How about making it impossible to get a gun in the first place? Don't stats show that most gun deaths are either innocent people or victims of accidents, and not intruders/attackers?
Clearly, this guy had some major issues... and more so than anyone, he himself is to blame... not the school who was taken by surprise as any other school would have...not the media... not violent video games... but the one thing that sticks out in my head is that it is absolutely too damn easy to get a gun in this country.
They should make a law that if you sell a gun to someone and that person uses it to shoot someone, you can get charged as an accessory to that crime... That would lead to some real careful background checking, I think.
April 17, 2007 in Politics | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-17
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Hold the phone... WeeWorld Survey Cracks the Avatar Code: Stats reveal why Gen Y likes avatars
"82% of respondents noted having an avatar “because it is fun,” while 66% also noted a key driver was “because it’s a cartoon version of myself""
Man... that's just so amazingly insightful... People like avatars because they are fun and because they are cartoon versions of themselves. Wow.
I mean... wow.
I gotta hand it to the WeeWorld folks... the survey they just released really sheds some light on why people like avatars. And here we were making avatars that were NOT fun and ones that looked like OTHER people. Well, shit... now we've got to push back this week's Voki launch and rebuild the whole damn thing from scratch. At least we saved ourselves from a lot of embarrassment.
Also discovered in this survey...
- 100% of WeeWorld users also use the internet.
- WeeWorld users win coin flips about 50% of the time.
- 0% of WeeWorld users are time-travelers.
- 100% of WeeWorld users have answered survey questions before.
I guess that's what you do when you have $15 million sitting in the bank... you pay PR firms to makeup surveys.
Next week: WeeWorld surveys its users on whether or not they like cheese.
April 16, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Gettin' Outta Dodge: Crowley Leaves Google
If you're a young entrepreneur tempted to get bought by a big company because you think it will be a safe, supporting place to help nuture your idea, talk to Dennis Crowley:
"It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us..."
Dennis had hinted about his departure back at SXSW and I'm sure the growth of Twitter didn't help make him feel any better about being stuck in a place that wasn't helping Dodgeball innovate.
I think it's fair to say that if you get your startup bought by someone, you should pretty much consider it to be the end of innovation and, if nothing else, the beginning of monetization. That's why I hope Ev and Biz take an investment from a VC for Twitter (I hear there's a great VC firm in NYC, btw...) and get enough resources to help it really grow. Let it ride boys... because no one likes wondering what coulda been from inside a big corporate cube.
April 16, 2007 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-16
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Oooh...I like the little emo kid characters on her shirt... we need to make those
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hmm... ok... made some changes... Raleigh axed... plus now I gotta figure out where I want to start from to take into consideration my cousin's Boston wedding on 6/30
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Take 3
April 16, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Free California rolls...woo
Gotta love that...
April 15, 2007 | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-15
April 15, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-14
April 14, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
OMG, They're up to Wrestlemania 23??
Jeez...I remember 3. Is Capt'n Lou still alive? And why is Trump even on this billboard?
April 13, 2007 | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Hittin' the Road...
Just wanted to put it out there... Plans are in the works for a cross country trip the first two weeks of July. No, I probably won't be driving the 'Stang... one because I don't want to put her through that, and two because I get such crappy gas mileage. :) Also, I plan on coming back and I'm going to just make this a one way drive. So, I'll probably just be running a rental car into the ground instead.
So, if anyone has any suggestions on routes, stops, etc... please feel free to tag them for me.
April 13, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (3) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextNY Members: Now that's some steady growth
I don't even think I could draw a line straighter than this... Here's the growth of nextNY over the last year+. We started out with 79 interested members, and we're at about 780 at the moment.
April 13, 2007 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
What's the Standard?
"Every other day
Another bitch another drop"
- This is Why I'm Hot - MIMS (#1 Rap Song in America This Week)
“... A victory for public decency. No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation.”
- Rev. Jesse Jackson on the firing of Don Imus
"When it come down to these hoez
I dont love em....
...And anything fine im bag-gin it
And if she got a man, I dont care...
...Now the moral of the story is cuff yo chick"
- I'm a Flirt - R. Kelly (#2 Rap Song in America)
"...We cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism."
- Rev. Al Sharpton commenting on the Imus Situation
I just want to know what's ok to say and when... that's all...
April 13, 2007 in Politics | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-12
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Wow... I'm The Guy. :)
April 12, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Reprise Bought by Interpublic
Reprise Media just got bought by Interpublic. That's really fantastic and I can't say enough about Pete and Josh and the rest of the Reprise folks. They really know their market and obviously Interpublic recognized this. There are a lot of players in the SEO space, but few as sophisticated and thoughtful about their business as Reprise.
Good luck with Phase 2 and congrats!
April 11, 2007 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Somebody wake Friendster up... Best opportunity ever as MySpace blocks Photobucket Video
I'll admit it. I have Friendster nostalgia. It is the first social network I started using, back in 2003, and admittedly, I went on several Friendster dates. :)
But then, using it was like watching paint dry... it folded under its own weight, and got swamped by MySpace's speed and flexibility.
But the thing is, we may have forgotten Friendster, but few of us deleted our profiles on it. Friendster is still a huge social network... lying dormant... waiting.
Somewhere, there's a magic spell or a feature that will awaken the beast so that people find a reason to go back to it. Today, NewsCorp may have uttered the first words of that incantation by blocking Photobucket videos.
If I was at Friendster, I would put the PR and marketing pedal to the floor and announce support for Photobucket videos and play the "NewsCorp is big and evil" card to the max. Go scrape up a couple of viral videos, too.... whatever it takes. It's a chance to steal some thunder and capitalize on users' continued frustration with MySpace's control tactics on a site that gets more and more spammy everyday.
And while we're on the "if I was at Friendster" subject, it's pretty obvious to me that Friendster, in its current condition isn't really going to make an attractive purchase to anyone.... so why then, do they insist on maximizing revenue by making the site uncomfortably commercial? They're mixing True dating site profiles in with regular search results and Google Adsense ads wind up in the must awkward of places. It's a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. How much revenue could they possibly generate from their current userbase? Even if they do manage to break even, who would want to buy a barely profitable has-been?
Strip out the ads, get some killer features in there, and go on the marketing offensive... because now is the time to get in front of the "MySpace sucks" parade and lead it.
April 11, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-11
April 11, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
To Beta or Not To Beta
So here's a question...
Voki launches next Wednesday and the question came up... Beta logo or no?
Here are three good reasons for it and three reasons against it, but I'd love to hear your feedback.
For:
- The product is new and sure to have a few bugs and require some immediate changes. The "Beta" label lets people know that they're using the first public version and a few things might need to get updated/fixed... sets expectations.
- The idea of a perpetual beta is a good philosophy, because it implies continuous development.
- Says that we're not done and expect more functionality in the m0nths to come.
Against:
- "Beta" isn't really accurate. If it is public and anyone can use it, its not really your Beta... its your product. Public Beta is a contradiction in terms.
- Beta isn't an excuse and shouldn't be used as one. If something doesn't work, you fix it as soon as possible. You always innovate with new features... and labeling something a beta doesn't get you off the hook for anything, let alone any sympathy from users.
- Beta is sort of a passe terminology... almost a little bit of a cliche now... totally overused by Web 2.0
What say you blog readers? To beta or not to beta?
April 11, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (8) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Future of Apple, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft...
Hey Folks...
I'm going to be talking to my class tonight about the future of some of the more visible technology companies... and how each one seems to be encroaching on the spaces of the others... Google building office apps, Microsoft releasing consumer electronics, Apple moving into TV, Yahoo!... well... where does Yahoo! want to go anyway? Remember when AOL was on this list, too? Is it a Google and Apple world? Is Microsoft really dead? What about Nintendo backing its way on the web through its Wii browser?
Here are what I see as the most interesting questions:
- How far will Google go with its office app strategy... and.. well, why?
- Will Google be successful with other types of media advertising, like TV and radio?
- How will Yahoo! integrate all of the social apps it bought and will they make another run at a social network like Facebook? What are they trying to build?
- Will Apple control all my access to media?
- Will Apple ever gain a major foothold on the web? Does the fact that they don't seem interested in it mean that the web isn't the place for mainstream rich media consumption? What does that say about YouTube?
- Where does Microsoft fit into all this? How long can their OS and applications business survive in a world of Google and open source?
- Who else can be a major player of such size and scope? Sony? What about the media companies? AOL? IAC? NewsCorp?
- Does eBay become the phone company?
- What about Amazon?
It should make for an interesting discussion and I'd like to provide some further post-class reading... If anyone knows of any great "Future of..." posts from reputable sources, I'd love to hear what the thought leaders are saying about the direction of the big guys. I'd be very appreciative if anyone could post links in either the comments or tag something for:ceonyc. Thanks... I'll follow up with another post about the best ones that came in.
April 10, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-10
April 10, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Incubate This!
There is lots of debate as to what the bottlenecks for innovation are in NYC. Space. Cost. Money. Professional services with startup knowhow... And one approach at solving this is the incubator.
Ahhh, yes... the incubator.
Because there's nothing better than a machine that grows babies, chickens, and startups.
But seriously, what exactly does an incubator do and where are they in NYC?
One thing that really struck me was that, when I was at USV, incubators didn't seem to get prominent attention in the startup world. I found them tough to locate and I wasn't always aware of what was going on in them.
I'm curious about people's experiences with incubators and if there isn't something that can be done to elevate awareness about them here in NYC.
Here are a few that I know of, but would like to know more about:
NYSIA Incubator
NYU Stern Incubator
Polytechnic Incubator
Second Century (Pace)
Perhaps it is worth doing some kind of nextNY event where reps from all the incubators can get together and just tell people what they're all about?
If you've been involved with one of these, you should join nextNY, b/c we're a group that really wants to know about these sorts of things and could be where you get your future tenants.
April 9, 2007 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Joy the Dog
I'm pretty sure Joy isn't a purebred Bichon and that the rents got hosed... but they love her anyway. She's not so bright, though, but I love her ,too.
April 8, 2007 | Comments (3) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Easter Bunny Hates You
Seriously, he does...
April 8, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Lacuna Coil Rocks Roseland
Last night, I went to the Jaegermeister Tour at Roseland to see Lacuna Coil... I discovered them last year on last.fm and they've quickly become one of my favorite bands. They're a bit like Evanescence, with a powerful lead female singer in Christina Scabbia. Great show, but they were unfortunately followed up by Shadows Fall, which was just a bunch of noise. Total crap.
Anyway... I took a few videos of Lacuna Coil... here you go:
April 7, 2007 in Music | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-07
April 7, 2007 | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-06
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Trashing someone with my blog... and its encouraged?? This is too easy.
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I don't think I want to see what's on the bottom of the Hudson...
April 6, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
3-0 Baby!
Who said our pitching has issues... USS Maine 1-hit the Cards through 7 strong... Bye bye Birds!
April 5, 2007 in Baseball and Other Sports | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
This is the end of the beginning... Social gets built into the browser
New technology becomes a commodity over time. That's just the way it works.
Someone comes out with a new feature, than everyone copies it, then it just becomes a standard. That's good for everyone, except the people who made businesses based on those new features (cough... Tivo... cough cough).
Mozilla's Project Coop may just be the beginning of "social" being built further down in the stack... a layer more deeply integrated into how we experience the web. If the web is the operating system, that sort of makes the browser part of the "hardware" to me... It's really exciting and something I'll be tracking more closely, b/c I certainly can't depend on all of those blogs and social networks to somehow come together on a single identity standard or FOAF-like format.
April 4, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I'm not smarter than you... I've just downloaded more crap and given my universal username and password to more websites than you
It was a running joke when I was at Union Square Ventures that my job was to download as much rogue software to my laptop as possible. I'm a user... first and foremost. When we saw deals, my first question was, "When can I start using it?
Over the last few years, I've been in a fantastic position, both as a blogger, a VC analyst, a connector in nextNY and a product manager, to try and really get my hands dirty with so much social media... very much like getting the opportunity to live in another country and get immersed in the language. You can take Spanish classes all you want, but spend six months in Spain and you'll be more than just fluent... you may even start to think a few thoughts in Spanish.
So when Greg Verdino wrote about how social marketers need to get their hands dirty to understand this stuff, he couldn't be more on point:
"My point isn't that I know more than they do. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. My point is that everyone in this business owes it to themselves (not to mention their clients) to experience social media firsthand. It is only by rolling up your sleeves and getting involved with these channels as a consumer (even as a power user) that you can truly understand how to leverage them (and tap the active communities that use them) for marketing. You can't be a passionate user of everything (who has time for that?) but I firmly believe that you do need to at least try any new form of media that you plan to recommend to your clients. The list of services I've tried is as long as my arm -- I haven't loved every one of them but at least I can look my clients in the eyes and give them my personal perspectives on them all."
What's most difficult to do is to converse with people who haven't gotten their hands dirty and attempt to debate the right course of action when marketing or building products for these spaces.
This is especially true in design, where many people are more focused on making something look fantastic versus being functional--a typical approach by someone who doesn't actually use an application.
I know I can never speak for every user... and every user is different... but I can see, from the inside, what people are doing in this spaces and within these applications. I talk to them and ask them why. Why are you in this social network versus another? How often do you go to it?
It's a little bit like "management by walking around". It's very undervalued, but its important to get out of your office and walk around on the factory floor once in a while to truly get a feel for how things are going on the line.
I think marketing & PR firms, VC firms, anyone who has any kind of business interest whatsover in social media needs to mandate that the decision makers on your staff, right on up to the top, all "walk the floor". Maybe Fridays should be "social media days" where the whole office plays in MySpace, Second Life, blogs, plays World of Warcraft, Twitters, etc... Like Google's 20% time. Take some Flickr photos, poke some people in Facebook... (virtual pokes only, please)... Hell, go nuts and create a few speaking stand-up comedy avatars. (Shameless Oddcast pitch) The point is, "getting it" isn't a function of being smart, or having experience with other forms of media...
It's participating!
April 4, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-04-04
April 4, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Well Pitched Games, New and Secret Jamba Flavors and Gmail Spam
Hmm... maybe he is King Felix after all. 12 k's in 8 scoreless... not half bad. Better than Curt Shilling, who is not only on my fantasy team, the Jesuit Ultimatum, but he's blogging, too. Here's his pitch by pitch blog account of his subpar KC performance.
Gotta love the one comment:
"Hey Curt, you really bogged down my fantasy team man. Let’s get a better performance out there next week, maybe get some more K’s too. Atta kid."
I'm sure that's what drives Curt Shilling... fantasy stat lines.
So, yesterday, I confirmed the existence of secret Jamba Juice flavors. I leaned over the counter and quietly asked for a White Gummy Bear. They quickly jumped over to my side, throw a black bag over my head, hit me in the knees with a pipe and dragged me downstairs to a dimly lit room. After several hours of painful interrogation, they finally gave me the yummiest smoothie I've ever had there, until this morning. This morning, I noticed two new flavors in the Fruit only menu... peach and pomegranate. The pomegranate is fantastic.
Oh, and by the way... hey Gmail... when I click "report spam", that means I never ever want to get mail from that sender...ever. And shouldn't it get smarter the more I click "Report Spam". I get a bunch of Euromillions spam and "Dear Sir, please send me your bank account number" scams.
April 3, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
On Conversation
This is just a really great post about conversation by Eric Nehrlich:
When I’m talking to friends, I’m not just reciting the events of my life. I’m struggling to put them into context, figuring out the narrative that ties them together, making sense of the chain of events so that I can understand what happened. In other words, I’m constructing my self-story. By telling it to somebody else, I’m explaining it to myself, but at the same time, the feedback that I get may encourage me to modify my understanding. For instance, if I’m talking about an interaction I had with a coworker, and I explain what they did and why I thought they did it, my friends will offer alternative explanations that may better explain the events. And I modify and retcon my story to incorporate that new interpretation...
...I should also mention that such conversations aren’t entirely selfish on my part. By using my friends to help me make sense of the world, I’m promoting our ability to make sense of each other. Because they’re helping me interpret the events of my life, they gain a better understanding of how I think about the world. And their interpretations help me better understand how they make sense of the world. Plus, i can contribute my viewpoint to help them make sense of events in their world. It’s a two-way process that builds community and trust, and also increases our ability to function in a world that doesn’t always behave in an expected fashion.
I've met someone interesting recently and gotten to know them through a ton of e-mail conversation... so much so that it has us both interested in the nature of how people get to know each other and how information and story exchange works in the process of building up friendships and relationships. I really like how the second paragraph puts that function in perspective.
April 3, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Domino Effect of Confidence
Confidence is a funny thing. People say it's contagious, and I totally agree with that, particularly on sports teams. I've been on some great baseball teams when I was younger and we walked onto the field thinking, or knowing, rather, that we were going to pound out 10 or 15 runs a game. It's tough to beat that. Similarly, when things weren't going well, we had innings that we felt like we'd never get an out.
But what's also interesting about confidence is that not only does it spread, but it often has a powerful causality that may not be initially obvious.
For example... When you delegate, and someone doesn't carry out a task exactly as you would, your reaction can have some unintended results down the line. Let's say you correct them in ways that aren't qualitative, but just more along the lines of style choice. Then, the next time, they come to you for every little thing because they know you'll wind up changing it. Eventually, you'll be creating a bunch of people that can't execute, or that you don't allow to execute.
Even worse, when you don't get behind your staff and their decisions, eventually, people start going around them and checking with you on every little thing. Before you know it, all roads lead to you and you become the bottleneck.
This happened to me when I was in college. I had started a business newspaper that ran for two years, but being the perfectionist, I always wound up doing things myself if I wasn't happy with the work of the people around me. I wouldn't settle for any kind of quality dropoff when we started. What happened was that the people under me never really learned how to edit, do layout, etc... and so the paper folded when I graduated.
Plus, it's really unmotivating to a staff when they know that whatever they turn in isn't going to make the final cut anyway... that no matter what new ideas they come up with, they don't also have the power to execute them and be responsible. They fall back on their heels because they can't move forward without you.
The dominos start falling down outside of your organization as well. You send your staff out into the wild of business development and conferences, and it becomes obvious to others that you are not an empowered decision maker. You get taken less seriously and your organization gets the reputation as a slow mover.
Don't get me wrong... relying on people who don't do everything exactly the way you do or who might not be the perfectionist that you were is difficult... but sometimes, you need to let your people show you and the world what they've got, support them, and live with whatever they put out there. Otherwise, they'll never grow up and you'll find yourself the last man standing, and your college newspaper will fold. :)
April 2, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I bike through glass, nails, and razor blades...
I tagged some kind of a run flat, steelbelted James Bond bike tire system the other day and now I'm thinking I should seriously invest in that. This time, I'm on the subway again with a flat BACK tire. Goddammnit.
April 2, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
1 Down, 99 to Go... Mets Win Opener Behind Glavine
Its great when you can score 6 runs without hitting the ball hard more than once all night.
A few thoughts:
Glavine should win at least 15 games this year.... He looked real sharp, especially with the change.
Moises Alou looked pretty good.. hustling around the basepaths, taking an extra on an aggressive play.
Kind of ballsy to bring out Joe Smith in the 8th there. Talk about trial by fire for the sidearming rookie. Did Willie think that was Chad Bradford? That should have been Heilman's spot all the way.
I'm concerned about David Wright. He had a weak 2nd half last year and he grounds the ball around the infield a lot, instead of driving the ball. I'm afraid we're going to see him at .210 after April, but I hope I'm wrong.
April 1, 2007 in Baseball and Other Sports | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
