If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

Gizmoz new offering makes me feel good about some of our Voki features.  Yup, I now have another avatar on my sidebar...   a photorealistic 3D avatar created from a photo.  You can even comment on a Gizmoz.  Commenting on an avatar?  Really... wow, I wonder where they got that?  Still, kudos for adding that feature after the Voki launch.  I also like the way they did it without a popup.  We'll have to add that ourselves.

Still, I have to ask... what do people think about photorealistic avatars?   Frankly, I think they're a little creepy.  We've added them as part of the Sitepal service, but I've gone from using my custom drawn one, to a cartoon one, to one that's even more cartoony?  I love my little bigheaded cartoon Voki guy and I think that one of the best parts of an avatar is that it's a representation of you... not actually you.  We have this debate internally a lot and I've never been a big fan of 3-D photo conversion and am just fine sticking to my flat little 2D avatars.

PS...   New commentary on StumbleUpon and Mahalo at Walken's site.

links for 2007-05-31

• Walken... Talkin' Music: CBS Buys Last.fm
  Christopher Walken's Web 2.0 blog on the Last.fm acquistion
  (tags: funny web2.0 music cbs last.fm)
• Author Biography - Strumpette
  Best. Bio. Ever.
  (tags: pr bios)
• correlate.us/blog
  (tags: rss feeds)

I have nothing to say about the last.fm aquisition, but I know someone who does...

Blogging is all about personality, right?  Getting yourself out there with your own unique voice in the world...   

...but in the Web 2.0 ecosphere, there's a lot of crowd following.  Everyone posts about the same thing and says the same stuff.

Until now...

I just discovered a gem of a blog that you absolutely have to take a look at.   Who knew that the Continental had a moment to put down the cowbell and talk social media?

That's right, it's Christopher Walken covering Web 2.0.  (Please feel free to tag and digg liberally as a favor to the creator...  ;)   )

links for 2007-05-30

• Ok, freaky... Microsoft took a picture of my building
  (tags: brooklyn bayridge maps)
• Overlook Lounge NYC
  (tags: bars)

I am a feed.

I am negotiated lunches.

I am softball invites.  I am blog reading clickthroughs.  I am del.icio.us saves.   

I am multiple daily e-mails to Mere.  I am last.fm plays. 

I am IM. 

I am blog posts.  I am book purchases.  I am Fresh Direct orders.  I am tech spec changes tracked.  I am live fantasy baseball updates. 

I am boathouse photos.  I am biking times.  I am trailers watched.  I am phonecalls to Nana.

I am nextNY join requests.  I am EZ Pass withdrawls.  I am sunny forecasts. 

I am concert tickets by e-mail.  I am Regis Business Network listserv responses.  I am NYSC ID scans.  I am paycheck deposits and mileage card purchases. 

I am electric bills.  I am bits transferred. 

I am a feed.

links for 2007-05-26

• Facebook news
  (tags: facebook)

Two more thoughts on Facebook: On Accel, Amazon, and Microsoft

1)  What Accel did by investing in Facebook was the equivalent of spending $100 on a old painting at a yardsale that later appraised on Antique Roadshow for $5000.    That was BEFORE the creation of this developer network.  The way they've built this thing is like coming home and discovering that, hidden in the frame of your old painting is one of ten known original copies of the Declaration of Independence.

What I'm saying is that, a few years ago, Accel invested a lot of money in a very hot social networking property.  However, there's no way in hell, and no way that anyone could really convince me, that they foresaw Facebook's eventual prominence in the social application ecosphere as the OS.   I'm sure they just saw pageviews and signups and all sorts of nice charts with hockey sticks on them and wanted to be a part of that.  Now, maybe this is what Mark Zuckerberg had in his head... that's a possibility... I don't know the guy, but I seriously doubt he pitched the social OS concept to them before anyone really even gave any thought to what that meant.

2)  If Microsoft wanted to spent that $6 billion of agency M&A money more wisely, they would have bought their way into the web OS by buying Facebook for half that.   Google, Adobe... someone who wants to be in that layer should seriously consider throwing $3-5 billion their way.

Actually, to be honest, I think the acquirer that makes the most sense is Amazon.  Amazon store+S3+Facebook would mean that you have a place to host your app, spread your app, ways to sell stuff in a whitelabeled way through your app, and a social network to integrate into a "Your friends bought this" concept.  Imagine how powerful it would be if when I buy stuff, all my friends get notified.

Jeff Bezos... are you listening?  Buy Facebook!

Facebook is Windows, MySpace is DOS

It would be hard for me to say anything that hasn't been said about Facebook's new developer platform.

So, just a few thoughts:

• If you are any kind of direct to consumer application developer, developing for Facebook needs to become a priority... RIGHT NOW.
• Facebook Widgets, or whatever you want to call them, work because they add in what most web widgets lack... broadcast.  All that stuff sitting in my sidebar, it isn't any good to anyone if it doesn't get "in the feed"...   Now, what feed, whose feed, where, how, etc...  those are great questions, but the idea of getting in the flow of social data is incredibly important.
• I wonder if when Facebook came up with the NewsFeed, they realized how important it would be to their application platform.  Just think about it... when I pick up my Twitter app for Facebook, now all my mainstream friends (all the ones who don't know how or where to subscribe to my RSS feed) can see it, grab it, and learn how it works.  Facebook basically integrated RSS into their platform in a social way and now they're using it to fuel the spread and functionality of their apps.  Incredible.

Let's think about a comparison between MySpace and Facebook and how they approached third party  applications in their environment:

• MySpace allowed you to paste a piece of HTML code onto a page.  That's it.  No hooks into the service.  No way to discover new widgets other than random browsing.  Then, they tied one hand behind the back of their apps by disabling linking through Flash.  On top of that, they made a big stink when others tried to monetize their creations, banned some folks, etc.  There's no developer network.  No notifications.  No nothing.
• Facebook is encouraging development.  It is giving apps hooks right into Facebook, enabling the pulling of various parts of my profile, and publishing right back into that profile and publishing notifications and various application output to friends.  They even allow publishers of services competitive to Facebook features, like Twitter.  There's a developer site, documentation, rules, etc.   

Guess which one is the future of web based social application development and which one isn't.

I'll give you a hint, the future of app development rightly turned down a billion dollars for their company.

Brilliant.  Anyone know who architected this?  I'm so impressed.  I want to pick that person's brain.

Arrow Cat Not Laffing

News at 11...

Sen. Schumer being treated for Lyme... softball in his future?

Noticed this story on how Sen. Chuck Schumer contracted Lyme upstate....   it was sent to me by one of my teammates on my softball team, which is aptly named: Four of Us Had Lyme Disease.

In fact our jersey has a tick in the O...

Just wanted to let Sen. Schumer know that he is absolutely welcome to throw out the first pitch at any of our upcoming games (or play a few innings, if he’d like).   The great thing about the acronym is that it scales...  allowing for “FIVE of us...”

Here's our schedule, Senator...

 

5/30    Wed    8:45pm    Col. Charles Young #3
6/5    Tues    7:45pm    Asphalt Green #2
6/17    Sun    6:30pm    CP North Medow #2
6/20    Wed    7:15pm    Riverside 107th #6
6/26    Tues    7:45pm    Asphalt Green #1
7/11    Wed    6:15pm    Col. Charles Young #3
7/18    Wed    6:45pm    Riverside Park #8*
7/26    Thurs    5:45pm    Roosevelt Island

And yes, I was one of the four.

links for 2007-05-25

• This is going to be BIG! - We understand social marketing, we're special, you don't, nanny nanny poo poo: On the Public Flogging of Blog Pitches
  (tags: pr web2.0 socialmedia myposts)
• ESPN.com: Brian Leetch hangs up skates after 18 seasons
  Brian Leetch was still playing? You're kidding me?
  (tags: hockey)
• First Place Fund for Youth
  (tags: nonprofit microfinance)
• RED HERRING | The New VC Way?
  (tags: entrepreneurship vc)

We understand social marketing, we're special, you don't, nanny nanny poo poo: On the Public Flogging of Blog Pitches

I get pitched all the time.  Please link to me.  Please read my book.  Please read my client's book.  Please use my service.

And you know what, most of 'em are bad... like, really bad.   Usually, I try to give them advice on how to pitch.

Once I got a pitch that started with:

"I've just begun to get acquainted with your terrific website, thisisgoingtobebig.com, and thoroughly enjoy reading it."

To be honest, I don't even think my site is terrific.  I think I'm a terrific guy, but this site is kind of crap.  I mean, look at all these silly widgets on the side... and theme?  What's the theme?  It's a snarky Web 2.0 and kayaking blog... which goes together like peanut butter and eggs.   So, don't tell me it's a good site, b/c I know you've never read it.

BUT... that's totally ok.  You're just doing your job.  So I responded by e-mail with a story on a book that I bought b/c a blogger recommended it:

"... the web and the tech community is such a small world that isn't hard to break into at all... and so when something comes in from completely outside of my circle, it just goes in a big pile of unfiltered stuff that I'll look at later. So, this will probably come off as snarky, but I really don't mean it that way at all...  Just trying to be honest and give you my honest reaction."

And then, I invited the pitcher in question to a nextNY event.  In other words, I engaged her like an actual person... you know, the way that we bloggers say we want to be treated.   

"Let's talk more about it more Wednesday.  Again...  just trying to be honest and helpful...  not meaning to bite your head off at all."

I got another one the other day...  one that I responded to in a similar manner:

"This whole blast e-mail in a can thing wasn't very "Next Big Thing". A tag for me in del.icio.us or a blog comment on my blog or a Twitter or a Facebook or MySpace add or just about anything else would have been a lot more appropriate. "

The person pitching responded in a very polite way:

"Thanks so much for checking out the site, even if my email rubbed you the wrong way... ...thanks for the suggestions, feedback is ALWAYS appreciated."

Not all the bloggers she wrote to where so friendly.

Some people took to their little soapboxes and called her out:

Blah blah blah blah silly little marketing person we know more than you blah blah.

The only person who seemed to recognize that Alison was just trying to do her job was this blogger, Ed Schipul:

""Ya, I took the email link bait. From a Fleishman-Hillard blogger outreach email from Allison Mooney...I still get my daily TrendCentral Intelligence Report, but I welcome new relevant content. Just please please please be sure it is relevant."

Pretty constructive, I'd say.  He knew what he was getting.

Here's the thing that's easy to forget in the blog world... blogs, e-mails, tags, IM, are made out of PEOPLE.   Real people who try to do a good job and have feelings and friends and all sorts of stuff.  Do you know how I know that in this case?

Because, as it turns out, Allison is a real person.  As it turns out, she was at nextMadisonAve, nextNY's discussion of the future of digital advertising and she just wrote about it in the blog she was pitching in her e-mail.  So, she does participate in the community... and she wasn't doing someone else's PR dirtywork... she was actually pitching the blog that she writes for.  Social media kudos for being a part of nextNY and pitching your own stuff.  It also turns out we know more than a few local NYers in common and I found that out because I actually approached her like a real human.

Did her approach need a little work?  Sure?  Do most of our own approaches to social media need work?  Absolutely.  Does we need to tear someone a new one in public by name?  I don't think so.

I mean, what if she got fired for her pitch gone awry?  Is that what these bloggers wanted to see?  Would they have felt bad if she did?

I can't say that I'm necessarily blameless in the snarky callouts department, but the next time you want to call someone out like this, you might consider the following:

1. Respond directly to them by e-mail first, because that's the way they contacted you.  No reason to elevate.  When someone blogs something you don't like, it's more appropriate to blog about them, but keep the response to the medium it came in.
2. What is the big picture of how I should judge this person?  Do they participate in the community in other ways?  In Allison's case, she does... she's a blogger, a nextNYer, Flickr user, etc, etc...not someone from the "outside" who needs to be taught a lesson.
3. Is there added value to calling them out by name?  Can you pull out useful pitch lessons from an e-mail without needing to embarrass someone?
4. What position is this person in?  Are they a VP of such and such... a prominent thought leader that makes their living by headlining conferences, etc. or just a worker bee trying to make their way up the chain who could do without you kicking them in the head because you happen to be three rungs higher up the ladder?
5. Who the hell do I think I am?  This is something I probably don't ask myself enough and frankly, few bloggers do.  Saying stuff like, "I've been working in the social media space since 2004" is a good indicator of the need to ask this question more often.  Wow, 2004, huh?  That was like, even before YouTube existed.  Jeez, what was it like back then?  Did you have electricity?

links for 2007-05-24

• This is going to be BIG! - Filling the Angel Gap in NYC (if there is one)
  (tags: angel investing vc web2.0 nyc nextNY)
• Sanyo Xacti E1 - Gizmodo
  The earlier version of this is the one I dropped in the Hudson River!
  (tags: kayaking cameras waterproof)

Wait, I know her

Seeing Caroline on TV makes me feel like we're grownups.

People on the news are supposed to be adults...  wait, damnit... we're adults!  Fuck!  When did that happen?

Mayo Salad?

Check out my Voki take on "salad"...

Get a Voki now!

This is going to be HIRED and other widget updates

Man, does this pain me to do, but I just put up a Simply Hired powered "Job-a-matic" job board called "This is going to be HIRED."   Obviously, having worked for Union Square Ventures during the time of the Indeed funding, I was pretty conflicted about this.

I've wanted useful job tools on this blog for a while, but something more substantial than a sidebar widget.  With this Job-a-matic job board, I can have a whole board at my domain where I can even sell my own jobs automatically.  That's right, for $5 a week, you can have a prominently placed job on my job board.

Is it a good value?

Nope.

In fact, I'd be surprised if this job board gets any traffic whatsoever.   In fact, Oddcast's personal experience with blogger boards has been relatively poor.  Very few hits when we post to major tech blogger boards.   

It's interesting, because, in my opinion, Simply Hired has done a better job in knocking down big names for job distribution...  MySpace, Typepad, Feedburner...    but yet they lag behind in traffic to Indeed.  Why?

I think it's because of the location and implementation.  I just don't think your favorite tech blog or social network is necessarily where you go to look for jobs.  You go to the best and most comprehensive job search sites, and that, to me, is what Indeed has become. 

And, even if you did get jobs from these random places, it needs to be prominently placed.  While its neat to have a job board on my site, and I'll likely leave it there, I just don't see most of my traffic, which is RSS based, ever thinking to visit it.  What I need is a better way to put what I think are interesting opportunities for my audience right in my posts.  That's something I would integrate immediately, no matter who the provider.

As for the Job-a-matic... it was great because it was so easy, but not so great because it doesn't quite work like a distributed version of Simply Hired.  I couldn't autosave a job search, b/c it isn't really their job search tool.  It's just a list.  I'm not sure why they did this, but that really takes down the usefulness of the tool.  Also, while NYC-only was available as a filter for users, it wasn't the default, which, for this blog, it should be.

Anyhoo, that's not the only widget update I made.  Last.fm just came out with some cool new flash ones that allow you to play snippets of the songs I listen to, and my personal radio station.  I also added a Meetup.com widget for the NY Tech Meetups.

Gone is the co.comment widget.  Co.comment was a fantastic idea, tracking my comments across the web and helping me pull them back, but they never really figured out a great way to make this useful to me or my audience. 

Any other suggestions on helping me satisfy my widget cravings?

Filling the Angel Gap in NYC (if there is one)

So here are some meandering thoughts about the current state of the NY Angel market that I don't have the time or the intellectual capacity to synthesize into a coherent thesis/essay:

• People, including myself, say that there is an angel funding gap in NYC.  The reason why is that they cannot readily identify very many firms or individuals who are known to do angel investing.
• At the same time, I don't know of any really fantastic startup companies in NYC who are struggling to get angel money raised.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I know of several companies who are raising or have raised significant angel capital just through their own network or introductions.  Many of the investors have been people who do not usually do angel investing or at least don't have a shingle out to do so.   So, angel gap or no?
• If there was an angel gap, how best to fill it?  Early stage firms could go earlier.  A USV incubator perhaps, a la what Charles River is doing? 
• How about banding groups of angels together in a fund or group?
• What about other types of incubators?  Corporate?  CBS Interactive incubator? 
• Well, we know from the last go around that anyone who doesn't have a larger fund who isn't 100% in the main business of venture investing over the long term are the first ones to get wiped off the face of the earth in a bubble...  does that make them inherently bad structures or just more risky?
• There's a lot of money in NYC that isn't connected to the entrepreneur community...  hedge fund and banking money.  Would it be wise for someone to package up $5-10 million of that to do seed stage financing at 50-250k a pop?  Who should do such a thing?  Isn't a small investor like this going to get crushed in latter rounds because they don't have the money to maintain ownership positions?  That brings us back to the USV incubator idea... and also brings us back to the "Why would USV be interested in entrepreneurs who aren't savvy enough to raise 100k on their own?"
• Is "professional" angel investing, i.e. someone setting up a smaller fund to invest in people not necessarily known beforehand, adverse selection?  If an entrepreneur has never been successful before and isn't connected to enough powerful industry people with a compelling enough product to get backing from community insiders, what are the chances they'll be able to build a successful company?  Same thing with incubators.  If you can't find a space to build your business, how are you ever going to actually build a business?

links for 2007-05-23

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn for Good
  (tags: linkedin nonproft)
• LoveMyFlash Has Nicely Designed MySpace Layouts
  (tags: myspace)
• Darren Herman - Marketing, Advertising, Media and Technology Blog » Blog Archive » DFJ East Coast Venture Challenge - Columbia University
  (tags: angel vc entrepreneurship)

As if Web 2.0 didn't have enough sex today...

Girls Gone Wild is now Twittering... .and yes, I added them as a friend.

There's a fine line between brilliant and idiotic: I may have just crossed it with this contest

Did you know that today was Abstinence Day?

Yeah, no kidding.

Well, to celebrate, we came up with a contest for Voki.

Basically, you go to Voki, create an account, then send your sexiest avatar over to contests@accounts.voki.com.

Here are some ideas for the kind of thing we're looking for:

1. Describe your steamiest encounter... (or imagined encounter, for those of you who are waiting for wedding bells)
2. Long distance love?  Send us a note for them that will help pass the time until your next encounter.
3. Tell us your sexual fantasy.
4. Fake an orgasm...or...don't fake it!  (Does abstaining pertain to when you're on by yourself in front of a computer?)
5. Tell us about your secret sex crush!

Yeah, this is the kind of thing where if it gets 20,000 new users, it's brilliant... or if you get fired, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

But sex sells, right?

links for 2007-05-22

• National Abstinence Day: Screwed by Voki Contest
  (tags: sex web.20 avatars funny hilarious)

Voki by the numbers (and a little good natured poke at the competition)

In a little over a week of our Alpha launch, Voki had 1665 non-Oddcast employed users this morning.

How's that for transparency?

Now Mayka, the intern from Meez, will know, and you'll see her little cartoon head appear in my MyBlogLog and she'll go take that stat back to the management of one of our competitors.  Hey, at least they participate in the social web and use their own product.

Anyway, so what if they know?  So what if you all know?

Registered users are an absolutely meaningless number and in the early going of a product, I think most companies play it way too close to the vest with this sort of stuff.

For example, our goal is 350,000 registered users by the end of the year.  Is there anything different that we're doing to try to get to 350,000 that we wouldn't do if we were trying for a million?  No, absolutely not.  We'd love a million.   We'd love ten million.  In fact, we're actually shooting for 350 million, but the bottleneck there is the pain we would experience upon extracting these numbers from our own business ends. 

The reality is, you don't really know how many users you're going to get, but you just want to pay very close attention to who is signing up, how they find out about it, and what they're doing with it, and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly.

For example, I've noticed a lot of users posting Voki in their MySpace blogs as a way to speak to their users, rather than as one of 100 widgets on their profile page.  (Makes sense... since your Voki can talk, as opposed to just thrash in silence, crowd surf in silence, or ride a bicycle in circles in silence.)   Is this better or worse?  Certainly the blogs get less traffic, but in terms of engagement and placement, very rarely do you see many widgets posted in blogs at all, and when your friends subscribe and see a new post, they get notified right away and will come visit.  So, it's actually not such a bad place to be, but of course, we'd like to see Voki on the profile as well, too.

As for the number itself, one might think that's on the low side.  We're used to seeing big launches that lots of people buzz about because of a TechCrunch feature... and since TechCrunch has 350k subscribers, having a little over 1500 after a week of alpha seems sort of low, no?  Actually, no...   because TechCrunch registrations are often a blip...  noise generated by a highly engaged and curious audience that has 180 other widgets to play with.   We're happy to never get mentioned on TechCrunch because those users aren't by any stretch of our imagination our target audience.   I don't know any 15 year old girls with 600 friends in MySpace who develop in AJAX and read TechCrunch religiously.   (Not to mention the fact that I already know they like Gizmoz better because of their technology.  Me personally, I'd rather my avatar platform not have terrorist characters with guns and ski masks available for use.  I don't exactly find that sort of thing amusing.  Gagz!)

When I look at these e-mail addresses of users, I'm really happy with the 1500 we have, because we've got mostly "imaprettygurl85@domain.com" and "suchandsuch@college.edu"...   On the surface, definitely the audience we want to hit.

Plus, it all depends on how you're marketing.  We're working on little bugs and site improvements here and there...  getting feedback from the early adopters, etc. 

Growth is an interesting thing.  So, we need about 24% weekly growth to hit our target... but obviously, its a lot harder to go from 100 to 124 than it is to go from 100,000 to 124,000, right?

Well, let's think about that actually.  Sure, I could power my way to another 24 users with some e-mails to friends and of course that doesn't scale.   However, that's not a I'm likely to get repeat, sticky usage.  You might thing that it would be hard to add on another 24,000 users, but when you already have a base of 100,000, some good marketing to your users, some contests, viral feature improvements, etc, can be very powerful.... not to mention the fact that new people are that much more likely to have seen Voki elsewhere, maybe multiple times, and have a strong desire to get one because their friends are using it.  There's a tipping point in there somewhere, buried among all the network effects. 

Plus, we never really got into the idea of what being a user means.   I mean, I've created a WeeMee and posted him to my blog, and that's all I've done.  I don't think I've changed him since I first made him.  Do I count?  It's also getting lots of pageviews everyday, so its not like I have a totally stale account.  It would be really interesting to see how I get counted in their user numbers.

So, we have a lot of work to do to identify key metrics.  How to we compare a posted Voki out on the web to one send as a message via e-mail?  What do we want people doing?  Just recording new audios?  Messing with characters?  Is a Voki created with our Text to Speech engine inherently less valuable than a Voki with a real voice?

Lots of questions, lots of Voki out there, lots more still to go...   but one thing's for sure... headline numbers don't mean a damn thing.

I mean, Zwinky has like 4 million plus registered users by now, I think...  but how many of them still use it versus how many can't figure out how to uninstall the Ask.com toolbar that comes with it? 

Seen those commercials yet?  Get Zwinky!  Get Zwinky!  Get Zwinky!  It's enough to make me want to throw the TV out the window. 

Avatar Humor: The 5 Worst things you can hear from a Voki

You should definitely check this out...  If nothing else, to hear the cameo by my grandmother, who recorded her scene totally ad libbed and on the fly. 

links for 2007-05-18

• This is going to be BIG! - Product Managers? We don't need no stinkin' product managers!
  (tags: web2.0 myposts productmanagement pm careers)

Things that really suck: Getting your minivan crushed by a tree in Bay Ridge

I went to go move my car last night and I happened upon a really unfortunate sight:

Some poor shlub got his car buried by a bunch of fallen branches.  At first, I pitied the owner of the little black car, until I went around for a closer inspection:

Turns out it wasn't the black car that got the brunt of the damage, and it was, in fact, the whole damn tree that game down.   Actually, what I didn't show here is that the tree actually completely missed the little black car, other than a few light branches here and there... by inches!

The whole damn thing got yanked right out of the ground at the roots:

Man, if I would have come out to discover my car like this, I'm pretty sure I would have cried.

Product Managers? We don't need no stinkin' product managers!

The role of a Product Manager varies company to company so greatly, especially in an early stage startup, that anyone applying for PM jobs still has to ask, "So what will I be doing?"  It's not like being the left fielder for the Mets where you can pretty much narrow it down to, "We'd like you to hit, field, and run the bases."

In some companies, you're not so much a Product Manager as you are a Project Manager.  Features and ideas come from business, marketing, or upper level management and you're just the translater of functional specs to tech speak, checking boxes in MS Project as things get done. This is a helpful coordination function as a product is being built but often has limited usefulness once something is up and running.  At that point, you might see folks from the business side take over the running of the product and its direction.

Other times, the PM is shaping core strategy and really living and breathing all aspects of a product, not just coordinating, but inspiring and collaborating with Engineering, Design, Marketing, Business, etc.  They're the ones that let the CEO go to sleep with a clear head because PMs dream of their products.

The interesting question is trying to figure out what, if any, kind of PM your company needs and at what stage.   Some would argue that you need a distinct Product function as soon as you start building, not only to be the eyes and ears of the Engineering side. Sometimes, swimming in the open water of deep code, the tech team might not poke their heads up often enough to make sure they're not swimming to Jersey.  (As a swim support volunteer in kayaking for Manhattan circumnavigations, I can attest firsthand that this is very important.)  Also, it may be important to have a PM insolate and shield the product from the pull of business demands.  It's important to insure that your scaleable product business doesn't turn into a custom development shop with the addition of every new business development partner.

What has often surprised me is how often engineers seek out someone in a pure product role.  I would have thought that the people doing the building would naturally want to lead the direction of a product, but that's not always the case.  Sometimes, engineers become PMs, but its a difficult thing to do both sides at once.

That often happens in startups, and I believe it is to the detriment of the end product.  You can do all the user testing you want, but its important to have a fresh perspective on a product, especially when it comes to interpreting user feedback.

So what should the background of a good product manager be? 

First of all, you need to have extraordinary communications skills.  You not only need to coordinate a lot of different areas, but you need to make sure everyone feels like their feedback is important and you need to be able to synthesize a lot of different needs and goals.  After all, listening is half of communication. 

I think the next most important thing is empathy.  You need to have a feel for what users want to do with your product and how they want to interact with it, even if you yourself don't necessarily represent that demographic.  A lot of this comes with knowing a lot of different types of people pretty deeply and being genuinely curious about the human condition and how people operate.... being aware of lots of other "selves".

Breadth is important, too.  You need to know a little bit about a hell of a lot of things...kinda like a utility infielder.  (For the record, on my softball teams, I've played leftfield, center, short, third, first and pitched  and that's only in six games so far.)

Attention to detail is important, too, but not necessarily in the way you might think.  Products change and no one gets every last detail right the first time, but I think it's more important to be deep in your work and not just comprehensive.  So, if you're creating a suite of tools, one damn good one is better than five so-so ones.  That will at least hook some users who will anxiously await the development of the other tools.

Is it fun?  Sure...but I have to say that one of the most difficult things is not just being able to sit back and be a run of the mill passionate user, because you're too busy bug fixing, speccing the next feature and thinking about marketing to participate as much as you'd like to in the community of users.

links for 2007-05-17

• VokiBlog - The Top 5 Worst Messages You Can Hear From a Voki
  A little avatar humor
  (tags: avatars voki funny web2.0)

The Doghouse

You ever just complete drop the ball with something in the worst possible scenario, have no legitimate excuse for it, and of course, you do it for the second time with the only other person or group you've done it to before.

Brain, why do you mock me?

Ugh.

Bloomberg to Spend a Boatload on 2008 Campaign

From the Washington Post... (Thanks MJP...)

links for 2007-05-16

• This is going to be BIG! - XM Radio Suspends Opie and Anthony for 30 days: 1 Amendment Down, 26 to Go
  (tags: firstamendment o&a freedomofspeech journalism xm radio)

XM Radio Suspends Opie and Anthony for 30 days: 1 Amendment Down, 26 to Go

"As a company, XM provides customers with tools to control what they listen to on XM." - From XM News Release on Opie and Anthony Suspension

Unless, of course, what you want to listen to is morally objectionable.   Then, you'll just have to go on the internet, where morally objectionable content is pretty much free.  We won't feature that trash no matter how much we're charging you for "premium" radio.

XM just suspended Opie & Anthony (You know those guys who featured people having sex in a church on their show, who told everyone the Mayor of Boston died in a car accident...) for comments made on their show last week by a homeless person who referenced some despicable sexual behavior directed at Condi Rice and the First Lady.

If I was an XM subscriber, I'd cancel my subscription today... not because I find that particular thing funny... I don't... It's wrong and it's awful...    it's the hypocrisy.

The last time I checked, we have Freedom of Speech in this country, right?  Well, sort of.  You're not allowed to scream fire in a crowded theatre, because your speech might cause harm to others.

Well, sort of...  because, it is a fact that when the media portrays high profile murders and suicides, there are identifiable instances of  copycatting that lead to people's deaths...   I mean, we know that the Virginia Tech killer referenced the Columbine kids by name...

But then, we go and cheer on David Blaine when he wants to go jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.  Wanna start making bets on how many kids start jumping off bridges in this country after that gets televised?

So then it becomes more about offending people than causing actual harm to others.  If you are offended by something, and you have a good PR firm working for you, you can basically get anyone else fired or off the air... even if those airwaves aren't public.  Suspending Opie and Anthony from XM is like suspending porn actresses from the Playboy Channel.  Certainly there are lots of people offended by the Playboy Channel... shouldn't we be taking away people's right to smut in that situation, too?

The firings of Imus, JV and Elvis, and now the O&A suspensions are a snowballing witch hunt.  Do I support what those people say?  No...  but I support their right to say whatever I want.  It's the same with flag burning.  I don't support anyone burning the flag in this country, but I wouldn't stand  in the way of anyone's right to burn it.  That's what freedom is.

And really, how in the hell does Howard Stern avoid all this?

This is a really dangerous precedent we're setting here.  We expect all this Web 2.0 user generated content to be successful in the face of this culture of fear?  Who in their right mind would opening share their thoughts with the world in this climate.  We're a bunch of crazy people... we must be, because its only a matter of time before the bandwagon shows up at your door.

I mean, as it is, I can never run for President because of this post and I'm sure there are others like it that people could pull apart out of context and fuel the media machine with.

And the worst part about it...  XM and all these other radio stations totally knew what they were doing when they hired these folks... and what you never see are executive's heads roll.  It's not the fault of the talent.  You want to suspend someone... suspend the people that oversee the talent..  because what they realize is that nice doesn't drive revenues on the radio, and these stations are hiring these shockjocks to generate cold hard cash.  It's a business and they knew exactly what they were getting, so they shouldn't act all surprised and offended when stuff like this happens.

Look...  there will be people in your life you won't agree with.  There will be others you will be offended by.  Others will try to hurt you with words.  The best thing you can do is ignore them.  Ignore them and they'll go away.  If people ignored Opie & Anthony they'd be off the air in a heartbeat...  but that's not happening. People are listening.  People want to hear. 

I don't want to be censored, protected, etc...  Just give me the tools and I'll do it myself, because I don't trust the religious right, special interests, or least of all the government to do it for me.

In other news, the Rev. Jerry Falwell was so happy over today's news that he kicked it.  Also, our soldiers are now banned from participation in the conversation, so sit there in the desert and like it and whatever you do, we don't want to here or watch a peep out of you. 

Open?  Participatory?  Free?  Yeah, right.

Testing out Meebo Rooms...in this post

There is now a Meebo Room in this post...   Click through on RSS to check it out...

Ok...  I took it off b/c it kept autoplaying the videos...

 

links for 2007-05-15

• Techdirt: The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free
  (tags: business economics)

Neat del.icio.us tip: Tagging for yourself vs. readlater

From Hannah the Instigator...

Instead of tagging something "readlater" in del.icio.us, a tag you're not likely to ever go back to again and without a way to check if you actually read it, tag it "for:" yourself.  This way, when you tag stuff for:yourscreename", it sits in your "for" inbox until you actually click on it to read it.   

I don't trust any of you people

Tara wrote a post about trust yesterday that struck me.   I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what social means and should mean in terms of technology, especially as our social technology starts to make its way into the more private areas of our lives, like our finances.  Do Web 2.0 philosophies hold up in the design of social software for the most important parts of our mainstream lives?  I am sensing from my non-techy friends a kind of Web 2.0 backlash against all the openness and sharing, and while I still believe that open is better, I believe that when, where, and how are key questions that Web 2.0 has yet to flush out in order to start moving away from the bleeding edge.

So, back to Tara's post.  She wrote the following statement:

"The Open Source world needs to make the assumption that people are, basically, good in order to succeed."

I disagree and don't think that's how it actually works.  People aren't actually good.  They're self interested. 

However, it is generally in your own self interest to be a good person most of the time, because then other people will be good back to you and then you also don't have to deal with the penalties for being an asshole (poor reputation, retaliation from others, alienation, prison, perhaps...).   

That's a key difference, especially when it comes to the design of social software.  Take seller ratings, for example.  I bought some nice pieces from Bethany Cooper the other day.  Do I trust her?  Not particularly.  I don't know her.  Although, if I had to make a bet, unless she's an idiot, if she's interested in succeeding in such a public platform, she's probably not in the business of screwing people over on a regular basis.  So, she's probably good, but since I don't have any reason to trust her, I'll make my judgment based on the 1200 positive experiences that people have had with her according to her seller rating... which amounts to 100%.  In this case, while people are likely to be good, technology doesn't force us to depend on trust.

She could still, however, steal candy from babies in her spare time, so there's also context around trust.  I may not trust her to drive my car, but I trust her to send me some beautiful handmade stuff on time.   

Open source works the same way.  Are people involved in the open source community generally good people?  Maybe, but not always.  Are they contributing to the open source community out of selflessness or some interest in the greater good of humanity?  Maybe, but not necessarily.  In fact, many open source contributors are writing code that solves their own problems.  At that point, giving that code back, so that others might improve on it and also share code with them in the future is of greater value to them than hoarding code and not sharing.  Sounds "good" but what's really going on is that they've recognized that they're simply better off, from a utility standpoint, sharing.

It's the Prisoner's Dilemma. Two prisoners are being interrogated separately and if they squeal on each other, they have a better outcome than if only one of them squeals.  However, if they both keep their mouth's shut, they both get off easy.  Without communication and information on what the other person has done before, it isn't likely that these two will cooperate, but if you repeat the experiment a number of times, eventually, they'll learn that the better outcome is to work together.  Is that trust, or just two people maximizing utility in a world of free communication and discoverable information?

Trust has nothing to do with it.  It's about incentive, reputation, and access to information.  Don't ask me to trust you... give me the tools for you to figure out whether I'm trustworthy... or tell me some friends we have in common.

That's why, for example, when social applications like Facebook and Vox were built, they focused on privacy... making sure that the right people saw the right information about you.  Privacy is going to be a huge factor in the mainstreamification of Web 2.0, especially in the current culture of fear that's being spread.

Trust me.

It's about time... David Blaine to jump off Brooklyn Bridge

I'll be there right under the bridge with my kayak to smack him on the head with my paddle on the off chance he actually pops back up alive from under the water.

I think it's just a trick to get rid of this idiot once and for all.  We'll let him jump, and then he'll realize there are no boats in the water to pick him up...  no rescue divers.  Hopefully, we'll just get swept out to see and we'll never have to hear about his next idiotic stunt.

"I don't see any boats under there..."

"Trust me, they're under the bridge... they just don' t want to get in the way."

Perfect weather for kayaking this weekend

IMG_0788, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

A few slow mornings at the boathouse, but I did get visits from Matt Myers from 30elm and Josephine Dorado.

links for 2007-05-12

• TechCrunch20 Conference: Caterina Fake, MC Hammer & Rajeev Motwani Join Expert Panel
  Hammer at Techcrunch Panel... Shark: jumped.
  (tags: techcrunch web2.0 hammertime)

What does "social" mean and who needs it?

Fred and I had an interesting e-mail exchange the other day about his theory that "Every web service should be social."   

I hesitated to go that far, mostly because I'm feeling a little personal backlash against the idea of every service being explicitly social.

Take WebMD, for example.  Maybe one day, I'll be able to login to WebMD and get all my personal medical history there, but for now, its a good place to get questions answered like, "What is this purple growth on my pinky toe?" 

That's not exactly the kind of question I want to broadcast to a group, nor do I want an armchair diagnosis from Louise from Chattenooga.  I also don't want to be friends with other people with purple growths on their pinky toes.  In fact, if WebMD were suddenly morphed into a more explicit social sharing community about health, I actually might be less inclined to use it and so would others, because its not necessarily the kind of think the mainstream is comfortable being social about.

However, that doesn't mean the fact that 34% of all 27 year old males in Bay Ridge have this issue isn't useful to me.   "People like you...", a concept Amazon pioneered and really nailed, is indeed a very powerful social feature.  But, if you asked most people, you wouldn't normally think of Amazon as a "social" web service.

Would Amazon be even better if they became a social network and aggregated all my reviews, purchases, etc. into profiles?  Can I have Amazon friends?   Clearly, not every user would necessarily want their Amazon purchases so prominently displayed, but giving people the option to publish a public profile could be an interesting move for them.

So, what I'm saying is...   aggregated social data can be a fantastic addition to a site, but making the core of your service to be explicitly social may not be.  It goes back to the idea that a service needs to work if you're the only user and you don't care about the community.  del.icio.us worked at one user in a way that Digg never would. 

Allowing users to commune...  that can also be an added feature, but it's important to make sure that it doesn't alienate users who aren't interested.   There are many people who don't want their web experience to be social.   They see the web as convenient, easy, on demand, but social isn't necessarily want out of their web, even if us designers and product managers and VC think that makes the web universally better.

Social doesn't always mean friends and a public profile... it can mean data aggregation, design, filtering...   and be careful about alienating the people who want to just buy their Slurpee without having to tell the guy at the 7-11 counter about their kids and where they're from. 

links for 2007-05-11

• Oddcast Launches Voki: The Right Avatars for MySpace
  (tags: avatars mashable voki oddcast)
• World Wide Web of Widgets
  (tags: widgets web2.0)
• Amazon.co.uk: The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy: Books: Andrew Keen
  (tags: books)

links for 2007-05-10

• This is going to be BIG! - Hudson River Office Hours: Kayaking Starts Saturday
  (tags: kayaking nyc events dtbh)

The Anti VC

Fred Wilson asks what the "Anti VC" is...

Hudson River Office Hours: Kayaking Starts Saturday

I absolutely love the opportunities this blog and nextNY have afforded me to meet lots of interesting and passionate people in NYC.

The problem is, I never have time to meet all of them... and when I do, it seems to be all of them at once, and I can't sit down for more than two minutes at a time with someone.

....except during the summer, where I aften spend endless amounts of time completely available to anyone...   anyone who'd like to go kayaking anyway.  (Or if you just want to hangout by the water, but that's no fun...)

Yup, kayaking season is starting again at the Downtown Boathouse this Saturday.  We have three locations:  Pier 40 (by Houston St.), Pier 96 (W56th St) and 72nd St. in Riverside Park.

This summer, I'll be manning the one down at Pier 40 almost every Saturday, and most Sundays, too.    We open at 9AM and the last boat generally goes out at 5:30, but since we're all volunteers, that's sort of flexible.   This Saturday, though, I'll be out there at 9AM sharp if anyone would like to go for a paddle or just hang around the dock.  I'll probably stay until 3PM.

So if you want to talk shop, talk kayaking, talk about the Mets, or just say hi, you're welcome to come by anytime!

links for 2007-05-09

• Talkin' Avatars with Oddcast: Helllooooo Voki!
  (tags: avatars oddcast web2.0 voki)
• This is going to be BIG! - A product is born: Voki lives!
  [Closes eyes and jumps.... weeeeeee]
  (tags: avatars web2.0 voice oddcast voki)
• Voki Home
  (tags: voki avatars funny fun humor web2.0)

It's not just about free content...

Videohybrid has a copy of Spiderman 3 that you can watch right now.

I tried to sit down and watch it the other day, and about 3 minutes into it, I stopped.  I was bored.

It wasn't the movie.  It was the experience.  I really like going to the movies.  I like going with my friends.  I like the huge screen and the Snow Caps and previews, man do I love the previews.  I could seriously just watch two hours of nothing but previews... all the best parts of upcoming movies.  Fantastic.   All in all, despite increases in price, I still think paying the twelve bucks or whatever it is to go to the movies is totally worth it and one of the best values you can get for your money.  Bowling (at least in NYC) is more expensive, and so is pool.  You can't really drink for that kinda money for two hours...   not much you can do for six bucks an hour, really.

And that's really what it comes down to.  Provide a great experience, and people will pay for it.  If content owners spent nearly as much time trying to create a great user experience at a fair price as they did trying to police content, they wouldn't see declining revenues.   

I might watch Casino Royale on the web, b/c I've seen it already, but that doesn't mean I'm not still going to buy the DVD.  (Tried to once already... sold out at Best Buy.) 

A product is born: Voki lives!

Finally, I'm a product manager with a product. 

Voki is now public...brought to a level by which it can only improve through actual usage by real consumers.

What's personally interesting for me is that I thought that this would be the kind of milemarker that I would sit back on and take a breadth...carefully watch what people do with it, put the specs aside and listen to the market, talk it up.

Well, yes, I need to do all of those things, but there's no breather here.  Launching a product is not the end of a phase, it's really just the beginning.  All of those endless debates about what's more intuitive, what should a screen be called, where should a button be placed... now they become issues for potentially thousands of people in a very real way. 

Thought you were knee deep in it now?  Try being a sewer worker during the Superbowl when everyone flushes at the same time.  Such is the responsibility that comes with being a product guy. 

Still, though, it's important to recognize the hard work that got Voki to this point.  It would not have been possible without a lot of hours from Oddcast's creative and technical staffs, none of whom were completely relieved from various day to day fires that need to be put out related to other products throughout the company.  Still, they found time to make a new product happen.

Over the next few days, I'll be detailing some of the thoughts and decisions and "todo's" related to the product and I'm excited to be able to give an insider's perspective into the process of product management.   It will be fun to talk about a product that is out there and one that hopefully iterates and innovates over time.   If we're doing out job right, it will be obvious that we're listening to our community and working hard to make Voki more useful, easier, and yes, more fun. 

But right now I need a favor...  from every last one of you.

I'd really like you all to be a part of this...  check that...  I really need you all to be a part of this.  If you've been reading this blog for a while, or if you just recently joined, and you've ever got any value out of it, I'm glad.  I've never really asked for anything in return, but today I will.

You see, I really believe that the best products are made better by passionate users, and so, right now, that's what I need...users.   But don't use come in, poke it once, and leave.  Really use it and tell me what you think.

Here's what I'm looking for:

1. Register for an account.
2. Go to My Voki.
3. Click "Create a new Voki" and, well, create a new Voki.
4. Send it to a handful of people by clicking "Voki for others" and select that scene that you just created (or a completely new one).  Send it to me, too, if you want.  And don't just send a boring "Hey, check this out e-mail."   Send something cool.  Something funny.  Be creative, angry, sexy, moronic, obnoxious, sweet, sincere, alluring...  whatever you want.  Talk about what you're really passionate about.  Tell others about the war, or net neutrality, or about Paris Hilton's arrest.  If it's really good, we'll post it as a "Featured User".
5. If you have a blog or a MySpace profile or anywhere else you keep widgets, post it, even if only for a few days to see what people think... and to see what you think of being able to change your Voki's look and message on the fly.

Asking a lot?  Maybe...   but you have to understand, Voki is something I really want to be fantastic.  I don't want a lot of users because I want to go sit on a panel somewhere... I want a lot of users because I want to be able to say that I helped build something that people use... that when it's my birthday, I get to hear the voices of my readers because they're sending me Voki.... when I happen upon your blog, you're telling me what you're up to for the day, or just greeting me.

But I can't do that unless it's good, and I can't do that without the feedback of users.  So, try it out, stick with it for a little bit, and tell me what you think.   E-mail me at charlie@oddcast.com.  Don't pull punches either.  Tell me exactly what you think and I'll be posting the feedback right here and what we're doing about it.  It will be an interesting exercise in transparency and honesty.

So thanks for helping me out... thanks for reading... and seriously, sincerely, I look forward to hearing your voice soon, on a Voki.   Because, and I've said this before, it's not really about the avatar or virtual worlds, or being like Second Life or anything like that... It's a voice app, and voice is emotional.  I think of Voki as a creative skin for your voice and I believe in voice on the web.  We spend a lot of time by ourselves in silence on the web... often times glossing over the idea that there's a real person on the other side of the IP address.  Voice is a reminder, to me, of the human side of the web... and even with a little animated fish in front of it that lipsyncs for you, it can be a very powerful thing.

And while you're at it, RSS people, click through to my blog to see the first public Voki in my sidebar.  Go ahead and comment on it!  (It will take a second or two to appear... )  Play ball!

links for 2007-05-08

• Cross Country Map v1.0
  Good suggestion to stop by St. Bonnie's in Olean, NY
  (tags: crosscountry)
• Amazon.com: Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before: Books: Jean M., Ph.D. Twenge
  (tags: books)
• Pew Research: 'Web 2.0' Crowd A Small Minority
  (tags: internet research statistics web2.0 demographics)

links for 2007-05-07

• 5 Boroughs Ice Cream: One City, A World Of Flavors!
  (tags: food nyc icecream)
• Why Online Music Will Stay Locked Up - Forbes.com
  (tags: music drm nextCharlie)

danah's Twitter questions

Because I'm interested in the research and I'm an admitted fanboyd...

[x ] Yes, and you *must* use my real name.
[ ] Yes, but please use a pseudonym and don't use any identifying information.
[ ] No, please just use this for your own weird thoughts.

1. Why do you use Twitter? What do you like/dislike about it?

I use Twitter to keep up with what a particular social group is up to after work...  Only my tech friends really use it, and so I use it to make my city smaller...increasing the "random" run-ins and stop bys.

2. Who do you think is reading your Tweets? Is this the audience you want? Why/why not? Tell me anything you think of relating to the audience for your Tweets.

I don't understand why many of the people who are subscribed to them are.  Seems like a lot of the people don't really know me, so I'm not sure why they would care when I go play softball or what bars I'm at.  At least when strangers read my blog, they might gleen some interesting technology info or something...  but my twitters are the day to day minutia of my life...  Sometimes, I'm not even interested in them.

I'd love for some of my non tech friends to be on it...  and maybe I'll clue them in, but I don't think you'd really "get it" if you weren't blogging or reading blogs and understanding the value and potential of this kind of openness.

3. How do you read others' Tweets? Do you read all of them? Who do you read/not read and why? Do you know them all?

I read on the phone, but have it set to not buzz during certain hours of the day, like when I'm sleeping.  I do not read all of them...  just the people I'm likely to bump into and a few extras who I happen to find really amusing or interesting.   I know all of the people I read at least digitally... not necessarily in person.

4. What content do you think is appropriate for a Tweet? What is inappropriate? Have you ever found yourself wanting to Tweet and then deciding against it? Why?

I don't know why people have public casual conversations over Twitter... the kind that others aren't likely to be interested in.... I mean, I know why the do, I just wish I could filter it out.  I've never bagged a Tweet.

5. Are your Tweets public? Why/why not? How do you feel about people you don't know coming across them? What about people you do know?

My Tweets are public and I'm fine with it.  To people I don't know, they might seem irrelevent, but certainly not something someone would judge me on in a way that I care about.

6. What do i need to know about why Twitter is/is not working for you or your friends?

Twitter needs better group and notification management tools.  I want to be able to get different messages across both phone and IM at the same time, or at different times.  Basically, I need a calendar that allows me to turn on/off independently of each other what my notifications are with a schedule.  Also, I would like to be able to bundle/group people with this same level of control.

Petsi's Pies: Going the extra 344 feet

If you live in Somerville, MA, you know Petsi's Pies.  I've never had the pleasure of having a piece myself *hint, hint* , but everyone in the area raves about them. 

Well, I happen to know a couple of Harvard Law students busy studying for their exams that live right down the street.  Only problem is, I'm in NYC and Petsi's doesn't deliver...not usually anyway.

But I called the shop and asked if they would be willing to hand deliever a blueberry pie down the street, which they happily obliged.  A lot of places might not have bothered, but Petsi's went the extra 344 feet (according to Google Maps) to close the deal.  Apparently the owner delivered the pie herself, "in her pie-making outfit".   Thanks!

links for 2007-05-05

• IQReportCards.pdf (application/pdf Object)
  (tags: advertising agencies interactive)

Roadtrippin'... Driving across the country in July and the app that could have helped me

I'm not much of a traveller, I'll admit that.  I can count the number of times I've been out of the country on one hand, and one of those times was Canada, so I'm not entirely sure that counts.  (Just a little good clean Canadian humor, eh... just kidding around.)

So, when the idea of a cross country road trip was proposed to me, I jumped at the idea.  Ok, so actually, I thought about it carefully, and created several maps and spreadsheets on it, but the jumping was there in spirit.

But, actually, the whole planning thing was not only a logistical pain in the butt, but I thought of lots of opportunities for web app to help me out.

So first off, here's the trip:  (PS... All these yellow markets aren't necessarily real stops... sometimes, I just had to make sure Google Maps put me on the right road so I had to enter somewhere random to force it.)

And here's a link to the real map...   

And then to our calendar.    It's quite ambitious...  and no, I'm not driving the 'Stang.  No interest in putting 4900 miles on it.  That's what rental cars are for.  Plus, we're only driving one way.

But what I really wanted was a great integration of a map and a calendar, one that took into consideration driving times.   On top of that, I wanted to layer on events and hotels... ones that took into consideration the time I was going to be there.  For example, by random chance, I stumbled upon a fair in St. Louis going on right around July 4th when I'm going to be there.  Also, it was a pretty manual process to match my driving and my calendar with the various baseball games that I wanted to see, because teams aren't always in town when you are.

Not only that, the group collaboration around this trip was very manual... mostly with passing links back and forth.   I wanted to give my co-pilot the opportunity to comment on various parts of the trip.   Plus, the collected wisdom of others came in handy.  We got advice from others to make sure we hit the South Dakota Badlands and exactly what time to hit them.  Now we know that, but what about others making that same trip.

So what I'm looking for is a Google Maps, Gcal, Travelocity, Yelp, Gchat, Wiki, Blogs, Flickr mashup for roadtrips.   That doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do.  :)

Every ad should have embed code

I just saw a great ad on Shockwave.com with a limp joystick asking "Is spyware affecting your performance?"   Hilarious.  Nice job whoever did it for McAfee.

And I'd love to have reposted that ad on this blog... and I suppose get paid for it.. but regardless, why should video be the only form of viral advertising.  Every single ad element out there should be sharable.  Where's the embed code for this ad?  Even if you don't build in a way to pay me, people don't get paid to pass YouTube videos around (for the most part) yet either...  so why shouldn't you be making banner ads that are just as entertaining and just as worth playing?

Willie Randolph to Speak at Fordham Graduation

Sah-weet.  I'll be there to see what Willie has to say.  Hey Willie, I'm faculty... get me some tix. 

links for 2007-05-04

• Blog Law » 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know
  (tags: blogging fordhamclass)
• Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening
  (tags: