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I could wait until Easter, but this is too good...
The FAIL Blog
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January 31, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Twitter needs to level with us and open up about their problems
@jack, @biz I'm not going anywhere... at least not for a long time. So, don't consider this a threat to go over to Pownce or anything.
In fact, anyone who threatens to move isn't really thinking properly, because if we all moved to a different service at once, I'm sure we'd experience the same issues.
But, posting blog posts titled "Happy Happy Joyant" when you've had so many outages lately and your user base has little confidence that you're going to scale for the Superbowl and no confidence that you'll make it through SXSW without a hitch... its just not the right sentiment.
You guys built a fantastic service and we all love it, but we've all seen how scale problems can take down a business. (Friendster) And while the service is popular, it's not THAT popular. Most of your userbase is still pretty technical and it wouldn't really take much more of this before people started leaving en masse. It's exactly because they're pretty tech savvy that you have a unique opportunity to open up a discussion about your recent problems and engage your userbase.
Let's start a discussion about whether Ruby scales or how you diligence a host. Is it a matter of just throwing more hardware at the problem or are database and architecture redesigns in order. If I were Lee Mighdoll, I'd make it a point to blog almost everyday, even a short one, about the problems I'm facing and steps I'm taking to address the issues, so at least people feel like something's getting done.
Take a cue from Six Apart, who experienced serious uptime issues in the past and seems to have gotten over them. If nothing else, their tone during and immediately after their problems was the right way to go.
The Twitter blog hardly ever provides any information and there's yet to be a discussion of what the scaling issues are or timely accoutns of them.
Here's another post where they Six Apart recapped exactly what happened with one of their outages:
"Before we get into the details, we want to reiterate just how sorry we are for the inconvenience this has caused. We know our customers rely on us to provide superior service and performance, and that on Friday we let you down. The fact that Friday's outage came on the heels of our performance issues in October is obviously frustrating, both for you and for us."
Then they go into a pretty lengthy blow by blow account of what was going on. People want to know that because they want to feel like something's being done.
You guys should know that from dealing with your cable or phone companies as a regular consumer. Waiting in silence for somebody to fix something sucks. And it sucks even more when the service doesn't level with you about the fact that their are issues.
"Happy Happy Joyant" just feels like mocking, to be honest, and doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.
Here's your opportunity to be an "us" company or a "them" company with regards to this issue. It's a critical point in the life of your young company.
I'm rooting for you guys to approach it the right way.
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January 31, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Videos and Pictures from the Marilyn Manson Show at the Hammerstein
I don't think the multimedia in this post needs much explanation, other than the fact that, while I enjoy the music, I just want to make it clear that I do not condone all of the behavior that the music of the artist describes or inspires. :)
Photos
Videos
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January 30, 2008 in Music | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Etsy Raises $27 mil... Accel and Jim Breyer comes in. Score one for NYC
Nice work folks. I like the fact that this can only serve to make Rob Kalin more confident, because sometimes, I think that can be an issue with him. :)
And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
Seriously, though, put $27mil. on the venture funding in Brooklyn toteboard. No sleep 'til...
Congrats!
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January 30, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Now pitching for the New York Mets: Johan Santana (Assuming they can throw enough cash his way)
Once the Mets wrap up his contract in the next couple of days, Johan Santana will be pitching for the New York Mets... in the National League.
Anyone want to take a guess what his numbers are going to be like? I think it's fair to say that he's a lock for 18 wins and a 2.50 ERA. In '04, he whiffed 265 batters. Now, he'll get to face pitchers about 80 more times a year than he does now. Can we say 300k's?
The best part is, everyone seems to be in agreement that we got him for a song. I liked Carlos Gomez, too, but I don't think the guy's ever going to hit .300. I think the guy will wind up being an Alfonso Soriano type, without as much power... bat .280, hit 25, steal 35, but whiff 130 times and rarely take a walk. And the pitchers we sent over? Meh.... You never know with pitchers. Plus, Santana's only going to be 29 this season.
The Mets off-season went from a disaster to a huge victory in the blink of an eye, and you gotta hand it to Omar Minaya for getting his guy without giving up too much.
So I'm trying to figure out when Santana's Shea debut is. I say its Saturday, April 12th, because clearly he starts opening day, but the Mets have two off days in the first 10 games... so they'll use Santana, Martinez, Maine, and Perez, with a day of rest, and probably use Santana again that first Sunday on the road against Atlanta. It wouldn't make sense to push him back, because they're off that Monday, too, so it would be a week in between starts, and I doubt they're rushing to get El Duque more starts than necessary.
Anyway, nothing is guaranteed, as we saw last year, but with the best rotation in baseball, the Mets now have to be frontrunners for the World Series on day one.
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January 30, 2008 in Baseball and Other Sports | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Subway Thumbing
There's a man sitting across from me reading "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God". This small paperback has a picture of some little figure, perhaps the distant cousin of a WeeMee, shooting himself in the head with the bullet exiting out the top in a small burst of splat. So, if I seem distracted this morning, its because I'm keeping a close eye on that guy for sudden movements.
There's a short girl standing next to me reading a a magazine article about traumatic brian injury. Very few other people are reading. I'd love to see an analysis of time of day, whether a person is reading, catching up on zzz's, playing video games or listening to their iPod or some combo.
This train is unquestionably a zzz train. I'd say that 60% of the people in this train have their eyes closed. It's 7:20AM and I'm on my way to Fordham to teach class. There's a banana in my tummy, but I'll def need my MetRx shake when I get back to the office at 10:30AM.
I gotta remember to tell my students to allow anonymous comments on their blogs.
There are two City Year girls on the train. They're in there big red winter coats. Those coats look pricey. I wonder what percentage of City Year donations go to buy coats for volunteers. Couldn't they just get hats? I never see them actually working or sponsoring anything...just collecting money. What does City Year do anyway? If my kid ever wanted to stand on the street and collect money for charity, I'd hand them a donation that covers there summer (if I had it) and tell them to go be an intern in a program management or policy making department within a non-profit or government sponsored social program. I think that's where you make a much bigger impact, especially since most donations come from corporations anyway.
I just switched to the 6 train at Union Square... I plenty of time to get to Grand Central. Look, there are Dominican Academy girls on this train...haha. DA!
Girls from DA were the first girls you met in Regis because we had a joint fundraiser with them in October... a Walk-a-Thon around the Upper East Side and the park, which basically meant that everyone in Regis dated a DA girl in freshman year. But I was cool because my DA girl was a sophomore. She taught me who the Ramones were. I feel like I told this story before.
This guy just walked onto the train. He's a dead ringer for Chin Ming Wang...and he's wearing a Yankee cap. Only... he's obviously a high school student.
January 29, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Call me a big dumb male, but I don't get it: She looks like a snow angel to me. Isn't that a scarf and boots?
Women, are you really offended by this ad?
I kinda feel like we have bigger fish to fry. At least this model is pretty well covered up. If I had a daughter, I'd rather her look at ads like this in Times Square than ads of half-naked women in sexually suggestive poses. Isn't that a much worse objectification of women?
I dunno about you, if this ad makes you want to shoot things at women's crotches, I sort of feel like maybe you had some issues before you saw it. Me personally, it makes me wish for snow.
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January 28, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Keep Pier 40 a place for people, not big business
A few years ago, the Hudson River Park Trust evicted the Downtown Boathouse from Pier 26 in order to make way for a brand new pier, similar to the one we moved into up at Pier 96. We knew we'd likely be back, but, in the short term, that left us without an actual Downtown Boathouse location.
Then I heard we were moving a few kayaks to the south end of Pier 40. Of course, typical buracracy delayed the permit that would have allowed us to put a dock down for months and months. That meant that we started our Pier 40 program in 2006 midway through the summer. It started very slow. Construction around Pier 40 meant that you needed to walk halfway past the whole Pier to figure out how to get to us. The neighborhood saw the demolition at Pier 26 and thought we were gone for good. They didn't know anything about the "Downtown Boathouse" as an organization...they just knew about the free kayaks at 26.
Little by little, we started to get more and more traffic to Pier 40. I was there helping to run the program there every weekend. When we started up this season, we hung a big kayak by the jogging path with an unmissable arrow.
People climbed over concrete planters to get to us rather than figure out how to go around. Regulars to 26 started returning.
Pier 40, with only 15 kayaks, no trips, no classes, skyrocketed in popularity.
What also happened was that the whole Pier became a destination. We took people out for a paddle who otherwise couldn't get into the sold out trapeze school on the roof. We took kids out after the soccer games they played on the fields indoors, or runners who normally didn't think much about what was going on inside the pier, and previously just ran around it. Pier 40 became even busier than our main location uptown.
And now, the Hudson River Park Trust is voting this Wednesday on one of two commercialized proposals for the development of Pier 40. The only politician who seems to be on the side of the people is State Assembly Member Deborah Glick. She wrote an editorial regarding the Related Companies' proposal:
"Unfortunately, Related’s latest proposal for Pier 40, though it has improved from previous versions, remains one for a mega-entertainment center, complete with Cirque du Soleil as the anchor tenant, a huge banquet hall, 12 movie theaters and several large restaurants. Such large-scale uses do not belong on a pier in the midst of a park and bear no relationship to the park. Uses like Cirque du Soleil are not water-dependent and serve no local need. They could be just as easily — and more appropriately — located on 42nd St. or 52nd St. Related’s latest plan, which is expected to draw 2.7 million visitors each year to Pier 40, would substantially impair the park’s ability to serve as a safe and quiet respite, since it would bring large numbers of vehicles across the busy bike lane, endangering walkers, runners and bikers. In addition, the proposal would only add to the area’s congestion issues, running counter to the city’s traffic mitigation efforts in Lower Manhattan."
There's already a major movie complex right down the street, by Battery Park. And Cirque du Soleil? I doubt that most of the 20,000+ people who went kayaking with us last year can afford the Cirque du Soleil ticket price. Plus, most of those people would probably have more fun if the trapeze school were given room to expand and they could fly through the air themselves versus paying more to watch other people do it.
Plus, last time I checked, we're supposed to be building a PARK, here right? Isn't that what it's called? Hudson River PARK. Go ask a five year old what belongs in a park. I don't think he'll answer banquet halls, movie theaters and restaurants.
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January 28, 2008 in Kayaking | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Outside.in launches discussions: How to fight the sound of silence
Outside.in, which is one of my favorite NYC startup teams, launched their discussions feature very quietly last week.
It's something similar to when Zillow launched their neighborhood and discussion features. Zillow faced the aggregator problem of not having a site where people normally contribute directly to the site and now opening up a centralized community feature. The great thing about these sites is that they reach out and find the community and bring it to you, but discussions require that the communities are on-site.
My suggestion to Zillow at the time was to go seek out some Outside.in content.
Now what do I suggest to Outside.in?
I thought they should start pulling the comments off of the blog posts they aggregate and using those to start discussion. The discussion topic could be my blog post title or some summary, and the comments could show up as discussion comments on Outside.in.
Wait... but isn't that "stealing" the community from my blog??
No, not if you resyndicate the comments back to my blog and leave them there.
So, someone could find an article from my blog about Bay Ridge through Outside.in, leave a comment right there on the Bay Ridge discussion board, and I get the benefit of the comment. And vice versa, any of my comments get resyndicated out to Outside.in.
What would be the net effect of my traffic? I'm not sure, but even if I sacrificed some of my Outside.in traffic, I'd get lots more comments and probably engage my own users a lot more, because they'd think of my blog as a much more lively place.
Also, maybe each comment on the last.fm discussion board could permalink back to my blog... "Comment syndicated from This is going to be BIG!". So, perhaps I'd get even more traffic with a whole new set of links.
Either way, it's going to be tough sledding to cause people to get interested in a new discussion board in a place they don't usually do community stuff on... and so I think you need to start greasing the wheels with some aggregated content.
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January 28, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-27
January 27, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Tribune just about sums it up for me with regards to Obama and Clinton
"We're urging votes for a candidate whose political views we often disagree with. But this is a more complicated contest, and a more complex candidate, than the norm. This nation's next president inherits a war -- against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere -- that has found many ways to divide Americans. Capitol Hill is gridlocked and uncivil. Our discourse is hostage to blame.For the Democrats: Obama -- chicagotribune.comObama can help this nation move forward. A Tribune profile last May labeled his eight years in Springfield as "a study in complexity, caution and calculation. In the minority party for all but his final two years in the Statehouse, he tempered a progressive agenda with a cold dash of realism, often forging consensus with conservative Republicans when other liberals wanted to crusade."Racial profiling, death penalty reform, recording of criminal interrogations, health care -- when victory was elusive, Obama seized progress.
He did so by working fluidly with Republicans and Democrats. He sought out his ideological foes. He listened closely to them. As a result, many Republicans in Illinois have warm words for Barack Obama.
Obama's key opponent, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, unifies only her foes. Her penchant for gaming every issue -- recall her clumsy dodging when asked in a Philadelphia debate whether illegal immigrants should be licensed to drive -- feeds suspicion of maneuvering that would humble Machiavelli.As this campaign has progressed, Hillary Clinton in moments of crisis hasn't been an ennobling sight. Her reliance on her husband, the less-than-presidential Bill, to trash-talk Obama reaffirms that the Clintons do whatever it takes to prevail. Depicting Obama's record on Iraq as a "fairy tale" is instructive: Think what you will of the war, but Sen. Clinton was an enabler when that was popular. In Kerryspeak, she was for the war before she was against the war."
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January 27, 2008 in Politics | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I can haz friendz? Facebook powering the rest of the web (and maybe a new business model)
I hope the news that Facebook has just opened up its API to applications that sit outside of it is true. Frankly, as cool as the concept of Facebook apps are, needing to build inside their little box is very constricting. At Path 101, we were definitely going to leverage the Facebook platform around our personality testing, because we thought that comparing results to friends could be very viral, but, to be honest, needing to build that app to live within Facebook wasn't so exciting.
Now, we can just take the existing application and have the social aspect "powered by Facebook". That's very compelling.
It seems that Facebook understands that users don't spend 100% of their time on Facebook, so there's no sense trying to keep them there. By extending out to the rest of the web, they're making membership in Facebook that much more valuable. Even people who might not want to spend a lot of time on the site could see value in keeping their social network there, kind of like an address book.
I wonder if there's a business model in here. What if this made Facebook the defacto social dialtone on the web? Could they charge for API access, kind of like Amazon is doing with S3? What if it cost websites a few pennies everytime a user spread their app to their friends via the Facebook API anywhere on the web. Certainly most sites pay for user acquisition on some way. If they could set the right throttles and controls, I could see Facebook taking a small sliver of every single social transaction on the web--that's IF they get the social thing right.
In its current form, the viral spread of Facebook apps is, while trendsetting, still kind of hokey and it clutters up the user's experience. I like the fact that they're continuing to experiment, and this move could give them a whole new playing ground. When if you went to an app on the web, and it automatically told you that 25 of your friends have already used it and you could compare data with one click? That would be pretty neat, I think.
Thoughts?
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January 27, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-26
January 26, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-24
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A practical blog for impractical people.
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Confusion disappears when everyone starts using the same screens.
January 24, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Amen, Brother... Investing through the economic downturn.
If I take the last downturn as my guide, I can say with confidence that venture investors would be well suited to continue to invest right through the downturn - in 2002 and 2003 terrific companies were formed and funded at very reasonable valuations and with business models that reflected the demand for capital efficiency and economic viability.Will Price: Downturn - Now What?
From Will's blog to VC's ears...
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January 24, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-22
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Terraminds micro search engine allows searches in tweets and users back to three months ago.
January 22, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Fake Reach
You know what the Fake Reach is... You've either done it or expected someone to do it.
You're out at lunch with Bill Gates. He invited you to join him to get your expertise on social media. The bill comes.
You do the Fake Reach.
You have absolutely no intention to contribute any money to this meal and all social ettiquette rules dictate that he should treat. Still, you don't want to seem too entitled or expectant, so you fake willingness to pay just to acknowledge their gesture of paying.
You wait for them to waive you off...
"No, no... I got it."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, my pleasure..."
"Oh, thanks...I got it next time."
Ever been on the other side of a date where you knew you were paying or being paid for and the Fake Reach was used?
Giselle sneaks away from Tom Brady to go to lunch with you and the bill comes for your meals. Does Giselle even carry money? What would be the point? Does she need to pay anywhere for anything?
Still, she's gotta do the Fake Reach. Lord knows, given some of the outfits she wears, where she'd even reach, but still, she's gotta reach. Otherwise, in my book, she's definitely not worth the second date. :)
January 22, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Dodge This!
I got some good coverage on the Sportsvite blog, WreckSports... apparently word is getting out about my phenom status in dodgeball.
Therefore, I'd like to announce that I am in training for the Beijing '08 Summer Olympics. Yes, dodgeball is finally an Olympic sport and I've been selected to captain the team.
Don't believe me?
Check out these videos:
Block, block, block, throw! from ceonyc on Vimeo.
Block and fast catch from ceonyc on Vimeo.
Throw, Dodge, Throw from ceonyc on Vimeo.
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January 21, 2008 in Baseball and Other Sports | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-21
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Presentation from web directions 2007
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Google Tech TalksMay 14, 2007ABSTRACTMuch of what we know about innovation is wrong. That's the bet this talk takes, as it romps through the history of innov...
January 21, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Relationship Perspective
My friend just had a baby... a completely unexpected baby as of about three months before she was born. The details of how a baby can be unexpected so far along are unimportant. The most important thing is that I witnessed a couple so singularly focused on this new little person that it really affected me. This couple isn't married and they haven't been dating much more than a year or so, but now they're a family.
They're a family because they all chose to be so. Well, the baby didn't choose, but knowing the parents, I'm pretty confident she would have made the same chose.
Does this couple know every last little detail about each other? Nope.
Do they know all of their roommate idiosyncrasies, like whether there's drinking from the carton or balls of hair left in the shower? Doubtful.
But this little person just seem to make all that insignificant Maybe you're a match on paper, maybe you're not. Bottom line is that you've got two people dedicated to figuring it out for the sake of another.
When I think of it that way, it doesn't seem like such a stretch to think that two people should be able to figure things out if they just do it for the sake of each other. Love shouldn't be so hard and there's certainly too much stuff we let get in the way of it.
It seems like most of us clutter up our minds and our hearts with truly insignificant crap. We're not good at reduction. We can always think of more things to worry about, to ponder, to get excited about, but how often do we focus on less things?
This couple now has one thing to think about, and all of the sudden, their life, rather than being complicated by this beautiful baby, now seems so simple.
They don't need a 72-point eHarmony diagnostic to tell them if they're a match. They don't need to treat the other person like a discounted cash flow model--calculating whether or not they'll be able to support them in the lifestyle and social status that they're accustomed to. They don't need congressional approval from the congress of friends in their life--mostly temporary people who have a nearly non-existent stake in the outcome of their lives and who probably won't be around for half of it.
We live in an age where information, in addition to informing us, pollutes us. We're paralyzed by fear. Rather than look at our own job security, we watch the unemployment number. Rather than look at our own budget, we watch the housing foreclosure numbers. We're so focused on staying at home to watch the consumer confidence index, rather than going out and buying the things we can afford that we really want. And if we can't afford them, we spend too much time watching what other people have to appreciate the things we do have.
Its funny, too, when you think about what people choose to optimize for. A lot of people decide that they'd rather be focused on careers rather than family. Given the empirical evidence, I'd say that you have a lot better shot at reaching happiness through living for others than living for your job. (Of course, I of all people still think its extremely worth it to also focus on reaching happiness in your job, but there's got to be some kind of priorities.)
So what's truly important to you in your life? How long is that list?
I'd say that if your list is any more than about two or three things, its too damn long. Focus, people!
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January 21, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Feed Cleanup... Need some inspiration
Over the last week or so, I've unsubscribed from a number of feeds that just weren't doing it for me. Interestingly enough, what I've been left with is a feedreader full of my friends. More than half the blogs I subscribe to are friends of mine.
I could use some suggestions on new blogs to be reading. Here's some key criteria:
- People who are thoughtful about career and life decisions.
- Anyone who takes Web 2.0 with a nice heaping grain of salt and doesn't get too caught up in the hype.
- People with outside interests.
- New Yorkers especially welcome.
- People with a good sense of humor.
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January 21, 2008 in The Blogosphere | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Why are women always cold?
@ptrain just threw on a hat and scarf...meanwhile I'm sitting here in bed in my Twitter t-shirt and boxers. I think she's leaking antifreeze... I'm going to go check the last place she was sitting for neon green liquid.
January 20, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Let the good Tynes roll... Giants head to the Superbowl
ESPN: The Worldwide Leader In Sports
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January 20, 2008 in Baseball and Other Sports | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
My friend Sandy, who brought kayaking to Hoboken, lost her apartment in a fire.... Please help
Over the last few years, Sandy Sobanski has led a group of Downtown Boathouse volunteers over to Hoboken's Frank Sinatra Park to bring free kayaking across the river. Over time, the Hoboken kayaking program has become a summer fixture. This year, the program will become even more permanent as it moves to the Maxwellhouse Boathouse and becomes it's own independent program.
If you've ever worked with any kind of local government, you know that getting new programs run on public property isn't easy. Sandy's been at this for a few years now and 2008 was all set to be a big year for her and the new program.
That was, until a Hoboken fire destroyed her and her husband's apartment on January 7th. Since then, they've been staying in temporary housing--a chain hotel... and hopefully they'll be able to move into something more permanent soon.
Her insurance isn't going to cover all of her costs, and it's going to be some time before she's able to get her affairs in order to be able to get back work. Sandy works tirelessly, without asking for anything in return, to better the Hudson River waterfront and make sure its resources are made available to the public.
To have this happen to her of all people isn't fair... not that anyone deserves to lose everything like this... but to have someone who has given so much back to her local community have her own local environment go up in flames... it's really quite tragic.
That's why I'm helping the Downtown Boathouse raise money to help her get back on her feet. With nearly 2400 mostly local subscribers, I'm hoping there are enough people who have either participated in some of the Hudson River kayaking, or who just care about the waterfront, that are willing to help out someone who has done a lot of great work for it. I'll be matching donations from my readers up to $500 to help Sandy out.
Here's how you can help... even a five spot will go a long way... there's power in numbers. You can make out a check to: The Downtown Boathouse Inc. West Village Station Box 20214 New York, NY 10014-9998 Memo: Sandy Fire Relief (from Charlie's blog)
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January 20, 2008 in Kayaking | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-20
January 20, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Unfortunately, I have to unsubscribe to the Dilbert Blog
A while back, Scott Adams wrote how blogging wasn't really boosting his bottom line the way he thought it would, so he decided to make some changes. He has decided not only to blog less, but also to go to partial RSS feeds.
His reasoning is that, unless you were coming to the site, he couldn't monetize you as well. It wasn't clear that he had ever heard of Feedburner ads for RSS.
So, he made the calculation that he could force those reading his RSS feed to come to the site to read full feeds. In my case, he can't, because I read a lot of my RSS feeds offline, when I'm on the subway reading through my phone, though Newsgator Mobile. When I like a post, I clip it, and often send it to others or tag it in del.icio.us for later, meaning the link winds up on my blog and I send some traffic his way.
Either way, as an RSS reader, I'm still net positive on total pageviews. Moving me to partial feeds doesn't make me add pageviews, it makes me completely disappear. This is the case for a lot of RSS readers... going to partial feeds will make your RSS audience dry up, engage less, and certainly never pass the site to others.
I kept the feed in my reader hoping it would change back, but he seems pretty set in his ways, so I'm unsubscribing. I read RSS feeds and if you're not going to publish a full feed, then I'm not going to read you. It's a shame, b/c the Dilbert Blog was one of my favorites.
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January 20, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Rammstein Video Using Lego
January 19, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Do first impressions matter anymore?
As always, any trend that I notice occuring because of technology's effect on people should be taken with a grain of salt... you know, because of that vaccuous Web 2.0 echo chamber that I sleep in.
That being said, I'm realizing that a lot of the relationships I've built up with people lately have been built up over time, nutured slowly by tiny bits of information and without the pressure of thinking that if you don't do a complete data download on the first meeting, you'll lose the chance to reconnect. For example, I started reading Rob May's BusinessPundit blog (He's now over at CoconutHeadsets.com...sorry no link, posting by mobile) about two years before I ever met him in person. His blog just had to be readable enough for me to think I might want to go back to it again for it to get a tryout in my RSS reader...not a very high bar. But, it stuck, and we both wound up at last year's SXSW conference. Not only did it not seem weird, but all the previous back history of communication between us made the first inperson meeting that much easier. I didn't have all sorts of unfulfilled expectations or bad assumptions... I learned enough over time that I had a much more realistic view of him. Plus, I knew that, even if we didn't become best buds right then and there, our digital connection would keep conversation going, probably enable other chances to meet...It really took any pressure to form an immediate strong link off the table.
The same thing seems to be happening in poltics. I'll bet that when you had one chance to meet a candidate--the one time their election train rolled through your town, your first impression of them became a lot more meaningful. In today's world, we've swung to the opposite. Everyday, you see a new video clip. One day you think Hillary's a bitch, the next day you think she's warm and sensitive because she cries at a cafe hundreds of miles away. And what about John McCain? Didn't we have him left for dead not too long ago... wasn't Rudy the leading Republican candidate at one time? Turned out Rudy was a one trick pony and McCain can haz nine livez.
The ability to hang around the rim...to lurk, engage lightly, linger, subscribe, connect means that we have increased the window of opportunity we have to get to know each other...almost indefinately. I think that's great, because prejudgements are often wrong. How many of your favorite people did you initially have a not so great first impression of? Plus, how much could you really get to know someone on a first pass? People are so deep and complex, more information and a longer window to make judgements can only be a good thing. I mean, imagine if you could only hire employees based on resumes--no interviews, no trial periods...just a small bit of superficial information that corralates little to the lifetime value of what this person can bring to the table.
That's why I'm excited about Path 101' ability to help people get to know themselves better in relation to career discovery, because it will also allow potential employers to get to know them better as well.
January 18, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-15
January 15, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Why aren't you working for a startup?
When's the last time you worked until tomorrow and had a great time? How many meetings have you had in the last week with more than four people that went nowhere and accomplished nothing? More than five people? Eight? Have you ever heard your boss say, "Well, if we run low on cash, I'll just take a salary cut, eat less, and tap my savings a little more?" Are you passionate about what your company does? Do you have enough skin in the game where you start to think, "Wow, if we really kick ass, I could buy that car/house/island" or are you kissing all the ass you can to make sure your boss and coworkers give you good reviews during bonus time so you can just pay off your credit card bill? When you tell people where you work, do they say, "Wow, that's a really cool idea" or do they mention someone who also works for the same 55,000 employee company and ask if you know them...as if the whole goddamn company goes out for a huge picnic with "hello my name is" nametags once a week. Has your company ever gone on a picnic with "hello my name is" nametags? Has your company ever done anything requiring "hello my name is" nametags? Is the whole reason for your company's existance to find a new way of doing something or do you find spreadsheets, code, and docs related to your job that date back to 1999 on the company's servers? Do you jump up excitedly when a random ass conversation with someone in a completely different field helps you figure out some problem you've been thinking about? Maybe even leave to go back home or to work to fix it right then and there? Or do you chastise friends for bringing up work? Are there companies whose products you love to hate that you're going to blow out of the water or is it your company whose products your customers love to hate? Do you get letters from customers and supporters telling you how much they love your product? Do you get hate mail telling you how much your product sucks? Do you get any feedback at all? Every actually met anyone who uses your product that you didn't sell to directly? Do you even think that half of those people use it? When you talk about what you do, do you get so infectiously excited about it that, all of the sudden, everyone around you is talking about it, too?
Why aren't you working for a startup?
January 15, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
FeedDemon Free: My road back to (web enabled) desktop software
FeedDemon was the first RSS reader I ever used, back in 2004.
I really liked it, but it felt so disconnected. I moved to NewsGator because I wanted an automatic blogroll, a mobile application, and I wanted it to be all synced up.
Then, after Newsgator acquired FeedDemon and got things all synced up, I just didn't want to pay for it.
I did pay for NewsGator Mobile, which I love, but I wasn't willing to pay anything for synced destop software. Despite improvements to the interface, I still didn't really love Newsgator Online, nor did I love being unable to read feeds on my laptop while offline.
Last week, Newsgator took the pricetags off and went free.
Not surprisingly, they're also supporting APML, which means that they're going after the data. I always felt like the feed reading folks were in a unique position to see who was paying attention to what (as is FeedBurner) and build interesting applications on top of that. For example, I can't wait to use their list of feeds I pay the most attention to. Going free and building up attention data: not only very Web 2.0, but also so much more useful to me.
This is a major step in my continuing quest to bring stuff back out of the browser and onto my desktop in a way that is still synced to my phone. First, I successfully brought all my Gmail/Gcal functionality out of the browser and enable phone syncing through a combo of Thunderbird and other apps. Now I'll be able to read feeds offline but also sync those feeds to my phone. That's great because the browser, thus far, doesn't seem like it's a place to efficiently run things that need applications. I've also started using the GTalk client and never got much use out of Meebo.
Now if I could only manage edit/upload/manage videos in a connected client. Phanfare doesn't have editing.
Hats off to the Newsgator team!
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January 14, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Terrell Owens crying... baaahahahaha! Bring on the Packers.
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January 14, 2008 in Baseball and Other Sports | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Invisible window installation
Invisible « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures - I Can Has Cheezburger?
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January 14, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Five Kinds of Social Media Users
Everyone uses the web quite differently, but I've noticed some strong usage patterns among social network, tagging, and blogging users that I think hold true.
The first type avoids social media altogether. It scares them. They say things like, "I don't want to expose my whole life on the web." They can't be found on Google and actively attempt to clean up their digital tracks. These people are to be avoided at all costs. Clearly they either a) have something to hide, like a body in the trunk of their car, b) have serious impulse control issues and if given a Flickr account or blog will immediately start posting pictures of their genitalia, or c) suffer from Usenet related alcoholism, because its all to easy to do a shot everytime someone responds to an annoying thread with "unsubscribe" in the body.
The second kind is a closet social media user. They've secretly had a LiveJournal since the first time they heard Ani DiFranco. (Mood: Angsty) They break into a cold sweat anytime they read stories about people fired from blogging, but secretly, they're hoping to be found...to be led to freedom by an LJ revolt where everyone goes to the window, opens it, sticks they're head out and yells, "I have an angsty LiveJournal blog, and I'm not going to keep it private anymore."
Of course, it never occurred to them that they use the same screename on their AdultFriendFinder profile.
The third kind of social media user is the happy medium most social users hope to achieve. They don't know how many RSS subscribers they have to their Tumblog-- and its mostly people they know anyway. They read Perez Hilton just as often, if not more, than TechCrunch and edited Wikipedia just once--to erase one benign sentence just to see if it would work. They like the idea of Twitter, but they only know 2 people who use it and fail to see the value of following Scoble or Calcanis, because they've never met either of them.
The fourth kind of social media user uses social networks to reflect and leverage their real life with worldclass efficiency. When their cable goes out, they LinkedIn their way to the night shift operations manager at Cablevision, who also happens to share the same music tastes (Wow, you like Radiohead, too!)... Cable back on in 4 minutes. Everything gets delivered, and expenses get tracked by both their social expense tracking community and Najesh, the Skype enabled personal assistant from Mumbai. Never alone, this user is always a Twitter or Dopplr notification from meeting up with someone they know, even snorkling in Fiji.
The last kind of social media maintains social media as their one and only form of social. "What do you mean offline?" They live in places with the lowest population density to downstream rate ratio in the country--not another man made structure for 22 miles, but they've got fiber to the home. All of their profile photos have that grainy blue glow of a webcam shot and they don't get it when people decline their friend invites because they're not friends. "Yeah...duh... that's why you click accept... to become friends!"
Any of these too close to home?
January 14, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-13
January 13, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-12
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A take on the Hillary crying episode
January 12, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I'm in a painting... well... sort of.
the Painting Activist » Blog Archive » Years of dancing in front of the mirror worth something
My friend Ashley Cecil is a Louisville artist who does paintings and donates part of the profits to related charities. Her recent work bares, in this bloggers humble opinion, an uncanny resemblance to a good looking NYC tech blogger. I dunno... you be the judge.
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January 11, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
What I think of when I blow my nose
I don't often need to blow my nose, because I never get sick. If I get the sniffles once every two years, its a lot. I'm pretty sure I didn't get sick in 2007, so when I found myself a little congested last night I figured I was due. I feel just fine, though.
Anyway, anytime I blow my nose, I think of my grandfather. He got Lou Gerhig's disease (ALS) when I was in high school and had very quickly lost the ability to lift his arms at all. That meant that noseblowing was out of the question....so when I went over to his house to help out, I always had to help him blow his nose. He'd yell at me because, instead of just putting the tissue to his nose, I'd squeeze it, like most of us do. Of course, squeezing makes no sense because if you're trying to clear your nose, closing off your nostrils only impedes the process.
Anyway, I don't squeeze my nose when I blow, or at least, try not to... but everytime I do, I think of my grandfather.
January 10, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
ESPN Page 2 - Behind the Hall of Fame ballot
Don Mattingly: The people who want you to vote for him say he was great before he hurt his back. Well let me tell you something: My cousin used to be a math whiz until he fell out of a pickup truck when he was 12 and hit his head on the curb. He couldn't count his fingers after that. Did they let him into MIT anyway? No, they did not. End of parable.ESPN Page 2 - Behind the Hall of Fame ballot
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January 9, 2008 in Baseball and Other Sports | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Toss another victim on the Web 2.0 Whack-a-mole heap: Jaiku adrift inside Google
Don't mind me... I just wanted to say "I told you so..."
Remind us not to sell Path 101 too early, before it's achieved enough scale to weather big company neglect.
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January 9, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Don't call it a comeback
As of this moment, they're predicting Hillary winning New Hampshire by 3% over Obama.
I don't call that a comeback.
John Edwards took 17% of the vote. If Edwards doesn't win, who do you think most of those people are going to back? Certainly not Hillary after his unrelenting attack on her special interest ties.
Not to mention the fact that, to get the nomination, you need to win delegates, not votes. Clinton and Obama tied at 9 pledged delegates a piece. There are 5 superdelegates from NH and who the heck knows how that works, but either way, it's not totally clear that Obama will not sill win the vote of the delegates from NH come convention time.
I think Edwards should just quit now, campaign for Obama, beat Hillary, and be VP and run again after. He's certainly young enough. Both him and Obama are both about change and they're going to need to combine forces to win.
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January 8, 2008 in Politics | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Shake Shack line on a springlike winter's day
January 8, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-07
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Ranking the top blogs and bloggers in advertising, marketing and media.
January 7, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Dear Peter Kalikow, MTA: Wait for me, dammit!
This morning, my local R train arrived at 59th Street in Brooklyn just as an N train sat waiting on the express side. As the R train slowed to open its doors, the N train started up and took off, much to the shagrin of all of the R train passengers who wanted to transfer to the express. The N was not full and this is the second time this has happened to me in a week. I've been riding the subway almost everyday since I was 14 and if I had a dollar for everytime this happened to me, across multiple lines, I wouldn't be concerned about another fare hike.
Customers on the R train into Bay Ridge suffer some of the worst service the system has to offer because of the infrequency of service after rush hour. I've spent significant time waiting on that same 59th St. platform waiting for a local R to take me home after 8PM. Given that, the MTA should be doing everything it can to minimize wait times and passenger frustration on that line. I don't expect extra trains, but if a connecting express train is already in the station, it should never leave while a local is just seconds away from closing its doors.
This also leads to passenger frustration and stress, which I'm sure is positively correlated with incidence of violence, accidents, mistreatment of MTA employees. This makes what probably amounts to a 30 second tradeoff seem very worth it for all involved.
I'm asking that an express or connecting train never leave a station while another train is entering the other side with passengers waiting to connect.
Thank you for your consideration.
Charles E. O'Donnell
MTA Passenger, NYC + NYS Taxpayer
January 7, 2008 in It's My Life | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Christopher Walken on Path 101
We made a set of videos to give our various perspectives on Path 101. You should definitely check them out on the Path 101 blog.
I had a little fun, though, and decided to make Christopher Walken our Path 101 spokesman:
January 7, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
@ptrain and my niece Jenny skating in Bryant Park
January 6, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-04
January 4, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-01-03
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"I am not a candidate for President," says Mayor Bloomberg, as channeled by columnist Michael Daly. "Not that I couldn't run if I wanted to. That $50 million Obama and Clinton and Huckabee and Romney and the rest spent out in Iowa? A mere bag of shells."
January 3, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
You don't own your social graph (Or, how not to solve 0.0003% of the world's problems.)
So this morning's tech news is that one person got kicked off of Facebook.
Yawn.
But, since Techmeme is the geek water cooler, I guess we should all be talking about it. I suppose Scoble is like Desperate Housewives or Grey's Anatomy--the shows aren't even that good, but you gotta watch because it seems everyone else is talking about it.
Today, Mr. Scoble got booted from Facebook for violating their terms of service... for running some kind of script that seems to scrape social graph data off of Facebook.
People seem to forget what "I agree to the Terms of Service" means. If you join a service, and invite all your friends to it, contribute all sorts of data, etc., don't get all pissy when you break the rules and they boot you.
Why?
Because these are the rules that everyone else agreed to as well.
If I was your friend, I wouldn't want you using some script to scrape my data and take it off Facebook. People seem to forget that friendships are two way relationships... those are people on the other end, not just data... and you don't own the data on the other people. These are people that looked at the Facebook TOS (or should have), were fine with it, and decided to set up shop. They don't want to live in a digital place where people who violate the TOS pulling their data run amuck. Not that I think Scoble is malintentioned, but unless he gets every single one of his friends to accept the porting of their data to another place, I don't see what kind of case he his. I don't remember anything in the "accept friend request" thing that says, "accept it when your friend wants to run a script that yanks data about you off of Facebook and brings it to some other place who's TOS you will never see."
Does the script take into consideration the privacy preferences of Scoble's friends, or does it assume they're all as public to everyone as they are to him, because he's logged in with his account?
When are the geeks going to realize that 99.99% of the world's population doesn't need or want data portability. Sure, it would make our lives more convenient if my I could see the restaurants my friends frequent through their credit card purchase data, but rather than try and convince Mastercard to accept open data standards, build an app with a simple hack that allows me to download it, and moreover, a reason to. That's what Mint and Wesabe are doing with financial data.
And as for the social networks, MOST people don't care about being on 3423 social networks at once with 43,000 friends, and sharing apps and data between these friends.
In fact, I can't think of a single situation where I thought to myself, "Boy, I'd really love to be able to listen to the music that my LinkedIn contacts do."
And I have no problem keeping professional contacts on LinkedIn and real friends on Facebook, and I'm unapologetic about it.
Last time I checked, real life was about different social spheres. My "real" social graph isn't a completely intermingled, open flow of data, nor do I want it to be. My digital life works best not just when it improves my real life, but also reflects it. I'm not friends with everyone. I don't want everyone's data. I don't want to show everyone else my data. There's enough of me already out there with very little effort on my part.
So, Mr. Scoble, please stay off Facebook if you plan on running scripts that the rest of us agreed weren't cool in the TOS. If you think the TOS needs to be changed, tell us about the app, tell Facebook, and gather support without breaking the rules first. While they've made mistakes in the past, Facebook seems pretty responsive to users when they gather a large amount of support.
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January 3, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
@innonate and @kylebagger playing with matches again
January 2, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
A little off-color Web 2.0 humor...
Q: Why did the porn site put MyBlogLog widgets on their pages?
A: So you could see all the people that came before you.
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January 2, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
This graph is what every startup should aim for: My month over month increase in Twitter usage
I think this is an amazing graph, because its not just about getting users, but getting each user to find more and more utility in your site month over month. Users can be obtained, but there's no substitute for this kind of single user growth in activity.
via Brad Kellett's Twitter Graphs.
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January 2, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
