I showed up at the gym yesterday morning and realized, in the locker room, that I didn't bring gym shorts. 

Working out in the morning really makes my whole day, because, for as much as I don't like to get up early, I like the way it makes me feel.

So I decided I'd bite the bullet and buy a pair of New York Sports Club shorts.  I figured I'd get ripped off, but I really wanted to work out and I'd probably need another pair of shorts eventually.

When I went up to the counter and asked how much the cheapest shorts were, the women at the desk made a face. 

"$22.50."

Even they knew it was a ripoff, but I was stuck.  Then, one of the women told her colleague that I could use her employee discount code, because I was so nice to them.  It rang up $16.50...   not so bad. 

There are two lessons here. 

One of them is just to be nice to all the people who work behind counters. 

The other is that, sometimes, gauging your customers when they're most desperate isn't a good strategy.

Had I actually been charged the $22.50, I would have felt totally ripped off.  Not only that, but I've been a NYSC member for almost 5 years now, and I've never gotten a free anything.  Not even a damn t-shirt.

Those NYSC shorts are an advertisement for them... they should be paying me to run around in them.  (Or at least subsidizing them...)

Creating this kind of anamosity in your customer base--a customer base that pays you about $80 a month--just doesn't seem like good business.

Instead, by giving me her employee discount, that woman at the front desk totally made my day and made me feel good about NYSC.  Wasn't that worth the $6 for the company?

In fact, if they really wanted to create a more customer centric strategy with their swag, they should have t-shirt giveaway days with the location of your NYSC club printed on the back.  New York City is full of attractive people... we're in pretty good shape, because we're out there walking, biking, hurrying around.  Put some free t-shirts on these people and let everyone know where to find them. 

I'd be happy to wear a NYSC t-shirt that said 23rd and Park on the back...   not that I'd drum up any new business, but I'm pretty sure there are a couple of people who work out at that club that could. 

I've mentioned this in parts in other posts, but I want to make a point of saying it here on its own:

There isn't a place on the face of the earth that is more well positioned to be a center of innovation over the next twenty years than New York. 

That's because the most interesting things we're going to see going forward aren't about tech.  Its not about faster chips or bigger pipes.  Its about content and communication, and providing an enabling service layer to finally put to use all the tech we've put in the ground, on our desks, and in the sky over the last few years.

And, to a large extent, that's just as much about creating new business models than it is building anything.  Its getting NBC comfortable with distributing ad supported SNL clips, and targeting those ads so well that I actually want to get them.  Its about being always on only with the people I want to be always on with--and helping me discover those people as well.

It used to be that if you wanted to discover the latest technology, you'd go to a cutting edge university research lab and see something being sodered together on a bench.  Now, you've got just as much of a chance of finding the latest tech in the university dorm room...  and once you enable that kind of entrepreneurial freedom, you start to shake up the way things were done before.

A lot of companies I see now seems to have a need for a business development person in New York City... or one that's willing to spend at least half their time here.  Even Amazon is getting into the media business apparently.  I think the people holding the keys to the kingdom are here in the Big Apple.

Of course, we don't have a perfect storm yet.  There's a bit of a "funding gap"...  we could use some more individual angels interested in doing pre-revenue, pre-business model deals in the new media space.  And, its hard to get cheap space to start a company.  But what we do have, besides a critical mass of media, are some of the most creative university students, more lawyers than you can shake a stick it, and a growing base of repeat entreprenuers and a venture community who has been around the block once or twice now.  I think of this town like a venture powderkeg just waiting to go off.

Or, am I wrong, and is it the case that always is and always was?

Got something to say?  Chat about it!

Right now, you can click the "live chat" link at the bottom of this post (next to the screaming Wall guy) and go into a chatroom specifically designed for this post.  So quit lurking and see who else is reading this post, because I don't have all the answers for sure.

And when you're done chatting, drop me a line and tell me what you think of the whole concept.

I'll probably jump in around 8:30AM/9ish.

Dear TV,

     I'm afraid this isn't really going to work out.  There's someone else.  Actually, there's a couple of others... there's the web, and, well, its not even just the web... there's my whole life, with the softball and the kayaking, and you just don't fit into it with your rigid scheduling and DRM lifestyle.

     You always want to do things on your terms...  showing shows only at certain times, only at home on my couch.  God forbid you let me copy a show and watch it on my computer or a video iPod.  Its all about you... you don't want to share and I'm just a free spirit.  You can't keep me caged in anymore.

     I want a relationship that lets me watch Jeopardy on the subway the morning after it airs... or even in a podcast on my bike.  I'm willing to go halfway--I'll even take the commercials with me if it makes you feel better, but no, you're not happy about that.  And, even when you do let me take a show with me, you want me to pay for each one individually.

     Why do you have to be so controlling?  You could be so much more.  You could just publish all the content freely and attach ads to it and let people take them wherever they want.  You could break free from the box... why do you keep holding back?

     You know, I thought things were getting better.  I was watching those funny SNL clips on YouTube and it made me feel like I wanted to get close to you again... maybe work things out.  But then you went and spoiled everything.

     I'm tired of feeling so confined.  There's a whole big world out there, and if you don't want to come with me, on my phone, on my Ipod, on the computer, then I think we need to end this.  You're so stuck in your ways and if you don't change, you're going to die alone. 

     I don't regret any of our time together...  our afternoons when I was 9, watching Airwolf, two episodes of Knight Rider, and two episodes of the A-Team...  but I'm 26 now and I need something more.  I'm sorry.

Charlie

PS...  There wasn't enough sex either.

So, at first, Gtalk was underwhelming.

But, integrated into my Gmail inbox, I've been using it all day... but in a different way than I use AIM.  I've noticed that, when someone sends me an e-mail, and they're online, its a quick way to ping somebody right back--because they're still in the inbox.  Its very task oriented, whereas AIM is more conversational.

Anyone else feel the same way?  Differently?  Have you used it more now?

I don't remember where I heard this, but someone made a very good observation as to why  educational software pales in comparison to the kind of experience kids get at home on their Xbox...  the development budgets on the average video game are exponentially higher.  So, kids can shoot bad guys with cutting edge graphics, but learning geometry takes them back to 1990. 

So why not make educational plugins for Halo?  Shoot bad guys with ellipses and paralell lines... or construct tanks by solving math problems with angles.   God forbid kids might learn something and have fun at the same time.

The same is true about education and web applications--schools are getting left behind because of antiquated notions about what students should be exposed to.

Take Blackboard, for example.  The company has made a huge business out of selling a content management system to schools as enterprise software.  Schools pay thousands of dollars for installation and implementation of this education portal so that teachers can get their classes online. 

Has anyone actually seen or used Blackboard?  I've taught classes and I've tried to use it.  Its awful.  It looks like it was designed in 1998, and compared to the sites that most college students spend their time on, MySpace and the Facebook, its about as captivating as cafeteria food. 

This is a market ripe for a lightweight, social web-app.  Students would love to logon, get their homework, search the profiles of other students in their class, pair off in groups, like to MySpace profiles, etc. 

The only problem is, schools are slow decision makers and they've already invested so much in Blackboard.  So, for a product to go viral, it needs to be grassroots and free.

But free necessitates some kind of advertising, and that's where the party ends for an educational web app.  Schools have gotten a lot of heat for bringing corporations anywhere near the classroom and so the market shys away from such a thing.

But this is hypocritical and unrealistic.  Corporations sponsor athletic teams.  They run ads in school newspapers.  Plus, its not like schools have a monopoly on the eyeballs.  What do you think students get exposed to when they head to the web or turn on their school cable?  What about MySpace and the Facebook?  These companies recognize that students are consumers, too, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be exposed to responsible advertising.  The great thing about the web is that, unlike athletic sponsorship, students can tune it out and switch services when it gets to be too much for them.

A few people are out there trying to do online content management apps for education, and so far, none of those services have even approached the advertising model.  I say why not.  What's wrong with a tabbed portal where students log onto where they get their homework and travel deals for spring break in the same place?  Its not like they're getting pop-ups in the middle of a history lesson.  These are the kind of advertisements students actually want to get and its silly if they can't be used to support web applications that enhance learning a lot better than the clunky Blackboard enterprise software does. 

I am continually underwhelmed by business model creativity.  I had an entreprenuer ask me not too long ago if there was any other way to monetize his business besides AdSense...   I'm quite sure he didn't expect to be on the phone that long when I answered.

Yes, Virginia, there are alternatives... lots.  They just require a little creativity.

Take 3Bubbles, for example, profiled on TechCrunch.

Just thinking of this as ad supported chat really underestimates the power of a distributed communication service where people have a profile and a history of content generation in context.

I'm sure they'll get the implementation particulars right at some point, but think of it this way:

What if every content site had this service, and instead of walled garden chatrooms, they were all connected in a network. 

Essentially, you will have built a social network on the back of the web w/o a single central location.  I could be introduced to people who are chatting about the same things I am, and get recommendations based on the things they are chatting about.  By indicating which things I feel strongly enough to chat about, connecting to others like me, this could create a recommended reading list for me based on the profile it creates watching by my actions.   I wrote about how one could port this profile to other completely different types of services in my piece about Theirware and MyWare.

So, the profile built as the data exhaust from my 3Bubbles communications could be used to power e-commerce on other sites.  3Bubbles could be the place where I keep my offer inbox...   I chat about travel, and so travel companies offer me travel deals.  If you're an advertiser, imagine being able to give offers to the people who chat most about your product.  There are a ton of companies trying to track who the evangelists are for consumer products companies...  this would spotlight exactly who those people were and I'm sure companies would pay for access to them.

This could be really interesting... a lot more interesting than just ad supported chat.

I just tried vSocial and, while I had a nitpick about the uploading, the results are dramatically different than YouTube.

It doesn't pop you back your video right away, which was annoying.  So, I took my video over to YouTube.  I didn't edit it at all, and just uploaded the way too big MPEG4 straight into YouTube.  Well, not only was the quality of the video degraded, but the framing was all screwy.  It didn't shrink my video down to websize, it just showed the top corner of the video.  That's a dumb service.

So, just now, I got an e-mail note that my vSocial video was ready and I was so impressed with the results.  It looks just as nice as the video I took, rightsized itself, and played much quicker than YouTube.

Now, I don't know if this is scalable or not, because YouTube has a lot more traffic, but if it is, you should definitely be using vSocial for video hosting.

Here's where the "offer inbox", opt-in advertising, comparison shopping, and recommendations all need to converge:

I am an in-market Media PC buyer.  I want to buy a computer that is fast enough to do video cutting, splicing, etc.... plug into my TV, VCR, DVD, etc...   power my wifi music system, etc.  I probably want to spend around $2000.  Storage is very important to me, but I don't think I need a whole terrabyte.

I will not be gaming...screen res has to be good, but doesn't have to be ridiculously cutting edge. 
I want to burn DVDs and CDs...speed not that important as long as it doesn't take 4 days to burn my home videos to DVD.

So...  here's the question.  Where do I go to put the HP, Dell, Gateway, Sony, etc. etc. offerings all next to each other and compare them side by side, feature for feature, and also get user feedback as well?

Is there a good tool out there for this?  I'd literally just like to see columns and rows of features that I can sort and add/subtract from to get updated pricing.

Seems like this should be out there, but I don't think it is.

If it isn't, user feedback is much appreciated on this post.

So there's been a flood of interest in nextNY, which is great.

People are excited about connecting with others both socially and professionally in the local NYC tech and new media community who are early on in their career path.

However, most of these people so far are, not surprisingly, male.

That wouldn't be surprising if this were just about getting engineers together, because that's, unfortunately, the makeup of that area.

But the future of NYC's digital workforce includes a wider group--marketers, people in sales, design and creative folks, and I'm pretty sure there are a few women in those areas working with, for, or trying to get into tech companies.  And, if this is going to be a social group, we need a balace--a diversity of interests, backgrounds, and gender, too--because we want this to be fun.

So where are they? 

If you are an ambitious young woman looking to help shape the NYC digital community, or you just want to drink with the NYC digital community and attend the occasional presentation (we don't know what the presentations will be yet... taking ideas), join us on February 22nd at our first bar outing.  RVSP with me at charlie@unionsquareventures.com.

I had the benefit of getting to hear J. Michael Kelly speak at a conference on Monday.  It was clear from his talk that AOL's announcement that it was going to try to build out a social network around AIM instant messenger was a priority for the company.  They definitely recognize that, regardless of their ability to monetize the system in the past, when you have 7 million simultaneous users on your product, it should be a core focus for product development.  While I've picked on AOL before,  I can't shake the feeling that this effort has a serious chance of success.  I like the idea that this is a social network based on some other activity--communication--whereas some of the other networks, like Friendster, are social networks for the sake of social networking.  Building connections as a byproduct of some other activity is always going to be more authentic.  AIM, through its buddy lists, was always a loose connection of micro networks and just a little duct tape is going to go a long way here if Umairanomics has anything to say for it. 

Of course, I have a few suggestions for the folks at AOL, but when do I ever not have something to say?

1) Solve spam.
AOL gets in trouble with spam too often for a company advertising itself as the safe place to play on the internet.  Its too easy for spammers to get fake IM accounts and send out notices about sexy singles in my neightborhood. This is especially confusing when real sexy singles are already IMing you on a regular basis.  (Ben Barren's got the same problem.)  Part of the problem, as I mention later, is that the platform is closed.  They should let someone develop an IM spam blocking network on top of it if they can't figure it out themselves.

2) Bring back the profile.
When I was in college, back before the bubble, AOL profiles were MySpace and the Facebook.  (Kind of like the way that Netscape's Netcenter could have been Yahoo! had they realized that was the valuable asset and not the browser.) You used them to find people in your school , your neighborhood, or other people who liked Green Day.  That's how I met Beth.  Ah, Beth.  Of course, Beth doesn't talk to me anymore, and it seems fitting, because when AIM went standalone, they forgot to take AOL profiles with them.  In a way, leaving those profiles to whither is probably the biggest reason why AOL got so far behind in social networking.  Profiles moved to the web eventually, but on other social networks.  People liked updating their profiles and AOL should have realized there was something more to that.  The thing that could make an AOL profile so much more ubiquitous is that, unlike MySpace or LinkedIn, the brand is pretty universal, and a good product would pretty much appeal to anyone with a screename.  Plus, the penetration of AIM and its buddy lists gives it a terrific natural advantage in building out a social networking app.  Start small with AIM profiles that have a URL and are just as customizable as MySpace and people will come back.      

3) Build a presence platform.
I get my instant messages forwarded to my phone as texts when my desktop is idle. So, basicially, I'm reachable through AIM nearly 100% of the time. I can't say that for any other web service. That's a very valuable relationship to have with consumers.  Presence preferences could power a lot of other web services. If you add in email and phone information, your screename could be used as a personal ruleset for routing stock quotes, meeting updates, RSS, etc. Maybe apartment listings should hit me wherever I'm active, and if I'm not active anywhere, go to my email. But "hi" pings from friends should go somewhere else.  Letting the user calibrate all of those alerts from one place, their side, versus all of the sites they get alerts from, would make them a lot more manageable. This way, telling any service how and when you want to be reached, and by who, could be as easy as entering your AOL screename.

4. Open the platform.
Why doesn't AOL get aggressive and add a Yahoo and MSN plugin to their client, like Trillian?  Let everyone talk to each other.  They are by far the biggest network.  What's the worst that could happen?  Even if they got blocked, they could spin it as if they're trying to be user centric and the other two aren't.  If they were the only client out of the big three to open up, they would probably see a nice bump in users.
In further embracing the open mantra, they should make it easier to program bots and add-ins to the platform.  Let the community enhance the richness of the software, just like Firefox has done.  My add-in wishlist: IM spam blocker, CRM notetaking, and filesharing.

5. Pimp My AIM.
Every now and then, AIM tries to sneak one past the goalie on us.  Sometimes its a popup "Today" screen and other times its a bot or two.  Instead of treating the AIM client like a Trojan horse, AOL should build more opt-in functionality into the friendly confines of that little rectangle.  The combination of its ubiquity and the social buddy list data should enable a wide variety of services that we might want to add on from a menu, not get tricked into.  For example, they should partner with Pandora and turn AIM into a social music player.  Make it really easy for friends of mine to see the Rammstein+Depeche Mode+Orgy stream that I created on Pandora.  In fact, why stop there?  Turn AIM into a social rich media player, enabling me to share SNL clips and chat with people about the State of the Union address.  And, while we're at it, why not partner with Apple to make Quicktime the standard for the player, because almost everyone has either Quicktime or AIM. 

6. Remember my conversations.
Gtalk has a neat feature that archives my old conversations and puts me right back where I left off, even if I close the box.  This would be great for remembering things about new people, and great for AOL if they want to better contextually target users.  Google just announced that all your Gtalk conversations could be archived in your Gmail.  I think its a smart move if you're the leader in a space to be doing some of what Google is trying to do to make sure you don't get leapfrogged....  or at least carefully pay attention to it.

7. AIM everywhere
The whole web could easily get tied together in a social network by AIM.  Imagine how powerful a cookie on your computer would be combined an AIM status icon on my blog.  You could come to my blog and know instantly whether or not we knew each other through friends of friends on our buddy list.  No signing in, no inviting friends...just come to my page to see if we're connecte because your computer knows we're just one buddy list away from each other.  Extending AIM out of the desktop client onto the web is just the start.  It needs to get mobile, too.  I had a tough time figuring out how to get AIM on my phone and so I resort to just answering IMs forwarded as texts.  AOL should throw whatever resources it needs to get AIM on every phone, not just to ensure its position as a communications medium but as a platform as well.  At some point, people will want to text all their buddies within a mile radius to meet out at a bar...  And AOL needs to leave no mobile user sober in this scenario.

8. AIM Exchange/tag talk
Chat rooms, in my opinion, are clunky for conversation.  I chat on AIM and while I wouldn't mind getting into a few chatroom like discussions, I don't want to have to go anywhere else but my buddylist to do it.  Nor do I want to have to invite friends or wait to get invited.  Joining a chat should be as easy as IMing to a keyword.  So, I could have a NYC restaurants buddy that is just an ongoing conversation among anyone interested in the topic.  That's also why you need archived conversations.

9. Peer to peer
When you have as many desktop clients as AIM does, and you want to build something social, P2P seems like the infrastructure you should be building on.  Its only natural that people are going to want to share files and chat and, right now, a lot of people have both AIM and Skype on their desktop.  Is Skype a threat or an opportunity?  Should AOL partner with Skype to plug into AIM for VOIP?  One thing's for sure... If I were Yahoo or MSN I would be doing that.  I'm not as clear on the scenarios, but I think the time will come when the idea of having a piece of communications software on your desktop that isn't P2P will seem very quaint.

Thoughts?  Comments?  What should #10 be? 

Thanks for reading this far down. 

Sometimes, it seems like if you're on the west coast, everybody knows somebody at a startup.  The perception is that, every night, there's a blogger dinner, tech BBQ, geek swap or launch party (Oddly enough, I did the math and there have been more launch parties than actual startups.  Alright...fess up!  Who launched twice?).

But yet, as I see more of the TV creep onto the internet and vice versa, the growth of mobile media and services, and this whole new web revolution being underwritten by online advertising, I realize that New York, maybe more so than any other place in the world, is positioned to be right in the center of this new batch of innovation.  We've got big media, small media, WeMedia, telecoms, tags, culture, Madison Avenue, music publishers, and schools well positioned to fuel the fire with programs like NYU's ITP and the Parsons Design and Tech program, not to mention Columbia engineering and even the highly underrated CUNY system.

That being said, I thought that it was about time to get some of my own peer group together to help ensure that, going forward, New York City is as much the Capital of Tech as it is the Capital of the World.

That's a lofty goal, so we're ok if we just wind up having a good time and meeting cool people involved in the tech and new media space in New York City.  No harm in that. We have some awesome people involved that have provided a lot of great feedback and support, like Jakob, Greg, Carla, these mobile guys, these sticky folks, Maryhope from ATTAP, and a bunch of other cool NYC area movers and shakers.

Is there an age cutoff?  An experience level I can clearly define?  No.  I'm just conscious of the fact that is just as important to learn from those who aren't sure what their great accomplishments will be or who are still working on them, than it is to learn from those who have already done them.  I learn from other analysts in a different, but of course non mutually exclusive way than I do from Brad and Fred.  You need both to be successful and this is more about sharing ideas and good times with those people climbing quickly up the ladder, but still on the first couple of rungs.

So join us!

What:   1st nextNY Gathering – Please RSVP

nextNY is a fun way to connect both socially and professionally with young people who have a stake in future of tech and new media in New York City.  Participants generally have less than ten years experience and we especially welcome recent graduates who are just starting their careers.  We’ll be doing some bar outings, idea exchanges, and we’re open to creative ideas on what kind of events we should have. 

We’re seeking:

• Young entrepreneurs
• Analysts and Principals
  
• Programmers
• Marketers
• Designers
• Undecideds
• A balanced mix of background, gender, perspective (just like NYC!)
  

When:  February 22, 2006, 7PM

Where:

Antarctica
287 Hudson St
New York, NY 10013 

Cross Street: Spring Street

Directions: 1, 2, 3, 9; A, C, E at Canal St


RSVP:  Please RSVP to Charlie O'Donnell at charlie@unionsquareventures.com.  Please give us a one or two sentence bio and tell us how you heard about NextNY.

Ok, so its not really about the Spiritual Exercises, but doing this kind of introspection is certainly very Jesuit-y.  I'm quite sure that's not a word, but then again, neither is truthiness.

I think I'm going to start doing this.  Writing works for me in the same way.

Link: Fabrice Grinda: Musings of an Entrepreneur � The Power of Introspection and Detached Analysis.

"To help me make those decisions – whether in my business life or my personal life - I write myself long, detailed e-mails analyzing where I am, where I want to be, my options and the pros and cons of them.

The very act of writing down the options helps me think through them. I rarely reach the right conclusion while writing the e-mail to myself, but usually find it a few weeks later – sometimes after using the e-mail as a discussion tool with my close friends and trusted advisors."

Virus or hard disk crash?  Die in a hurricane or a terrorist attack?

Does it matter?

I was having a conversation today about the irrationality of fear and how it applies to both the IT world and to the geopolitical scene.

First, the IT side.

How many of you have virus protection versus how many of you have online backup?

Ok, now here's the kicker.  How many of you have actually had a hard disk crash on you versus being the victim of an actual virus?

Many more people have virus protection than have any kind of online backup, but the reality is, you're probably just as, if not more likely to suffer a hard disk crash at some point.  Hard drives fail... they aren't built to last.  Yet, we keep pictures of our family on them, thesis papers, music... all sorts of important stuff.  No backup.  What if it crashes?  I dunno.

So why are we much more afraid of viruses than we are of bad hard drives?  I think its the malicious intention that prey on our fears most.  Bad guys are trying to get at your computer and steal or erase your files. 

Its an easier marketing sell.  Just ask the Bush administration.  (Here's the political part.)  While I may be a fan of fighting terrorism and into the idea of a stable Middle East, I'm not so blind that I can't see a little imbalance in how we spend our money.  Going down to New Orleans opened my eyes to the fact that Hurricane Katrina has killed at least half as many people as 9/11 did, possibly even more (still 3,200 people unaccounted for, many of whom probably got swept into Lake Ponchetrain or are still under the rubble), but we're not spending not nearly the amount of money nor the time and attention we are to preventing hurricane related deaths as we are fighting terrorism. 

That's because there's no enemy to fight.  Hurricanes are an act of God and you can't exactly try to blow up God.  (You can, however, mail him a letter.)  Without any easy answer to point to, to find some other problem to deal with and hope it never quite happens to us.  (That goes for both terrorist attacks and hard drive crashes.)

Its just an interesting paralell, that's all.

So does this make Symantec the Halliburton of the internet?  You might think that's far fetched, but has anyone seen the ThreatCon system on their homepage?

Perhaps my time is better spent backing up my levees...  errr... um...  my hard drive. 

First came spyware:  programs that hid on your computer recording the things you did without your knowledge to try and spam you with advertising.  We've largely eliminated the spyware problem.

Now, we have "theirware."  Theirware is the sotware that drives the blackbox algorythyms of recommendation engines.  Amazon is probably the best example.  They keep records of what you bought, what you rate, and undoubtedly what you are clicking on and suggest products for you.  Not only do they not allow you to see that data, but you certainly can't take that data to another service.  You can't take the record of all of the Italian cookbooks you bought and use it to hint AdSense that they should be showing you ads about travelling to Tuscany.  That's theirware.  It mostly benefits Amazon alone and leaves you far short of reaching the potential benefit you could gain if you had access to the metadata you created.

Now people are starting to talk about spying on yourself...  Downloading little applications that follow everything you do and create a vault of data that you control.  The philosophy behind it is the right one--that users should be in control of their own data--but there aren't really good applications of having all that data yet.  It might be interesting to see where I click and how I search, but so what?  If I can't use that data somewhere, its a little bit wasted.  Plus, its going to be hard to convince a critical mass of users to start capturing that data, especially if it means downloading something, unless they can do something useful with it.

Here's one potential solution.  We're well underway on the client side app, but there needs to be a web site complement to enable a data for personalization "trade".  Its like a lock and key system.  The key side has all your captured browsing, any demographic data that you want to share, and is tweakable.  You can add and subtract keywords and change your interests depending on the time of day, your IP location, etc. 

The lock side should be offered on any site that could benefit from this kind of data...  Amazon, news portals, even ads.  When you first go into Amazon, there should be a little button to click that says "Unlock MyAmazon".  Clicking it exposes as much or as little of your personal data as you see fit and renders a page that is uniquely taliored to your interests.  So, maybe you're willing to give your news browsing habits to other news sites, but not to eCommerce sites.  Unlike the blackboxes, however, when you take the key out, Amazon loses the data and the page goes back the way it was.

This is good for Amazon because now they get the benefit of data gathered on you from lots of other places, and helps them target you better.  So if you're at Travelocity looking at trips to Italy, they can try to feature books on Tuscany on the front page.  This is like what Tacoda does for advertising, but now we're talking about rerendering the whole site based on your own data.

The consumer benefits because not only do they get a more relevent browsing experience, but they keep your own data.  I'd like to think that this will put an end to having to hand over your email address anytime you want to personalize anything.  Single signon and you can decide which advertisers you want email from and which ones you don't.  For an advertisier, they're  trading off the ability to mass mail you with something irrelevant for the data to give you want you want wheb you're actually on the site.  So, eBay, you can't have my email address, but show me bikes everytime I'm on the site.

Hopefully, each day we're getting closer and closer to balancing tipping the scales of the new media deal.

This doesn't happen enough to make me want to switch phones, but just enough to be annoying.  When I put it back on the cradle a lot of times, it turns the phone off.  Sometimes, if its clipped on to my belt, I'll look down and see that the phone is off, but I'll have no idea why.

Is there a "turn the phone off randomly" setting I'm not aware of?

Now that I've moved into the new place, I've realized I've forgotten something big.

Music.

In my old apartment, my computer was right smack in the middle of the living area, and close enough to the bedroom that I could blast it and it worked fine.

Now my computer is in an office way on the other side of the apartment away from the bedroom.  Plus, its going on 4 1/2 years old and I'm running out of disk space.

So, I think an upgrade is in order and I'm reaching out for some advice.  I'm willing to go pretty geeky here, especially if it means getting something on the cheap and learning something in the process.

Here's what I want:

I want something fast, with a ton of storage, that I can capture video on and play music.  The music needs to be streamed into 3-4 rooms, but I'd like to be able to choose which rooms.  So, if I'm cooking, no need for it to be on in the bedroom.  I don't need two different streams in two different rooms.  This isn't Webster Hall.

So, advice on a PC (minus a screen... I have a flat screen already) and a wireless speaker setup, as well as a good TV capture card...   Anyone either have ideas, sites to go to, or advice on how to approach my search?

Again...  let me reiterate that I don't want to/can't speak 10K on this.  We're looking to do this on the cheap.

Joshua from del.icio.us often says that lots of people are good at coming up with more ideas but very few people are good with less.  Less ideas?  Yes...   Narrowing down your service to its most basic features and elements.  Getting rid of the chafe.

When I wrote papers in college, I tended to be a bit wordy.  (I know, I know... right?   Me, wordy?)  I'd write a paper and then my first edit was to just cut the word count by 20% and say the same thing.  I'd go sentence by sentence replacing four words with three, just to squeeze under the target count.  It made my writing so much better, though.  More words don't always get your point across better.

With web services, more clicks and even sometimes more features, can confuse the hell out of a user.  When you develop a service, how about trying the following exercise:

1. List all of the ideas for functions of your service.
2. Rank them in terms of value to the user.
3. Kill off the most useless 20% of the features.
4. Take the remaining 80% and map how many clicks it takes for someone to actually complete them.
5. Even with the most simple, try and kill off 20% of the clicks... or if its really simple to begin with, just shave a click off of everything.

Seems that I missed some people at the NYSIA Web 2.0 meeting last Monday.  Fred mentioned that a couple of people, including a Fordham grad, asked for me.  Funny enough, I also cracked 600 today on my RSS subs.  I feel like my recent Chuck Norris association is really driving some of this popularity.  Blogging Chuck Norris=popularity.

Anyway, if anyone is going to be at the Digital Hollywood Media Summit, look me up.  I'll be the bald guy with the tablet.

If Yahoo doesn't want to be #1 in search, and they buy Digg after buying Delicious, what, then, do they want to be?