Yahoo just bought Delicious:

Here it is live from the source:
Link: del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!.

And here's our take, on our blog.

Link: New York Daily News - Mets - Mets add old reliable.

With Julio following in the footsteps of John and Matt, the Mets have had every player named Franco in major league history.

I was at MSG for Depeche Mode last night...    Great concert.  Took some phone videos:

View this clip on Vimeo

View this clip on Vimeo

SANY0100, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

So I'm in the elevator at work yesterday and this guy is kind of laughing to himself behind me. Before he gets off on 7, he taps me and says, "Hey, nice coat."

Great, me and my coat have become a hyperlocal celebrity--within the friendly confines of 915 Broadway. Too funny.

But that reminded me that I hadn't blogged about the coat yet, even though I've had it for a week. And let me tell you, it came none too soon, too, because its been as cold as snot in New York.

Link: Google Transit.

If I were HopStop, I'd be worried...   

GYM...  eating web services in a city near you....

How many friends can you have and still be a good friend to anyone?

How does that number change when your career takes off?  When you move?  When you get into a relationship?  When you get married?

Do you actively manage these changes?  Has anyone dinged you lately with "where've you been?", for not returning a phonecall, or for the dreded "viewed" with no response on a party Evite?

For as long as I know, I've always held on and tried to keep in touch with just about anyone that I meet that I find interesting.  Social networking on Friendster and MySpace help keep a lot of otherwise drifting friendships alive... and so does IM.  My evites are huge and I often forget how I even met half the people that I know.  However, I've never really had that small, closeknit group of friends that's always around.  My network is truly an expression of "small pieces loosely joined."  However, its catching up with me.  I'm realizing that you can't treat everyone like small pieces and expect them to treat you as anything more.   I think this happens a lot to people who spend a lot of time online.  Your relationship bandwidth gets spread over the long tail.

Please note some of the realizations I've come to:

• Evites with 100 people and group e-mails do not constitute friendship.
• Reading someone's blog or expecting them to read yours is not the only way you should be building relationships with the people closest to you.
• IMing isn't friendship if it never gets past "Hey... what's up?"  "Nothin' much."
• Any testamonials you leave on a social networking site should be said in person.

When I was in college, I went on some retreats and we used to have an exercise that would help you take stock in the people around you and come to the realization of who you were closest to and where, perhaps, your relationships needed work.  You would list people in your life and make little notiations next to the people you could count on for various things, and who could count on you.  It was a real eyeopening exercise.  I think it made a lot of people realize they were coming up short, and also that they were probably a lot closer to their parents or family than they realized.

We used to start it off by listing the phone numbers of our friends, but that was all the way back in 1998/99 before college kids ever had cellphones, so now that doesn't work.

So, instead, I've put together a new version:

Introspective Friendship/Relationship Inventory 2.0

1. Get a blank sheet of paper, open up a new blog post, or a document in Writely.
2. Divide it in three columns.
3. Down the first column, list the following people.  Don't double list anyone and if you have overlap, just add the one or two incremental people that apply.  Feel free to actually consult web applications to complete the list, especially for #4.
   
   1. Who are the first five people you would invite to be your contacts in a new social networking application?
   2. Who are the last three people that you've actually met in person that you have IMed?
   3. Who are three offline friends who don't have a blog that you wish would start blogging?
   4. List your immediate family members... parents, syblings, spouse, kids.
   5. Which two offline contacts have commented on your blog the most?
   6. Which three personal, offline contacts have gained the special priviliege of being communicated with through your work account, which also means you respond to them through your Blackberry/Treo, etc.
   7. Name three people that you know offhand appear automatically in GMail or any other mail application with autocomplete with just one letter typed.
   8. Who are the first three people you can count on to respond to an Evite?
   9. Who are the three people least likely to get pissed if you just walk away from IM without a goodbye?
   10. Who is the one person amoung the people you spend time with who is glaringly absent from this list?  (Did you forget a kid?)
4. Ok, now that you've got your list of people, add the following icons to each column as they apply.  So, for anytime its something someone would do/has done for you, put an icon in the left column.  For anything you would do or have done for someone else, put it in the right column.  In fact, take a moment to label the columns "for:<insert del.icio.us screename here>" (or just "me" if you don't use del.icio.us) and for:them".
   1. Make a little :) face next to all of the people who you would go to individually (not blogging) to talk about an idea you're really excited about... that goes in the right.  A :) goes in the left for anyone that has come to you with news about something they're really excited about.
   2. Place a :* (or a heart) next to someone you'd go to with a relationship problem on the right, and vice versa on the left.
   3. Put a $ in the respective columns when it comes to anyone that you could borrow money from and who could come to you.  (via Paypal, of course)
   4. Put a + for anyone you could discuss a spiritual issue with, and vice versa.  (You have to actually know Evelyn Rodriguez to actually list her, btw...)
   5. A <:) for anyone you would invite to a birthday dinner and the same for people who would invite you.
   6. A :.. ( for anyone you could cry in front of or who could cry in front of you.  (Do I have to keep explaining the columns?)
   7. Put a ! for anyone who would put themselves out there to defend you (if they blogged) in a Web 2.0 blogging flame war and the other way around.
   8. But an & for anyone you appear in a group photo with on Flickr or somewhere else on the web.  (both columns)
   9. Put a # next to anyone who you always pick up the phone, IM, skype, etc. for and hardly ever screen.  (Guess on who screens you and seems inordinately difficult to reach)
   10. Put a @ next to anybody whose house and/or local coffee shop you've been to in the last month and the same for people you've invited into your home. and/or local coffee shop.
   11. Who would you go to for advice or to destress if the RIAA got to you because of your illegal music downloading?  Put an "i" for that.  (for iTunes)

Who got the most icons in each column?  Where is there an inbalance?  Any surprises?  Who got overrepresented or underreppresented because their relationship with you is stronger offline vs. online, or the other way around?  Should your online life be reflective of your offline world or should it be the result of who is most easily accessable online?

I'm interested in the comments of anyone who takes the time to complete this...

David's got this right...

Link: VentureBlog: Social Networks 3.0.

After a fair bit of excitement and energy around pure play social networks, it became clear that the building and management of a social network was not, in and of itself, a compelling consumer experience. In a nod back to the earliest instantiations of social networking, entrepreneurs have come to realize that social networks are enablers of other compelling consumer experiences. Thus, social networks are becoming an important ingredient of all sorts of consumer experiences.

So Daniel Craig is the new bond.  Interesting.  I'll have to see him in action, but in the meantime, I think its time I brought the 007 franchise to my list.

But I can't pick just one.

So, instead, I'll make a "Best of" list....

SANY0095, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

And I'm scheduled to play football, too. Nice!

Link: BuzzMachine � Blog Archive � Local ain’t easy.

Jeff has been talking about how efforts like Judy's Book and Riffs go about trying to get users to contribute content, and whether or not content from strangers is of value to anyone.  People are trying to go about solving such problems by essentially "paying" for content and "scoring" the content via ratings, trust measures, etc.

Seems very heavy to me.

How about something more lightweight, like this...

1. I query my network (my real network, not one I built on an online social network) for a recommendation:
   1. Queries never have to take place on the website, nor does anyone have to be a member to answer them.  I start out by uploading or just plugging in/pointing to some kind of address book of friends.  Then, I contact a single e-mail/sms number/IM bot preset to output my query to a certain group.  So, I could IM "askmyfriends" and AOL, and it knows that ceo21 is me and that it should hit my database of friends.   
   2. I ask it something simple like, "Does anyone know a cheap Thai restaurant near Union Square?"  It knows what "thai restaurant" is and it knows "cheap" from "good" or "fast".  As for Union Square, it might not be able to figure that one out, so it might just IM me back and say "Where is Union Square?"  Then, I'd have to tell it a street address and it would probably send me back something silly like, "Is this where Union Square is in New York for everyone?"  Yes...  but thanks for asking, because "my office" might mean something else to someone else.
   3. The question gets sent to all my friends via e-mail.  First timers also get a little note saying "This note was sent via "askmyfriends".  Do you want to be contacted differently the next time Charlie needs to ask his friends for a recommendation?  Do you want to check out some of the answers people have been giving on the site?  etc...   This way, they can sign up to get an IM themselves, or an SMS... or some ordered "presence" combo.  EDIT:  To counter spam (thanks for the feedback, Jeremy), two fixes: 1) Ten of my friends may, at first, get a note saying "Charlie has just joined a service to help him ask his friends for recommendations.  We want to make sure he's not spam.  Is he legit?" Once you get a certain about of yeses, then it allows the message to go through, to make sure I'm a real person.  A certain about of "this is a spammer" messages bounce me off the system.  2) My contact database may only be build through my e-mail inbox.  So, I can only add people who I've e-mailed at least twice and they've e-mailed me back twice in the last month. Other ideas are welcome.
   4. They can respond the way the got asked the question (not only through a site), and the service can try and enterpret the results given the criteria I put in.  When Fred texts back "lemn grs", given that I was asking for a thai restaurant near Union Square, the service could check back with him and ask, "Did you mean Lemon Grass?"   They could even ask for a rating (how cheap is this?), but that's it for the follow up questions. 
   5. This quick little back and forth generates a lot of metadata.  It connects me to me and Fred w/o even requiring either one of us to "add to friends" or requiring anyone to signup.  All I did was point my question to my contact list, and Fred responded.  What it also did was tack on a vote and perhaps even a specific rating to a local restaurant from someone I know and trust.  Because, at the end of the day, that's all I'm really looking for...  not a site that I need to play on all day.
   6. The website for this service would be an afterthought... a way to collect and present most importantly, my own stored queries and answers.  Because, like del.icio.us, you can go a long way by just solving a simple problem (in this case, storing and allowing me to easily retrieve recommendations) for one user.  The network affects come second.  You can then ask to seek out recommendations from friends of others, because if Fred gives me the Lemon Grass tip, and I liked it, I might also want to see recommendations from the people who are tipping him off, particularly in the same category.  In fact, maybe you don't even allow people to add their own content.  All you can do is get recommendations from others by asking a question.  (Sort of like not letting people self-tag.) 

There are key differences with this idea than from what's out there:

1. The service gets built not by getting people to contribute first, but by getting people to solicit the content from others for their own benefit.  Its not "join this site and list your favorite places" its "please answer my quick question right now."  That's microchunking.
2. Decentralization comes first.  A lot of people built a site and then work on SMS, IM, chat, e-mail plugins later or as an afterthought.  How about someone built these communication tools first and save the AJAX for desert?
3. Social networking is implicit.  We're connected because we've actually connected on a Q&A, not because I've added you as a contact, friend, stalker victim, etc.  This is a much more natural and passive way to build out a users real social network.
4. People join after using the site and contributing content.  After people have answered a few questions, you can remind them in the question e-mails, "Hey, thanks for all your great recommendations... if you ever need to go back and find all 4 of them, they're conveniently stored here.  If you want to ask your friends to help you out for once (since you've been so helpful to them), you can do it here as well."  Someone could participate heavily and never have to join anything, upload a photo, etc.

Business model?

Well, in addition to advertising, how about selling restaurants access to the best local critics and let it go blindly through to the users who recommend the most.

So, if I'm opening up a new Italian restaurant in Brooklyn near Gino's, I think it would be worth it for me to invite the top ten local Italian restaurant recommenders to my restaurant at half price, no?  From a raters perspective, I think I'd probably answer more questions if I thought some dinner coupons would come my way.

Multiply that for movies, music, bars, books x hundreds of cities.... you get the point.

Maybe you wouldn't even need advertisers... you could just "sell the right to offer free stuff to the sneezers."

Who are these clowns on the subway?, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I like his commuter shoes better than mine.

In spite of my newfound popularity in the Phillipines (they were the only ones viewing my profile and e-mailing me) and the "19/f wanna chat, go to my profile on naughtyhighschlrs.com" crowd, I'm tired of Friendster.  I just killed my profile.

It was fun at first.  I even went on some Friendster dates that worked out pretty well, admittedly.  But now, its just a pain.

Its one thing to not provide any value...   I never get any new friend requests because the service is losing users, and not gaining any.  If that was the only issue, I would just leave my profile and let it drift.  But, I get spammed by fake hot girls trying to send me to porn sites elsewhere.  Why am I spending any time deleting those notification e-mails (which don't show me the message, requiring me to go to the site to check them out) if I don't get any value from the site?

So, it was fun while it lasted, Friendster, but well...   even above all this, the reality is, its not you, its me.  I'm not the kind of guy you're looking for.  You need someone more valuable.  Someone who clicks on all the ads, perhaps?  Someone who wants to list things for sale in the Friendster classifieds or start/join a Friendster group.  You want someone who wants to sign in and invite more friends to the service as soon as they enter before they even check their Friendster e-mail.  You want someone who wants to skin their Friendster profile, but not actually have full flexibility on the format.  You deserve better.  I'm sure you'll find better friends...   just look at the hundreds of people who aren't on Myspace and/or the Facebook.  I'm sure there are some of those people out there for you.  I'm just not that guy.

Link: Coat Idol.

Selection   Votes 1) New University Coat (with Thinsolate) 42% 20 2) Columbia Men's Leather Bib Hipster Jacket 8% 4 3) Kenneth Cole Reaction Wool Peacoat 17% 8 4) Kenneth Cole REACTION  "Boxcar" Coat 17% 8 5) Andrew Marc's Marc New York 8% 4 6) Leather Car Coat 8% 4 48 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Has TV learned nothing from the music industry??

Link: NBC might sue TiVo over PSP and iPod support - Engadget - www.engadget.com.

I know, I know, I'm doing a terrible job of keeping up... but I've been busy fixing the layout of this blog.  :)   Well worth it so far, no?   This is the end of phase one.  In phase two, I'll be fixing the layout of the sidebar and reorganizing some of the bells and whistles.

I rediscovered Ghostbusters not too long ago.  I never really realized the quality of the writing before.  Almost every single line in the movie is either funny or just plain good.  The commercialization around this movie really made it cheesy, but if you go back to it years later, its actually a fantastically written movie.  The humor is often subtle and I don't think you pick up on half of it unless you see it a few times.

"Do you have any hobbies?"

"I collect spores, molds, and fungus."

The other thing I like is how genuinely New York the movie is.  So many of the extras couldn't get any more Gotham, from the unsuspecting Upper East Sider who walks into the corpse's cab, the Mayor, and all of the wiseass cops.

"You do your job, pencilneck, don't tell me how to do mine."

Nice cameo by local anchorman Roger Grimsby, too...  I remember Grimsby and Bill Beutel every night at dinner on Channel 7.  Little details that just make the whole thing a little more authentic...well, as authentic as you can get a movie about catching ghosts.

"What are you supposed to be, some kind of cosmonaut?"

"No, we're exterminators.  Somebody saw a cockroach up on 12."

"That's got to be some cockroach."

"Bite your head off."

This is also a movie that never should have had a sequal, and I think the cheesiness and commercialization of the franchise really detracted from the original.  But, you know, Ivan Reitman's got to put some food on the table...  which, if you've seen him lately, doesn't seem to have been an issue.  Same with Ackroyd.

I'm finally upgrading my site template over the holiday weekend...

Biking Hazards, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

A week or so ago, I had a flat tire on my bike... the bike store found the culprit.

I hate "Best of" lists.... unless, of course, I'm on them.  Then I have an entirely different opinion.  :)   Check out the "Biz Bloggers" list.  Honerable mention.  Not too shabby!  Thanks!

Link: Mighty: God's Informed People '05.

My best friend Brian, who I know for twenty years now, since we first played t-ball together the summer before first grade, has invested in a new business with his brother Jim.  Its called Diamond Player Development and its a great place to fine tune your baseball skills if you really want to develop into a top tier player.

When I was younger, I had coaches who played favorites--got other kids more playing time.  It wasn't until I was put on a team that was so bad that there was no way anyone was going to cut into my time  that I even started to get any good.  By then I  was 13, and although I developed into a  pretty good contact hitter and a solid outfielder, I really didn't have much of a chance of making my high school or college teams.

I always wish I had real coaches when I was at critical points in my development.  Well, I went down to DPD last weekend and I saw firsthand what kids have the advantage of today.  There were kids in batting cages who were getting videotaped and had their swing analyzed by a pro instructor.  Who knows how good I could have been with that kind of technology!  Ah well.  I suppose corporate softball will have to do.

So anyway, Brian and I spent some time in the cages on our own.  Think of this video as the "before" video.  Maybe Jim will will be kind enough to point out all the stuff I'm doing wrong.  I know one thing I have an issue doing is really turning my hips and using my legs to generate much power.  They turn, but they're not really planted very well and so its just more like spinning my wheels and not going anywhere.

View this clip on Vimeo

So drop on by to DPD or if you have a team or individual that wants some real coaching, contact Jim.

I just had an unsettling experience.

As I was leaving the our office to walk down to the train at Union Square, I spotted a man fall down as he was stepping onto the sidewalk.