When I was in the 7th grade, I had a Valentine.  We dated for six months before we really made out...  lots of hand holding.

When it happened, we broke up soon after.  I really don't think the relationship was ready for that level of physical intimacy.

I had a Valentine in my freshman year of high school...  a sophomore.  She was cool.  She liked the Ramones and the Lunachicks, and she could makeout with gum in her mouth.  I could never find where she was hiding it, but I tried.  I bought her perfume and gave it to her at Mimi's pizzeria on the Upper East Side.  She told me, upon acceptance, that she didn't really wear perfume.  Why she couldn't just graciously accept, I have no idea...  that bothered me and we broke up soon after. 

I often wonder what happened to that perfume.

When I was a senior, I was in the middle of a serious two year high school romance.  Valentine's Day was the end of a long string of relationship capex.  November: Anniversary.  December: Christmas.  January: Birthday.  February: Valentine's Day.  Love was an expensive proposition.

She doesn't talk to me anymore, even though she lives about three blocks away from me now, but there's still something that persists from that relationship:  A black Pink Floyd t-shirt.  Its 10 years old now, and there's not a single hole in it.  I wear it to the gym and its been washed a million times.  Its faded, but like Keith Richards, it cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

As a junior in college, Valentine's Day got me back into a relationship with my best college friend.  I was smitten for two years and she was... well...  looking for a boyfriend.  That lasted until I realized that this wasn't the ultimate culmination of three years of emotional friendship...  but instead a boyfriend beartrap that I stumbled into in the hopes of a tuna sandwich.  Tigers are kind of stupid that way.  Growl.

She'll be getting married later this year.

The year after college, I dated a girl who wanted to change the world.  I made her some kind of fake meat tortilla for Valentine's Day, which she didn't really eat, because it still looked like meat.  I threw myself at her for six months, we dated for six months, got dumped, then tried unsuccessfully to prove to her that she'd regret dumped me by being the best guy on the face of the earth.  This included helping her move to Ohio, where she ultimately fell for her Americorps supervisor. 

I guess getting a girl like that to fall for a guy working for the General Motors Corporation was a bit of a longshot.  Perhaps if we oppressed the weak a little less and curbed some of the polluting, and if she hadn't seen Roger & Me things might have gone differently. 

Damn you Michael Moore.

Last year, I dated a girl who seemed to want to be everyone's Valentine...  like in bars and with guys that she had been with before.  Sketchy sketchy.  I did like her cat, though, and I don't even really like cats.

Her actual cat.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

And now?  And now after all that I've been through, I think I know less about love than I ever did before.  Sometimes, I really thought I knew what I want and other times, I really knew what I want and couldn't get my stupid male mind to accept it.  I go after what isn't good for me, and kick and scream when things seem just right.

I'm not real bright and I'm far from as in touch with this part of myself as I need to be.  Regrets?  I have the growing suspicion that I now have them.  Hope?  Yes, everyday.  I hope for clarity of vision...  to see into myself and understand who I want to be, and therefore, who I want to be with.  The search for others really is a search for self and I think things don't work out when you forget that its just as much about you as it is about the other person.  If you don't have all your ducks in a row, forget about the doves. 

Someone should write the "Art of Love" and model it after the "Art of War."  Know thyself.  I hope I figure it all out one day... and soon, before my ducks and doves start pecking away at each other.

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?

SANY0018, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

$5.15 for a pre-made hero and a side salad. Can anyone beat that? This is from Deli Marche on 5th, between 22nd and 23rd, just a few doors down from Jamba Juice. They usually have some kind of turkey hero and that's what I get. When you work in NYC, lunch is often the most expensive meal of the day... Paninis for $7.95?? No thanks!

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. 

Snowy Stang, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Hopefully, its in the 60's all week, b/c I don't feel like shoveling this out.

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.

I don't know where this guy needs to go, but here's the ridiculous thing about Brooklyn... about 2 minutes later, someone came and took that open parking space.

SANY0002, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Still coming down...

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.

Great panel on advertising at MediaSummit, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Particularly great comments from Scott Witt, who manages the Coke brand for MediaVest and Rob Norman, CEO of MEC Interaction. They talked about user created advertising, innovating around how advertising is presentent and the relationship between content and advertising. Good stuff.

I've been blogging for two years now. 

In that time, I've applied and failed to get into grad school, switched jobs, moved, shaved my head, my dog died, hurt myself many times, met Bono, started a meme, not to mention all sorts of emotionion personal life things. 

What a long strange trip its been.

Where will I be in two years?

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. 

I run a mentoring program for college students interested in finance.  We're looking for two more speakers to round out our breakfast program... one for 7/20 and one for 7/27.  If you work for/own your own hedge fund or if you work with futures, options, or derivatives, please contact me right away.  CFA charterholders highly preferred.

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.

Brad on a panel, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Kind of poorly lit, but our logo is nice and big. :)

Never gonna stop me

Never gonna stop.

Scream if you want in, 'cause I want more.

Rob Zombie - Never Gonna Stop

So Fred doesn't want to live forever.  He finds a life span to be comforting and natural end to the story.  As for me, as long as I'm not feebly old and propped up in a chair or hooked up to anything helping me breathe/eat/use the bathroom, I'd be perfectly happy with it.  I love the life I've constructed for myself and I find death to be a completely inconvenient interruption of that.  Now, of course, if no one ever died, we'd have population overcrowding and disproportionate accumulation of wealth, but besides the societal problems it presents, I think living forever would give you fantastic perspective.  I'll bet you'd be less likely to get caught up in hysterias and fads, because you've seen so much of it before.  You'd also have a higher bar for the people around you, because, while most of us can probably only say we know of two or three really great people, if that many, we'd be able to say that the path of our lives has brought us encounters with dozens of great people, all of whom raise your expectation of the next person you'd meet.

Perhaps you'd also take some more time to do not so much of anything, because you wouldn't feel so rushed.  I think 80 or 85 years isn't really enough, considering you pretty much wasted the first 10-15 of them, and the last 5 probably isn't too productive either.  You sleep a third of it away and then you probably spend a good year of your life brushing your teeth or something ridiculous like that, which is important, but isn't terribly productive in the grand scheme of things.  Given all that, that doesn't leave you much time to get everything done you'd like to... you probably need at least twice that much... at least I do.

I wasn't born with the idea that dying is natural...  and I don't think that many of us think that the current lifespan is acceptable, because we never accept when people just make it.  I mean, how long does a person have to live before most people go, "Oh, well, he lived a full life."   At least 85, if not 90.  Who says someone had a full life when someone makes it to 78?  My Deathclock puts me almost making 86, but I'm going to try and stretch it to at least 90 if I can.  In fact, given that I don't smoke, don't drink, have a positive attitude and eat healthy, I'm going to be pretty pissed if I don't make it to 90. 

PS... I didn't know that Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order:SVU was Jayne Mansfield's daughter.  I was wondering who she was referring to during the Golden Globes and Sam brought it up on her new blog.  You learn something new everyday.