The NYT wrote an interesting little piece on the New York technology scene...  in the Fashion & Style section. 

Fred thought this story should have gone in the Business section, and at first I would have agreed, but now I think that was a good place to be.  A lot of my non-tech friends noticed it there and started asking me more about what I do.  These are people that otherwise wouldn't have read the Business Section.  I think the more you get the mainstream aware of this important NYC industry, the better.

But let's be clear, the New York digital community isn't a trend...  its an important part of the area's economy had has been for some time.  And, as I've made the case before, as media and technology converge even closer together, its not just a part... but its going to be even more of a cornerstone.

So, we're not just standing next to the fire of what's going on in the Valley, as the Silicon "Alley" copycat name might imply, we're lighting the fire.  We're fueling it.  But, to be the fire, we need to act like we are.  Step one would be responding to reporters who act like the current digital environment is a "rebirth" or "1998 all over again."

Its 2006.  The "rebirth of Silicon Alley" angle is a tired one.  NYC didn't die as a center of innovation any more than Silicon Valley did over the same time period. 

So, if you're covering the New York tech scene... stop writing about the past and start talking about the now and the future.

"This fire is out of control..."

Thanks to Joshua for pointing this out to me.   I like using FeedBurner for my RSS feeds because I get to see how many subscribers I have and what posts they like to click on.  FeedBurner provides me with those stats, while the two feeds that come off of Typepad do not.  Now, I have over 100 people using my FeedBurner feed, but I have no idea how many people are using the default Typepad feeds.  If you're subscribing via FeedDemon or Yahoo... something where you just dropped my URL in a box and let it figure out what my feed was, you could be using any of these.  However, you can change your HTML to point to only Feedburner as your default feed.

Just go down to your template until you see this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="<$MTBlogURL$>atom.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="<$MTBlogURL$>index.rdf" />

And replace it with this:

="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed" />

This way, people who drop your URL in a box will get your FeedBurner feed.

If you're subscribing via RSS and you're not sure which feed you're using, if you could go into the properties of the feed and check, I'd greatly appreciate it.  It would be great to have accurate statistics on exactly how many people are reading this blog.

I just unsubscribed from the Manhattan User's Guide today, which is a shame, because, until today, I found it to be a useful service.  Everyday, I'd get a cool looking e-mail about cool things going on in the city.  Its subject matter, as described on the site, was pretty diverse:

"What kinds of topics do you cover?
Here are just a few of the topics we've covered in the past: The first word on the best new restaurants, shows, and shops. How to get just about anything fixed: lamps, air conditioners, jewelry ­ anything but parking tickets...The city's clockmaster (who knew we had one?)...Where to find baseball memorabilia, Cindy Sherman-designed Limoges porcelain, the best chopped liver, a reliable contractor, or get custom ties made. The best gifts to give new parents, older pets, or your bad old self. If it's interesting, entertaining or useful and it's in New York, we may write about it."

So today, in my e-mail I get a post that implicated that God was displeased with the Pope and sent him to the hospital because the Pope compared abortionists to the Nazis.

Huh?

Well, regardless of whatever side of this issue you stand on, clearly this don't not fit into the "it's in New York" catagory.  I don't find it entertaining either.  I mean, you might disagree with the Pope, which is fine, but to e-mail me a "Manhattan User Guide" message saying "We Know What God Wants" and to say that God sends people to the hospital when he disagree with him?  That's just plan inappropriate.  Plus, I don't personally believe that God is vindictive in that way.  If I wanted MUG's policitical and relgious commentary, they should set up a blog and I'd happily subscribe to it.  I only welcomed them into my inbox because they told me about new restaurants and where to get my jewlery repaired. 

So, I sent them a note, believing that some constructive user feedback might be welcome.  I mean, surely I can't be the only MUG user that felt like maybe, rightly or wrongly, this isn't what they expected when I signed up.

I wrote....

I like this service, but I could do without the political commentary…   I won’t unsubscribe, because I do find the service useful, and its not as if I even disagree with today’s e-mail… (he did write something against Jerry Falwell, too, so I wasn't completely in disagreement with what he wrote)  but I just think its inappropriate for the kind of service that you’re offering.  If you want to write about your personal beliefs, you should start a blog, but please don’t e-mail them to me intermixed with the mostly useful information that you do provide.

And what do I get back?  I was thinking I'd get back "I'll take this under consideration" or "thanks for your feedback, let's see how the other users feel about this."

No, I get...

"nope, sorry, you don’t get to decide what;s appropriate for mug. feel free to unsubscribe.

charlie suisman"

Fine then.  I will.  Perhaps he'll change his mind if three quarters of his users walk out the door.  I'll support services that care about what I think as a consumer, not people that tell me to essentially take it or leave it.   Its not about the politics.  Its about being transparent about what you're offering, which MUG clearly was not (religious/political commentary  is not listed as a catagory on the site, just Arts&Ent, Food & Wine, Info, Lesuire & Sports, Services, and Shopping) and also about listening to your customers.  So, if you feel like you shouldn't get Charlie Suisman's personal political commentary intermixed with info on the latest art exhibit, please let him know.  And, if you support him and want to keep getting messages like that, let him know that as well.  Either way, this guy should be in touch with his customers and care about what they think so he can get a sense of how to serve them best.

Link: A VC: eBay and Skype?.

Fred asks why eBay would want to own Skype, because he doesn't see the synergy.

That's because there isn't any.

But that didn't stop eBay from buying PayPal.  When eBay bought PayPal, the payments system was already public, with 750 employees.  The business is still run pretty seperately, too.  At the time, probably 30-40% of eBay transactions were being done by PayPal.  Great.  Probably about 30-40% of all Nike sneaker wearers wear Champion socks... does that mean it makes sense for Nike to buy the Champion sock business?  I'm not saying it would be a bad deal...   it might be a better ROI than the company's current sneaker projects, but that doesn't make it true synergy.  So, eBay has grown PayPal and its a great earnings stream for them, but I really doubt that having PayPal in house, versus people just using it when it was seperate makes someone that much more likely to transact on eBay.

That being said, while Skype may in fact be a great way for you to ping a buyer on eBay to ask a question, I seriously doubt that Skype is going to make transactions that much easier.  Its not true synergy.  I doubt most people even want to get on the phone with someone anyway...  I think voice makes a transaction harder, not easier.  People could start pestering you by calling you about your bike, lamp, car, whatever...  Skype rings are intrusive if they're coming from people you don't know. 

Russell Shaw thinks its a good idea, calling it a way for buyers and sellers on eBay to talk to each other, or even just to Instant Message.  Yeah, or they could...  um... just Skype each other or Instant Message.  Most e-Bay users already have AIM, but that doesn't mean eBay should try and wrestle the AIM business from AOL. Most eBay users have a browser, too.   Should they buy Flock? When does this get silly? When does the market take this as a sign that the core eBay business is dying and the company is looking elsewhere for growth?

Yet, its probably going to be a good purchase for them.  I agree with Fred that Skype still has even greater potential as a business, and we may look back at Skype and think that $3 billion was a bargain. Perhaps one day Silver Lake will come along with its $50 billion Fund VII and buy eBay fifteen years from now to break out its undervalued Skype and PayPal assets the way it did with Seagate.

Link: CNN.com - Long Island principal cancels prom - Oct 16, 2005.

This is interesting...     I agree with the idea, but perhaps maybe something less drastic would have worked better.  How about a "no limo rule" or holding the school's Disney trip the day after the prom, eliminating the weekend in the Hampton's afterwards.  I see what he was trying to do, but now you've just created a vacuum that will be filled by rich parents. 

Link: Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition: LinkedIn Needs to Disintermediate Itself.

LinkedIn needs to act less like the mother at the school dance and more like the limo driver waiting to take you to the next party.

One of the nextNYers pointed us in the direction of Stikipad for our website.  At USV, we like the idea of a blog as a website, but nextNY isn't really a group that's going to be doing a lot of publishing, at least not as a group.  We have some individual bloggers, but we needed a site where we could collaborate on ideas, and put our links to Flickr, Google Groups, etc. all in one place.  It needed to be easy, but we also wanted it to be branded with our stuff.

Stikipad proved really easy to setup and the interface is simple and responsive.  The best part is, with a pro account, they allow you to map a domain to it.  So, our Stikipad hosted wiki is located at www.nextny.org.

Its early in the site's development and it doesn't have some of the apps that Jotspot does, but I'm sure they'll get there.  I had a little e-mail exchange with Matt and he seems like he's on the right track.

In the meantime, check out our site!

Today was a major breakthrough in terms of my photography skills.  Jeff the Intern, put this photo in your pipe and smoke it:

The funny thing is, this butterfly wasn't even that impressive in person.  He (or she... I didn't check) wasn't even that big--maybe about an inch and a half across.  But, I got the camera right up in his grille and snapped one off.  I'd say it is probably the best photo I've ever taken.  I guess you just have to take a lot to get a good one.  I just bought a new memory card for the camera, so be prepared for a lot more.  I'm going to start posting all the originals on a site.  I've seen Ofoto.  Valarie Cooper suggested Snapfish.  Does anyone else have any suggestions?

So, yesterday, we basically tooled around the city.  I think it was just as much an excuse for me to take lots of new photos as it was to explore the city.  One thing I'm realizing about taking pictures...   it gives the best moments of your life a longer shelf life.  We all have boring or sad times in our lives, but when you flip back through the pictures you took of the best parts, it tends to dwarf the times you'd rather forget.

First stop of the day was the Haight-Ashbury district... SF's equivilent to the Village I suppose.  I only took this picture to show that I was there, but I didn't feel comfortable snapping off a lot of pics like a tourist in and around the tattoo shops and used clothing stores.  I felt like they could smell my recent vote cast for the red team and didn't want to get the scarlet "R" branded on me.  (Although, if I wanted an R branded on me, there's a shop there that would do it.)

These pictures are from Buena Vista park.  The church is St. Ignatius Church at USF.  Gotta get the Jesuit stuff in somehow.  The first pic was a close second I think for the pic of the day.

So, as we're leaving the park, I spot this random mound thing.  I was curious, so we went over there for a closer look.

There's a sign that labels this thing as the "Randall Museum."  I'm not sure I understand exactly how this is a museum, but it was fascinating nonetheless.

I took pictures from the top of the "Randall Museum".  These were difficult to take, because I'm pretty damn scared of heights.  The good thing is, I'm better with looking out  than I am with down.  This is where I took the butterfly pic.

This is the Palace of Fine Arts...  the architecture is impressive, but the turtles proved equally as interesting...  for 10 minutes, Carrie my patient tour guide and I watched one the closest turtle to us in this pic get a worm off his  back leg.  For you and I, a worm on our leg isn't a big issue, but imagine if you were a turtle.  You can't reach your leg with any other part of your body and you can't really shake it out too quickly to dislodge the little critter.  It took a while, but he finally kicked the worm off. 

I have more pics, but its taking too long to upload.  Note to Six Apart...    you should let people post multiple pictures at a time.  The interface is really good and it lets you cut and paste very quickly once its uploaded, so I wouldn't mind being able to just upload the whole group of pics I plan to post at once upfront.  For now, I'll finish with this one.  I don't know who these people are, but they were sitting by the water in Sausalito and I thought it made a good Hallmark moment--certainly picture worthy.  Sigh.

To get more funny NBC videos, "go to the source".  (Page source, that is.)

Ok, quick, name a movie with Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey MacGuire, Christina Ricci,  and Elijah Wood.  I hadn't heard of this movie before I saw it on TV, and I was like, "Wait... wow, look at all these people in this movie.  How have I not heard of this before?"

To be honest, I don't know how good of a movie this is... but it just has so many people in it that I really like to watch.  I like Kevin Kline a lot because I tend to like his characters.  He's great at playing a guy with good intentions that gets himself into some not so ethical situations, but yet, it always seems to rise above it.   While  Keven Spacey did an enormous performance in American Beauty, I think Keven Kline could have also played that role as well.

And Sigourney Weaver...  well, Sigourney and I have a connection, because we literally bumped into each other one time...  like actual bumping.  I was going to pick up my high school girlfriend at Sacred Heart on 91st and 5th, and when I was turning the corner on 91st and Madison, we walked right into each other.  I didn't realize who it was at first, but when I was like "Oh... um.. wow."  She smiled and we both walked off to return to our normal lives, forever altered by that single moment.  I'm sure she feels different for having met me even to this day. 

The movie takes place in the early 70's in suburban Connecticut, with charactors basically stumbling through the search for themselves by doing all the things they shouldn't, with sometimes tragic results.   Its sad, sometimes interesting and often somewhat uncomfortable, but it is in these moments of uncomfortable sexuality where the A cast really shines.  (Although, since I already said that Christina Ricci was in it, did I even have to mention that there would be some uncomfortable moments like that in it?   She was going 17 going on 36 at the time.)  No car chases, explosions, special effects... just a really great movie with great actors and some interesting situations.

Arrington just posted some early screenshots of the Google calendar.

He also writes:

"It’s also clear from the event creation functionality that Google is is
going to attempt to aggregate events like eventful and zvents do now."

I think that was a pretty obvious move for them...   I wrote about that back in October. 

As for the rest of my wishlist for Carl Sjogreen, I don't want to have to enter in all the events that I'm interested or go searching.  I use Gmail...   please crawl it to determine stuff that I'm interested.  Coming up with something that looks at all my e-mail, figures out that I want all the Met games on my calendar, kayaking stuff, Rammstein concerts and the Philharmonic Concerts in the Park shouldn't be too hard.

Oh, and went my friends send me e-mails about their birthday parties that aren't evites, make those dates clickable so that I can add them to my GCal.   And please, please make it sync with outlook, otherwise its a non starter b/c then I can't get it on my phone.

Oh, and a publishable calendar widget for my blog would be great, too...  so people could tell when I'm busy and see where I am so they can stalk... err.. visit me.

Thanks for your time.  Feel free to contact me to be an alpha tester.  I promise I won't blog it until I'm allowed to. 

PS...   I assume Gcal will eventually get placed here.

Seth writes:

Link: Seth's Blog: Amazon's Time Machine.

The question here is: why don't online stores do stuff like this on purpose? Why don't they slip in ridiculous items or funny descriptions? It's not like they're going to run out of shelf space or have a problem with inventory.

They do, Seth.   Its called woot!

Woot! sells one item (many of that item, but just one type) a day and does a hilarious job with the descriptions, often throwing in stuff like "turns into a mind controlling robot" for blenders.  I don't think I've actually bought anything yet, but it keeps me subscribing for the humor.

You can't make this stuff up...   I snapped this pic with my phone yesterday:

1. One of your coworkers bet someone.  "Hey, I bet you $100 I can jab a huge safety pin in Bob's collar without him noticing."
2. One of your coworkers tried to jab a safety pin in your neck, but missed.  "Hey Bob, your tie is crooked.  Lemme fix it...  DAMMIT."
3. The guys from Myth Busters were debunking the theory that you could kill someone with a homemade giant safety pin launcher.
4. He's one of those old guys that wears his pants too high, and there's another safety pin on his belt that also broke.
5. For all you Matrix fans:   "There is no safety pin."
6. Its a Delicious/AARP joint venture to tag all the old guys.  His tag fell off, though.
7. He's The Fly's dad, and he accidently got into that big teleportation pod with a big safety pin.
8. He's trying to start a trend.  All the cool people are wearing big safety pins in their collar.
9. He's so cool that his collar naturally goes up, and he needs the safety pin to keep it down until after hours.
10. He's always forgetting his briefcase around, so he usually keeps it safety pinned to his collar.

Hi, Dave.

"By the time the election rolls around, people are going to know where Democrats stand," Reid said.  Link

This is why I don't like politicians.  They need to spend months, even years, trying to figure out what they think.

Why not just SurveyMonkey every Democrat in the country?  Isn't that what they think?

Kirk Rueter retired today.

Among his noted accomplishments, he had a .586 winning pct and is the winningest lefty in Giants history.

But he also accomplished a bizzare statistical feat.

He gave up more runs than he struck people out.

Now, if you're terrible, that's easy to do, but then you don't stay in the majors that long.

But that's really hard to do if you're actually good.... to have batters put that many balls in play and still succeed.  It certainly keeps your fielders on their toes.

In fact, I went and looked it up and I could only find one other pitcher with a career of any note who has also done that.

At first I thought it was about velocity.  So I thought about other junk ballers...  Moyer, Wakefield, Hough, nope, nope, nope.

Not even close.

Ground ball guys?  Quisenberry, Innis?   Quisenberry comes close, but no cigar.

Damn.

Well, I did find two more.  The first one is just amazing.

Cy Young.

Yup, that's right.  What are the odds that Kirk Rueter and Cy Young wind up in any kind of a trivia question answer together?

So, then I thought maybe it had something to do with that era.  So I checked out other notables...  Matthewson, Grove, Waddell, Brown, Ciccote.  Nope. 

Well, so for a moment there, I thought I had the best trivia question ever...  but then I found one more who just ruins it.

Another ground ball guy, and also a former Giant.

Billy Swift.

Fuck you, Billy Swift.  You ruined my trivia question.

This post brought to you by Baseball Reference.

The Mets have a kid who can play second, who is 5 for 7 this spring who has scored everytime he's been on base. 

Kaz Matsui is hitless in nine trips to the plate.

Well, I've seen enough.  Anderson, you've won the second base job. 

In fact, let's just cut Kaz now and let Willie Randolph be Anderson's backup.

Man, I am starving...and I had a smoothie before I left.  It didn't really take.

The subway is really crowded.  Hopefully it won't be too long before I can start biking again.  Seems that we're having our February weather in March, though.

Onlt five or six weeks until softball.  I went to the cage at Chelsea Piers yesterday.  This is going to be a breakout softball year I think.  This is probably the first year that I've fully embraced the idea that I'm not a hardball player anymore and that, from here on in, its softball.  I even bought a new glove, which needs some working in.

There's a couple in front of me chatting... This has to be one of the most irratating pair of individuals I've ever seen.  They're trying to talk in some kind of code so not everyone can hear them, because he's standing and she's sitting.  Obviously, they haven't really practiced their code, because they're not getting it.

"...Do you mean the first thing or the second thing?"

"What second thing?  The thing from the other person involved?"

"No, your second thing...from before....you know..."

*Smacks hand on head.*

I'll bet you they're not even talking about anything remotely interesting.

No one seems to notice that I'm wearing two different sneakers.

It was an accident.  I had two pairs at work and grabbed a mismatching pair...  I'm just lucky I didn't get two lefts, or, even worse, two rights.

Adrianna tells me that I can't understand the plight of the underprivilaged and that its not so easy to just pick oneself up from one's bootstraps and create success in your life.

That may be true.  Its not as if I have a lot of avenues of understanding in that area. 

I don't have any friends without some kind of support structure.  I mean...   even poor actors that I know still have families to go home to and even college degrees that would allow them access to other careers.

I couldn't believe Andrew Rasiej came in FOURTH in the NYC Public Advocate's race with 5.17% of the vote.  I didn't necessarily support him, but I felt like he was EVERYWHERE and EVERYONE was talking about him.

Turns out, only the bloggers and tech people were talking about him, and the numbers seem to prove out that those were the only people he was talking to as well...   now I'm surprised we number as high as we do...  5%...    woooooo.   A victory for geeks.  A failure for diverse communication.

We're talking to ourselves... highlighting ourselves... making ourselves smarter.  The problem is, "ourselves" is a really small community... smaller than we think.

Everyday, I take more and more advantage of the little platform I've created here.  I've sourced a few deals, connected to smart people, but more importantly, I use blogging in general to gather information and feedback.  I look at all of the people who aren't publicizing themselves by blogging, and who aren't listening to blogs and I see the information gap growing and growing.  I connected to people via LinkedIn.  I lookup information on Wikipedia.  I see the most popular things going on up to the minute on the del.icio.us popular list.  But that's only the beginning.  I see who links to me... I connect with them.  Others write lists of the technologies I should be looking at.  I know several standard dev's more than the avg Joe about my world  and what's going on around me.

But its not just about my job.  Its deeper than that.  When you have this much information and personal connection to people in your own industry, you "see the path."  You see clearly that, if you make the right, and sometimes tough, choices, you can be very successful on your own terms.  I can clearly see that when I don't drink, I can wake up early the next day, work out, logon, connect, etc. all by 9:30 and be fresh, thoughtful, and hopefully impressive to anyone I might meet.

So, where does that leave the average inner city high school kid?  It used to be about just getting him to finish high school.  Then, the bar for the same level of achievement probably became a college degree.  Now, the underrepresented, underreached and undereducated seem to be getting left further and further behind as our neat little peer production community bootstraps itself to the next level.  Everytime I learn some new way to leverage technology to move ahead, recently I can't help but think who I'm moving ahead or just further away from.

How do we fix this?

Ok, so I've been thinking about conferences.  We have conferences for everything... for RSS, for blogs, for Web 2.0, for blogs about business, for blogs about blogs, for women bloggers, for women bloggers who go to conferences about RSS and then podcast about them...   you get the point.  And, to some extent, its a lot of the same people that sits on a lot of these panels. 

What if we did a conference for (and perhaps by) the segment of the population that's getting left the furthest behind and we featured all of us talking heads that usually talks to ourselves?

Here's the idea:

In conjunction with public schools, non-profits, etc. we get a bunch of inner city kids to attend a conference loosely about the future... their future.... and additionally, our future, because they are a big part of the youth of America.  Think Larry and Sergey in a discussion group with some kids from Mott Haven in the Bronx.  Let's get them understanding what Google is as a business, but also have them understand who built it, why, how and what it took as people to get it off the ground.  At the same time, Larry and Sergey should learn about what the lives of these kids are like... hear the stories of friends lost to drugs or violence.  Let's get these kids blogging the conference... and boost some of them up the Feedster 500.  We'll put the smartest people we know together with the students who know the most about that world... because they live it everyday.  How about some collaborative panels?   Maybe Bill Gates could create a presentation together with a 15 year old single mom about...  I don't know...  maybe just parenting.  We could have workshops aimed at answers, roadmaps, how to's, etc.  Let's talk about how to get the underprivilaged youth of America back on track, but not just back on track, but winning the race.  What will it take for some kid to grow up coding in the projects and creating something that not only lifts him up, but lifts his peers as well.

And everyone donates their time and effort.  The venue donates the space.  The speakers donate their knowledge and time, etc.  Perhaps we do it with multiple industries over time.  We could do 6 conferences...  one on tech, one on media, one on education.....  who knows.

Here are some of my questions:

Does the idea hold water?   Is it too extreme and will their be too much culture clash to get anything done or any understanding?  Who best to speak?  Does it make sense to narrow it by industry? 

I write this post not because I think I have all the answers, but because I'm interested in the ideas of other people who take an interest in social software.

I've written a lot about LinkedIn, because I see a lot of potential in that service-or at least its potential to power and improve a lot of the other services I use.  At the same time, I've grown pretty frustrated with the service because I don't see it moving towards fulfilling that potential. 

The biggest problem with the closed social networks is that other than the actual exercise of connecting to people, there isn't  a lot to do on them.  There are two solutions around that.  First, you could build the entire suite of services that you thing people would like to do.  That's what I think MySpace is doing.  On MySpace, you don't just connect, you communicate, you consume media, you have the flexibility to express yourself...those three things right there are about 90% of what their demographic wants to do... And that's what makes it so popular.

The other alternative is to plugin and power everyone else's services.  That now seems to be the Plaxo model.  Every now and the Plaxo tells me someone I know has a new phone number...and that's useful to me.  Other than that, I have no idea what its doing.  Its just kind of sitting there somewhere, lurking in the background, making sure I have people's updated information.   Maybe I should be concerned.  I don't know what the business model there is either, but if you're not going to enable your community to consume your services, then I think that's your only option.  (BASF..we don't make any of this stuff...we make it better...)

LinkedIn seems to be caught in between.  They really haven't successfully built out a suite of services that people want to use on a regular basis, but they don't seem too interested in powering anyone else's either.  Hence the stagnation in their site traffic:

I don't even think they need to remake the whole service to significantly improve the usage.  Here are five lightweight features LinkedIn could implement to get themselves more usefully integrated into my life and maybe a decent percentage of their network:

1. Mimic the Plaxo update functionality with contacts.  Contact info on Linkedin is an "excuse me" feature.  You can input all your info, but they never remind you to, so, at best, most of the Vcards you can download only have a name and an e-mail.  On that note, it shouldn't even be a Vcard.  Automatic plugin.  If we connect on LinkedIn, your phone number should be in my Outlook. 
2. Recognize that people aren't just static contacts in the world of professional networking--they're continual reminders.  LinkedIn should integrate with my calendar, contacts, and tasks, and remind me to talk to particular people, and at the same time provide me with their one-click contact info.  Even if you're not trying to sell anything to anyone, the task of keeping your network fresh is still very task oriented.  You make phonecalls, you send emails, you do lunch.  One major problem I seem to have with a lot of the people I meet is that I get their contact info, but then I have no way to manage my desire to see them once a month, drop them a biweekly e-mail, or whatever. 
3. Allow me to write my own notes on people.  Do you know how many times random people IM me and I have no idea who they are.  It would be even cooler if they had a little popup that was reading my e-mail, IMs, etc, and would just do me the favor of telling me who people were with my own notes and an abridged version of their Linkedin profile.  I think this would be a killer applet, because, as of right now, I don't keep this stuff anywhere.  I know some people who make notes on their Palm Desktop.  That's archaic There's got to be a better way, no?  I keep people on Linkedin and if I interact with them, Linkedin should also allow me to track and annotate those interactions.  If anyone knows of any good people management solutions, I'd be interested in hearing them.
4. Let users customize their LinkedIn profiles enough to become landing pages--destinations.  I don't like the idea that I do all the work of inviting, connecting, writing my bio, etc., but the page only helps publicize me within the walled garden.  I should be able to put my company logo, plugin del.icio.us links, whitepapers, whatever.  Its funny, because I call Linkedin the Friendster for professional people, and that's what it is.  Unfortunately, Friendster is dying because their profiles are so rigid and dead.  LinkedIn should aspire to be MySpace for professional people... a vibrant social network of thoughtful communication and "professional expression"... not just connecting. 
5. Reed's Law tells us that a network is more valuable when each and every node on the network can become its own network.  In otherwords, a group of groups is more valuable than just one big group.  Therefore, any social network would have to be crazy to do anything to hinder any kind of group creation.  In fact, they should foster it as much as possible.  Yet, the "groups" feature on LinkedIn is very limited in scope.  In fact, its kind of an exclusive club for "established, real-world organizations (e.g. legally recognized entity, membership costs money, budget, members meet face-to-face)."  It is not designed for "cybercommunities (people who read a blog, members of a mailing list, etc."   Well, why the heck not?  To be honest, I'd be much more interested in connecting up to the 500+ people who read my blog then the hundreds of people who attended the WeMedia conference.  I mean, that was an interesting conference, but I don't really share anything in common with all those people... yet my blog audience I actually talk to all the time and we're probably a more lucrative connection than two people who just went to the same conference.  If I form a group of "people who like the same stuff as me" and people agree to be in it, why wouldn't LinkedIn desire to be the place where those people connect?  Seems a bit ironic that an online professional network isn't interested in connecting up other professionals networking with each other online.  If you really want to manage my professional network, you're going to have to let me group it... and not with an application form, an approval, etc., but in minutes like Meetup.

So, how about you guys?  Anyone out there with any ideas for what LinkedIn or some of these other social networks could do for you to get more integrated into your life?