From an article about how routine cell phone pings helped put a murder at the scene of a crime:

"Most people don't realize this. And criminals don't think to turn their phone off when they're about to commit a crime."  - Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University

Thanks Peter.  Now everytime I hear someone turn off their cellphone, I need to start running. 

Great.

So yeah, my wallet got stolen from the Boathouse.  I've had quite a streak of luck there lately.  First, I lost my digital camera... and to be honest, I'm not 100% sure where the heck it is, so I won't say it get stolen there.  But today, someone definately got my lock open at one of our locks and made off with my wallet.  To be honest, our locks are pretty crappy, so, in the future, its probably better to bring you own lock.  But still, I've never had a problem there before.  There are so many volunteers down there, that we notice sketchy characters right away.  Taino suggested that maybe someone else got the wrong locker and cracked open the lock thinking it was their locker.   Then, seeing a wallet just sitting there, they just made a spur of the moment grab.  Punks.

The funny thing is, they left my Treo 650 just sitting there.    They had no interest in a $600+ phone.  Instead, they took my wallet, which had $80 and all of my credit cards.  Well, you gotta assume I'm going to cancel the cards... and if you just want the cash, just take the cash and leave everything else.  Morons.

Everyone that I told was more concerned about my driver's license.  I guess, to most people, they'd rather incur a substantial monetary loss than have to go to the DMV.

Anyway, I just cancelled and reordered all my cards and stuff.  In the meantime, I have no cash, save for my change jar... so I'll be making a trip to Commerce Bank and using their little coin machine.  Maybe I'll have enough to feed myself, because I'm temporarily living in my friend's apartment until my closing on Thursday and she sure has hell doesn't have any food in the house.  If anyone else wants to bring me food, call my cell.

What really sucks, though, is the fact that I lost three items in my wallet that were really important to me.  One, I had one of those little plastic funeral cards from my grandfather.  Second, I had a 10 year old generic blue gum wrapper that my high school girlfriend gave me on the first day we ever met.  I know that's cheesy, and the girl hates me now, but I guess I'm just sentimental.  And third, I had a five pound note that was a momento from my trip to London a few years ago. 

Thieves.  They should be shot and then forced to tag for the rest of their lives with Yahoo MyWeb 2.0.   

This post is going to serve as my guestbook.  Feel free to say hello and sign.  Please don't advertise anything behind just linking to your site in the field.  I don't appreciate my blog being used as your marketing tool.

Of course, you can feel free to say nice things about me, too.

As a handful of you were watching Hee-Seop Choi unload off of Dan Wheeler last night, you might have been wondering whether, aside from Dream Team 1, whether there's ever been an international stage where the USA succeeded by not only winning, but also getting people to like us.  Anytime we do anything in front of other countries, we usually either suck or make asses of ourselves. 

I, on the other hand, was thinking, "Hey, wasn't Dan Wheeler on the Mets?  Didn't he have a fantastic year for the Astros last year?  What did we get for him?"

So Wheeler threw 73.1 innings for the 'Stros in 71 games, posting a 2.21 ERA and a WHIP of 0.98.  Opponents batted .204 against him.

The Mets traded him the year before for minor league outfielder Adam Seuss.  You remember Adam Seuss.  He tested positive for steroids last April after the Mets cut him.

So, just to recap, we sent a good reliever to the Astros for a juicehead, and then a year later, we shipped 40% of our rotation for a handful relievers, two of whom, Schmoll and Maine, have looked horrendous in Grapefruit ball.  Good job.

I find myself in the middle of a lot of groups.  Here are all the groups I belong to in various capacities:

nextNY, Fordham Alumni Young Alumni Committee, Fordham Jubilee Committee (5 year reunion), Fordham Softball, ZogSports Football, Dodgeball, & Softball, Warthogs Softball (all guys Brooklyn fastpitch team), Downtown Boathouse, Hoboken Cove Boathouse, NYSSA's SEMI Program, and of course, Union Square Ventures.

Check this out...   Google Maps!

You can get directions, and find local businesses as well.  The maps load and scroll much faster than Mapquest.  Hmm...   Perhaps I should check out what my available lunch options are for next week...

Interestingly enough, the maps are powered by TeleAtlas, a recent aquis

These are the next six pages from my little book.  I smile when I look back at how big a crush I had on Morgan from Fordham when I was a freshman.  I won't use her last name here, because I'm pretty sure she's close to being engaged now and I'm sure her financee doesn't need to be googling her and finding this.  I'll just say she was in my year and lived with Lauren in Queen's Court freshmen year, so people who know me know who I'm talking about.  Even at the time, though, she had already met this guy and I didn't have much of a shot.  Ah... young love.  I sure did seem to be pretty smitten, didn't I?  Then I follow with completely random things that I have no idea now what they meant, like "artist sketch couple photo."  What the hell could that possibly mean?  The 3/9/98 reference to getting an A on a history paper that says, "I won" refers to a battle I had with a lowballing professor.  I never worked so hard on a five page people in my life, because I was determined to get an A despite her across the board grade stinginess.  It was war.  I like my CBA Business Journal reference there.  That was written before I even started the business newspaper that I ran for three years while I was there.  I was just a freshman with an idea, but I knew going into the school that I wanted to do something big.  Obviously, it didn't take me very long to figure out how I was going to make a "dent."  Notice I didn't say impact.  The phonecord incident dream is a bid disturbing, no? 

Popular misconception is that companies like Google, AOL, Microsoft, IAC, Yahoo! just have sales organizations in New York City and little else.

We know that's not true, but...   

...what is going on at some of these firms?

Well, the ambitious members of nextNY would like to know!  Open your doors, Google!  AOL, show us how open you are now!   Kimonos wide open!

We're looking for a large tech firm in NYC to host our 3rd event in April to give us an overview of what they've got going on here in the city and to tell us how we can be a part of it.  Ideally it would be an interactive session--some Q&A with the key people in the Big Apple.

Please contact me at charlie@unionsquareventures.com if you can help us make this happen.

Jamba Juice Co., a San Francisco–based maker of healthy blended beverages, has agreed to be acquired for around $265 million by blank-check acquisition company Services Acquisition Corp. International (AMEX: SVI). Upon completion of the merger, Services Acquisition Corp. will change its name to Jamba Inc. Jamba Juice shareholders include Technology Venture Investors, Benchmark Capital, GRP Partners, Invesco Private Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Trinity Ventures and Phillips-Smith Specialty Retail Group.

This could have far reaching effects in the NYC venture capital community...

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.