I got a really great comment on my "Understanding the User" post from Mike McGraw.
Thanks Mike!

Mike writes:

"Charlie, your SitePal is not what I expected (a gimmick), but rather very cool ... a nice touch of personalization. I'm a regular reader (subscribed) and although many of your posts are irrelevant to my interests (I'm not from Brooklyn, I don't love the Mets, and I've never been in a kayak (yet)) ... the few that are relevant are like jewels. Thought it was about time I sent you a comment/prop.

We are now in the middle of our wireframing / experience design efforts for a very cool rich media aggregation/discovery service ... we are breaking from many conventions and are targeting the youth demographic with a Flex deployed RIA, so your observation about trying to understand the user really hits home. I have a suggestion for anyone who is deploying a consumer facing service and understands as little as we think we do: find and appoint a sharp/ savvy consumer to your advisory board who has the necessary influence and reach within your targeted demographic ... and listen to what they have to say...On that note, I can't wait to send her your way and see what she thinks about your SitePal and your post! Thanks Charlie ..."

There are a lot of things I don't know much about...    clothing, NASCAR, reality television.   Add art to that list.

But unlike the other three, I wouldn't mind knowing a little more.  Its interesting to me, even though I don't understand a lot of it.

So I pass on this link just because there's really cool stuff in this gallery run by a girl who had a small cup of coffee with our Zog softball team last year.  I can't vauch for its value, style, snob appeal or cultural significance, but nonetheless, here's Raandesk.

What really fascinates me to no end is how much time any web service needs to spend understanding the user.

Case in point...  that little digital me on the sidebar.  Some people didn't like that it auto-played... saying that blog readers are not used to having to deal with any kind of audio whatsoever.

That may be true, unless you're ever checking out MySpace pages, which barrage you with audio and video, sometimes two videos at a time, all as soon as you load a page.  In that community, jarring as some of us may find it, that's the norm. 

Why is it ok to present an audio experience on MySpace but not on my blog?  Is that because you're reading in the office?  Is it just a generational thing where most people under 25 watch TV, listen to the radio, instant message and do work all at the same time?

Of course, there's no right answer, but if you're a web service, it certainly presents a difficult challenge.  Avatars aside, anyone who wants to get penetration throughout the web  has to decide how they make their platform flexible, but not confusing and certainly not so flexible that it fails to establish a uniformity of a brand experience. 

I don't know about you, but I've been getting a lot of messages from foreign bankers wanting to share the misplaced fortunes of dead military generals and millionaires from Africa.

Is the Gmail team too busy integrating GCal to notice the spam uptick?

I thought it was a little fishy that there was a news helicopter hovering above my subway stop this morning.

Turns out that some lady was late for her train and tried to pull up right up to the train by parking on the platform...underground. 

They just don't make city streets like they used to, eh?

Its slightly unsettling to me that, no matter how big that watermain is or how long it was spewing water into the subway station, that all it takes is a little H2O to make the whole damn street collapse.

What happens when it rains hard?  Should I not be driving the 'Stang on 4th avenue?

Last Wednesday, I went to the Nokia Theatre in Times Square to see Prodigy.  They've been around quite a while, but gave a really powerful, exciting show.

At one point, Keith Flint went into the crowd about 10 feet away from me...  which makes for some great video.

The first video is Keith...  it gets really scary when they turn the lights on by him.  The next two videos are Firestarter and my favorite Prodigy song, Breathe.

I'm really getting into DigiCharlie over on my sidebar...     There's a new message...more bald, twice the funny.

I had never actually seen them change this sign...., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Cool.

SANY0056, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Multicolored!

If you normally only read my blog through RSS, today I've got something worth you clicking through on....  its on the web.

Just trust me....  click though.  :)

You have no idea how much rogue software I install on my computer everyday.  If you've got a startup that looks like its in our space, and you need to install a plugin, client, add-in, add-on, whatever...   I'll click and install.

And, I know I'm not alone.

Basically, VC analysts are a spyware company's dream.  Will click anything and download anything.

Someone once told me is that what made the spyware business so good is that people will click anything at two in the morning to see Britney Spears naked.

Well, VC analysts will click anything during the workday to find the next Skype.

If a venture firm was really smart, they'd get me to download some kind of spyware that looks like a p2p, web 2.0, ajax enabled, bittorrent video tagging service powered by AdSense... one that secretly scans all my incoming e-mails for new deals.

Good thing venture firms aren't that smart. 

The really great thing about getting all these great people together for nextNY is that I really get to learn a lot.

Here's what I learned:

1. Bars with big comfy chairs and leather couches are not condusive to mingling.
2. The real business model in podcasting is recording everything in your life and then charging people not to podcast it.  I mean, come on, how big is the global blackmail market relative to the potential podcasting advertising market?  (from Greg Galant of Venture Voice)
3. If you are an entrepreneur, Barcelona wants you! 
4. As the organizer, I will never get a chance to play pool.
5. SquareSpace was created and run by just one guy...  and a small army of carpenter ants, but they mostly just do QA.
6. When two or more podcasters show up to a party, and record each other's podcasting each other, its called group podcasterbation.  (from Adam Varga of DailySonic )
7. Student Advantage was a billion dollar market cap company at one point....actually, for one day.
8. Some really cool people come out of ITP...actually even more cool than I thought before.
9. The next trip I go on, I need to go here to find people who travel the way I do.
10. Dewey's has a really good jerk chicken sandwich.

More pictures taken with our cheap throwaway camera here.

I officially volunteer to play left field for the Washington Nationals.  I have years of little league and softball experience.  I'm a contact hitter that hits to the opposite field.  Please contact my agent, Fred Wilson, if interested.

This Soriano "not playing left" garbage is ridiculous.

And I've seen it before...   with good and bad results.  It really just goes to show you the charactor of the player.

Remember Todd Hundley in left?  That was a total disaster, because Hundley didn't even really try.  He didn't want to play out there and you knew it.

Mike Piazza at first?  Well, at least he tried.  He wasn't very good, but he was at least mildly serviceable.  He should have started doing that earlier, though, and maybe he could have been halfway decent.

The best example, though, and a guy I'd have on my team any day of the week is Craig Biggio. 

Craig, go catch.   Okay.

Craig, go play second.  Okay, no problem.

Craig, go play center.  Done.

Craig, go back to second.  Great.

How about A-Rod?  Moves to third to play for a contending team.

So when Soriano says he refuses to play at all rather than play second, I say, sit the bum.  Let him miss a whole season.  Its the same with the Mets and Matsui.  He couldn't field his way out of a hat at short, but it was in his contract that he couldn't move.  He should have offered to move, or they should have said, "Fine, don't play."

Playing baseball professionally for millions of dollars a year is a priviledge.  Not a right.  A lot of guys would take your place in a heartbeat and be just as entertaining and just as productive. 

Soriano, you're no Robin Yount.

Douglas Warshaw sent me this list some time ago...  I was just cleaning my inbox and couldn't figure out what to do with it, and I think its really best suited out in the open, b/c its such a well thought out list.

From Doug:

Charlie ... was reading your blog ... and thought I'd send you the below.  It's a list I made up last year for a friend's son who was going off to college (hence, some of the notes specific regarding on what date a film should be ideally be seen :)

WINTER KILLS.
By the author of The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor, a dark satire
on the Kennedy assassination ...probably the best movie you've never heard of.



   PRIMAL FEAR
Ed Norton's breakout role -- and he's surrounded by a great cast, including
the incomparable Laura Linney, Frances McDormand, John Mahoney, Adre
Braugher, Alfre Woodard and Richard Gere -- a terrific, underrated movie
(probably because its dumb-ass title has zero to do with the plot!).



   THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
Sean Connery and Michael Caine...about as good as a Kipling tale -- or a movie
for that matter -- can get.



 *THE LAST DETAIL
One of a line of truly great, cynical American movies of the late 60s and 70s. The kind of flick that makes you realize how far from great today's

films are.  Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles.



  BONNIE & CLYDE
Changed American filmmaking, our sense of violence, our sense of celebrity -- and even effected American fashion. Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and young Gene Hackman (in his breakout role).



   NETWORK
Paddy Chayefsky's amazing black satire of the TV business -- that today seems less a satire than an on-the-mark prediction. Another of the great, cynical American movies of the late 60s and 70s.



  THE HOSPITAL
The single blackest film I've ever seen. Another gem by Chayefsky.



  *CHINATOWN
Regarded by many as one of the very best scripts in the history of film. Roman Polanski at is best, and Jack Nicholson, again,  at the top of his game.



 *THE MALTESE FALCON
"A man can have many sons, but there's only one Maltese Falcon."
 The most perfectly cast film ever. (From a great Hammett novel.) Another John Huston gem.



 THE BIG SLEEP
What the Falcon is to Hammett, the Big Sleep is to Chandler. Bogart and Bacall, 'nuff said.



 LA CONFIDENTIAL
Another great script. And, of course, Rolo Tomasi.



  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Billy Wilder meets Agatha Christie. This one gets lost in the shuffle of great old films, but a true gem.



 *THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Best script of the past 10 years.



 *THE GODFATHER (I & II)



 *GOODFELLAS
"Funny how?"
Forget Paul Hamm... The IOC should make Kevin Costner walk over to Scorsese's house and hand him the two Oscars Costner stole in 1990 (for Best Director & Best Picture, for that abomination, "Dances with Wolves").



 *RAGING BULL
Regarded by many as the best film of the 80s.



 *TAXI DRIVER



 *CUCKOOS NEST
Jack at his best, yet again. (The World Series scene is one of the greatest ever -- hell, the whole movie is one of the greatest ever.) And to think it only took a decade for Kirk Douglas to find a producer (his son) willing to make it.



  SERPICO
Based on a true story of the one honest cop in all of New York in the 1970s.
   Another of the truly great, cynical American movies of the late 60s and 70s.



 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
I cry just thinking about it. (See it with a date, and show her your sensitive side.)



 *DINER
Tough to find a smarter, funnier, more enjoyable film. The sort of film you quote from once a week. The sort of film that has about a dozen GREAT scenes (including the greatest quiz ever.)

  The first of Levinson's Baltimore films.



  TIN MEN
The second of Levinson's Baltimore films.
  Not Diner, but pretty terrific.



  BREAKING AWAY
Another great script. And another great ensemble acting job (featuring Paul Dooley, one of my very favorite character actors: "Refund! Refund!") Another gem.



 *ANIMAL HOUSE
Simply the finest American film ever made. To be quoted from at least once a day.
  I dare you to find a funnier picture.



 *SPINAL TAP
Another film you'll quote from for the rest of your life.



  LOST IN AMERICA
Albert Brooks' best film. Funny and mean.



   FLIRTING WITH DISASTER
Ben Stiller, Tea Leone, George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore in a another cruely funny (David O'Russell) film.



  MY COUSIN VINNY
Another comic gem.



 *PULP FICTION
Right up there with The Usual Suspects, in terms of script, and great direction to boot.



 *TRAINSPOTTING
I LOVE this film -- its energy, its wit, its grit, its script, its
filmmaking, its humor.



  DRUGSTORE COWBOY
Another great drug film. Starring Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch (with one of the all-time laments: "You won't fuck me and I always have to drive.")



  *48-HOURS
Eddie Murphy's breakout film. And still his best.



  *3 KINGS
David O. Russell's brutally funny, smart, quirky film about US Soldiers in post-war Iraq on a quest to find a chunk of Sadam's hidden treasure.

  George Clooney & Ice Cube have never been better together!



  *PATTON
Huge.



  APOCOLYPSE NOW
My guess is you've seen it. And best not seen on a small screen. But I couldn't stop myself from typing it on this list. (Falls apart at the end,

but well worth the trip up the river.)



  BREAKER MORANT
Brilliant courtroom drama that takes place during the Boar War. Small picture, big issues.



  LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
One of the all-time great films. But best seen on a BIG screen.



  THE RIGHT STUFF
Perhaps APOLLO 13 is better ... but this is bigger ... and translates the remarkable reportage of Tom Wolfe to the big screen perfectly.



  ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN
Just a great movie. And every frame of it is true.



  NORTH DALLAS FORTY
One of the all-time sports films. Dark as hell. But funny as hell. And on the mark: This really is what pro sports was like in the 70s/80s. (From a

terrific novel by former Dallas Cowboy, Pete Gent.)



  *SLAP SHOT
THE FUNNIEST sports film ever made.



  *BULL DURHAM
Probably the most entertaining sports film ever made. And probably the best baseball film ever made. (And Costas agrees :)



  *CHARIOTS OF FIRE
The Olympics before NBC, Bob Costas, or even Roone Arlidge.
        "True story* of two Brits competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics: One a devout Scottish missionary who runs for God, the other a Jewish student at Cambridge who runs for fame and to escape prejudice."

 *(Actually, some of the facts are conveniently moved around :)
  Won the Gold medal for Best Picture in 1981 ...and unlike Paul Hamm's, no one argued about it.



  *COOL HAND LUKE
How many hard-boiled eggs can you eat? George Kennedy (later of Naked Gun side-kick "fame") gets the Oscar, but Paul Newman owns the film.



  THE HUSTLER
Man, Jackie Gleason was just a great film actor. And Paul Newman is just... Paul Newman.



  *THE COLOR OF MONEY
How many Scorsese films (and Paul Newman film) can I put on this list--and the guy's never one the Oscar!!!--dunno', but no way this sequel to "The Hustler" gets left off.



  GOING PLACES ("Les Valseuses")
A great date film -- but has to be the right girl -- and its subtitled, so see it on a big screen if you can. But you probably can't, which is why I'm putting it on this list (whereas I've left off a lot of other great films like "The 400 Blows," which you'll be able to catch on campus).

  Aimless criminals, and aimless sex. But blisteringly funny. Starring a very young Gerard Depardieu -- and featuring the legendary Jeanne Moreau, of "Jules and Jim" fame -- and a very young Isabelle Huppert.



  AMERICAN GRAFFITI
George Lucas's breakout film about his home town. No special effects -- just a great young cast: Harrison Ford, Richard Dryfuss, Ron Howard! ...and a brief but memorable appearance by the then unknown Suzanne Summers.



  SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
Lost all the hoopla over John Travolta, and disco fever, and the Bee Gees, is the fact that this is a great (small) authentic film.



  * THE GRADUATE
My guess is they'll show it Freshman week. If they don't, save it for a date. (Just don't make it a date with one of your friend's mothers.)



  MORGAN: A Suitable Case for Treatment
One to watch on a date...or with a group in the mood to see a very offbeat film...that's one of the best of the British comedies of the mid-60s.

  I love this film.
  And Vanessa Redgrave, despite her politics, just may be the most beautiful woman ever to walk the earth. And in this film, she certainly makes you understand why, "Morgan is sad today."




  * CASABLANCA
You must remember this... Maybe the ultimate date film. (Ideally the third date.)  Hell, maybe the ultimate film.



  *THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
  For a long time this remarkable film of war veterans coming home after WWII held the record for most Oscars, and deservedly so.

  I cry just thinking about it. (Another one to see with a date, to show her your sensitive side.)



  * IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
One of Capra's classics. And another great date film.
   (Don't get fooled into thinking this is some “Miracle on 34th Street” Christmas Holiday see-it-on-TV film. This is one remarkable movie. And Jimmy Stewart gives one of the great performances ever caught on celluloid. It's why Tom Hanks--only at his

best---gets compared to Jimmy Stewart.)



  THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
Maybe the greatest (and. smartest) "screw-ball" comedy ever made:  Katherine
Hepburn, jimmy Stewart and cary grant. And, yes, she is "yar."
  Another date flick.



 * DESIGN FOR LIVING
Gary Cooper and  Fredric March both living -- and sleeping with! -- Miriam
Hopkins.  (With the magical Edward Everett Horton--the voice of Bullwinkle's
"Fractured Fairy Tales"--as the cuckolded husband.)
  This film almost single-handedly brought about the Hayes/Hollywood
Production Code, which took the sex out of American movies for about three
decades!
  (My favorite shot is when Hopkins falls back on the couch, and the sex--in
the form of dust--just rises all around her.)
  You won't believe someone made this film 70 years ago. It's brilliant, and maybe Lubitch's best -- and that's saying something.

  Another great date film.




OKAY... i can't help myself... here are the films that you MUST see when they play on campus... all but the last four are great date films :)

* GRANDE ILLUSION (anybody who really knows film has this in their top 10 -- Renoir's greatest)

RULES OF THE GAME (another gem by Renoir)

400 BLOWS  (possibly Truffaut's greatest)

CITY LIGHTS (Chaplin's greatest)

* MY LIFE AS A DOG

NINOTCHKA (another Lubitch masterpiece -- it'll make you realize what all the fuss about Garbo was about)

* CITIZEN KANE (basically the mount Olympus of films)

KIND HEARTS & CORONETS

ANNIE HALL

BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID

HEAVEN CAN WAIT

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (one of the 20 most influential films of all times)

HAROLD & MAUDE ("offbeat" doesn't do it justice)

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

RISKY BUSINESS

* Clockwork Orange

* Dr. Strangelove

M*A*S*H

Henry V (both Olivier's and Branagh's versions)

----also
   The Blue Angel
   Destry Rides Again
   Goodbye Mr. Chips
   The Hunchback of Notre Dame
   Brassed Off
   The Commitments
   Notorious
           (Gary Grant, Ingred Bergman and Claude Raines in my favorite Hitchcock film)
   From Russia with Love
   Five Easy Pieces
   Easy Rider

Big city.  Big ideas.  Big mouth.  :/

Bald is the new black.

Booyah!

Juuuust a bit outside.

Hat for bat.  Keep bat warm.

What are these lines?

They're from the second half of my title bar, which I keep changing, and along with everything I've got going in my sidebar, you're probably not paying attention to them because of RSS.

As RSS grows, I think we're going to see everything outside of the main feed of content get marginalized and also see a buildup of people trying to get into the feed.

Del.icio.us was a good example.  They allowed people to autopost their bookmarks to their blog.  You could also create a Del.icio.us linkroll, but I'd bet anything that link lists right in the feed got higher clickthroughs than those on the sidebar.  Part of me feels like its kind of a vote of confidence on behalf of the publisher.  If it appears in the main feed, the publisher thinks its useful enough to get sent directly to their most loyal readers.  That's a filter usually worth looking at for me.

I'm suprised more of the services I use haven't tried to live in my feed.

I just started using Upcoming (I know, I'm late to that party...) and now I've got a little widget on my sidebar for it...  but its a bit dinky.  It should really autopost to my blog what event I'm looking at or planning on attending the day before.  It would be great marketing for them and I'd love the feedback on that.  I'm sure somebody would be like, "Hey, that looks cool, I'd love to attend as well." 

So what other "...of the day" services should live in my blog?  Any ideas?  What services either live in your sidebar or just on the web somewhere that could benefit from some in-blog/in-feed distribution that would actually make for interesting content?


Technorati Tags: web2.0, webservices, blogs, RSS

Obviously, our SEO skills leave something to be  desired...

When you type in "new york venture capital" in Yahoo! search, Union Square Ventures comes up #3, behind SuperPages and New York Life, two sites with way more traffic than ours.  That's pretty good.  (Good to see venture capital jobs in New York from Indeed come up on that first page, too.)

But in  Google, I can't even find us.  (Can't find Indeed either.)

Pitango comes in ahead of us, because they list themselves as having a New York office, even though "New York" isn't in the title of their site like ours is. 

The Davis venture fund comes in ahead of us, too... albeit on the 2nd page, because "Davis New York Venture Fund’s investment objective is long term growth of capital."  So, the words aren't together, but capital is in that sentence somewhere.

Our Feedburner feed is at the bottom of page #8, but I went all the way to page #20 and can't find our actual site at all.  Wacky, no?  I mean, the words "New York Venture Capital" are right in the title of our website, in that order.

Anybody have any ideas?

Technorati Tags: google, seo, yahoo, search

I just found some SimplyHired jobs on Vast.  They had been crawled, but the Simply Hired folks were smart enough to give "sorry" messages to anyone who clicked through.

You know, I think when an aggregator aggregates things from an aggregator, that's how vortexes great created.  Should I disappear off the face of the earth, its because I clicked on one of these jobs.

Flashing victims with cameraphones, take two.

Perhaps it was just a wardrobe malfunction.

I've been a Trillian user for sometime, so its been forever since I upgraded AIM. 

But AOL's new release of Triton (at least I think its new, I never noticed it before) has won me over in a day.

First off, the AIM spam problem is over.  Everytime a person not on my list IMs me for the first time, it goes in this one "AIM Catcher" box.  I can preview the message and decide if I want to open it, trash it, block the user, etc.  Now, porn spam (which I haven't gotten yet since I reopened my buddy list) is relegated to a single little box and doesn't get passed to my phone when I'm idle.

Second, what's really neat for Plaxo users is that you can lookup the screenames of your contacts and autoload them.  To be honest, there were a lot of people on that list that I'm quite sure wouldn't want IMs from me, so there should be some better or at least more obvious privacy rules around that, but I definitely added a number of screenames of people I e-mail all the time as if we were on IM. 

The whole interface is redone, too...   it feels very slick.  Its a significant improvement over AIM versions of the past and it has me back on AIM and off Trillian.  I still think they should let me talk to my few Yahoo! buddies.