So, I'm taking a 4 day vacation on the West Coast...  Originally, this trip was loosely based around a Stanford visit, but then I just realized that I needed a bit of a break and I had good enough friends out here to welcome me with open arms and open apartments.  :)   So, for now I'm in Walnut Creek.... just chillin', maxin' and relaxin'.   I won't lie... I did do a little bit of work this afternoon for a client presentation, but for the most part, its the first non-family related vacation I've had in a while (visited the bro in Tampa twice this summer.)   Its funny, because as I was telling Charles (my boss) that I was going to be gone the rest week, he's like, "shit."  I'm like, "Dude... look at the calendar...  look at the last time I took time off."   So, here I am.  I'm here, and I'm resting comfortably.  Its a nice way to clear ones mind especially as big decisions may be looming. 

Pics will be coming, too, of course.  Tomorrow, I plan to head over to a Ford dealership I saw that had a Mustang on the lot.  :)

Oh, and by the way, did anyone catch Jack Cafferty ripping on Yassar Arafat this morning on CNN headline news??   I won't repeat what he said, but he basically flipped out on how terrible a guy this once and finished with, "Good riddence."  Solidad O'Brien was speechless.  Interesting stuff...   Apparently billions of dollars in donations to his cause are unaccounted for?  I didn't know this... I need to go check that out.

Lately, I've been conjuring up all sorts of ideas for what you can with del.icio.us.  A lightweight tool distributed across an active internet userbase can be a very powerful and very interesting thing.  Fred and I have been using it a lot to search.  For example, you can go to del.icio.us/tag/restaurants+nyc if you're looking for someplace good to eat.  The good thing about del.icio.us, rather than a citysearch or something like that is that unless someone finds it worthwhile enough to remember, it probably won't be on there--so the crap is already screened out to some extent.

Anyway, while I was at the Boathouse today, I was talking about dating with someone and I came up with an idea.  What about distributed dating via del.icio.us?  The problem with dating sites is that its hard to tell which ones you should use, and they're all so closed off.  Not everyone is on Match or Friendster or MySpace or whatever.  A metasearch that crawls all the dating sites might be ok, but at the end of the day, you'll still need to pay to talk to people, regardless of whether or not those people wind up being worth talking to.

So let's take back our personal lives with a little good ole fashioned self-tagging.   Basically, it will work like this.  Pick any page, preferably a page that someone can access (as opposed to one behind a pay dating site) and tag it dateme with del.icio.us.  If you don't know how to use del.icio.us yet, kick on the Pimp My Web box on my menubar.  I have some screencasts on how to get started. 

Now, we'll need some way to search people, so I suggest you go by 10 year age groups and gender.  How about location, too?  Now, certain cities have really obvious abbreviations, like NYC is obviously NYC.   Same with San Francisco.  If you're not sure, just put your two letter state abbreviation.  So, for me, I would tag my post as follows:

dateme 20s male nyc ny

If you were a woman in her 30's from San Fransisco, you'd tag yourself:

dateme 30s female sf ca

And the same thing goes for searches.  So for me, I'll be watching the del.icio.us/tag/dateme+20s+female+nyc page and its corresponding RSS feed at http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/dateme+20s+female+nyc. 

Inherent problems with this?  Well, first of all, the del.icio.us user population, similar to the blogger population, is probably male dominated.  So, we need guys out there getting their female friends up with del.icio.us and a blog page.  What needs to happen there I think is that some newspaper or maybe Gothamist or something needs to pick up this story and encourage people to do it. 

The cool thing is that you can setup your page, tag it, even tag it anonymously, and no one would even know that you were doing it.  So, you could just be writing  a blog, and tagging yourself for this distributed dating system, and you wouldn't have to go through the embarrassment of someone at work finding you on match or anything like that...  unless they were literally on del.icio.us looking for exactly your type of profile. 

So, I'll be tagging this post and seeing what comes of it.  Anyone who reads this, forward this to your single friends and get them up on del.icio.us if they aren't already.  If nothing else, this is going to be an interesting experiment:  The del.icio.us distributed dating experiment... starting with one silly blogger--a blogger that appreciates openminded, ambitious women who like the outdoors, movies, cooking and being cooked for, and baseball.  (Just in case this actually works.)

So... who's with me??  Tag yourselves "dateme"!!

This Saturday, the Downtown Boathouse will be holding its annual Harrison Street Regatta:

From DTBH:

This is our annual fun-race and BBQ that is held every year at the Boathouse. It is the highlight of the paddling season. We hold a race from Pier 96 to our 72nd St. dock. The winner is the 2nd boat to cross the finish line. The race is open to all human-powered craft. All participants are entered in a drawing for boating-related prizes. Our fleet of public kayaks is available for use, or bring your own boat. Come at 1:00PM to register, the Race Starts at 2:00PM. A BBQ is held after the race. Everything including the food and soft drinks is 100% free.

Last year, I came in 3rd... but 1st my self termed "Crappy Boat Class".  The two guys who beat me were in fiberglass boats and I had a slow plastic one.  So, I'm going to secunder one of our newer boats by taping my name to it in the wee hours of the morn before the race starts...   I don't care about the whole 2nd boat in, thing...   I'm very ok with finishing first.  :)

So, if you'd like to come and check out kayaking, Saturday afternoon would be the day to do it....  so you could watch me leave Tim in the dust.  Remember, though, that the race ends at our location at 72nd Street!   Its a one way race, so that's where the BBQ will be as well.

Finding new things in del.icio.us is a little bit like an egg hunt.  The Tag Team releases a new feature,  with no announcment, and then the community finds it.

So, if you haven't used the for: tag yet, don't feel bad.

Basically, if you want to send a link to another del.icio.us user, you tag it for:theirscreename.  Now, I've used the "forchristina" tag in the past and had my mentee use it to get things, but this is much less of a hack.  With the for: tag, you can send stuff directly to them and only get can see it.  To retreive your own for: tags when you're signed in, just got to http://del.icio.us/for and it will automatically default to your own for: links.  Plus, you can subscribe to your ow for: tag via RSS.

So, if anyone wants to send me a link, be it furniture for my apartment, cool events, companies of interest, etc. you can just tag it for:ceonyc and I'll get it. 

In the future, every digital advertisement you see will fit into the following categories:

1. You asked for it, because want to know more about a product or service.
2. Someone paid for your attention with some kind of an offer.
3. It was deemed funny or entertaining through social screens made up of actual humans.
4. You saw it as part of the self-expression of someone else...that they use the brand to self-identify, so your interaction with them became branded (like when your friends wear Nike t-shirts...  only this time, its on their avatar).

They will all have the following attributes:

1. Every ad not passed on through social screens or as self expression will be data targeted in some way, not contextual.  Something about what you did or who you are will drive what you see... 
2. You will always have a way to block future ads from these non-social placements.
3. You will be able to subscribe to more information or announcements about these products in a blinded way that ensures you can stop at any time and that your contact info doesn't get sold off.
4. The ads will be built for the medium they are carried on.  In other words, boring TV commercials will not follow you onto the internet and appear as YouTube pre-rolls.  They will take advantage of the format and be more interactive.

Here's some other stuff I'd like to see happen:

1. Brands will set the elements of their brand free... logos, music, images, etc... for users to do with as they please...remix, reuse...  even parody.
2. I'll stop getting junk mail.  Seriously, folks...  once a week, I just shred 99% of the snail mail I get.  Is there any way to spam block an offline mailbox?  (Oh, and btw...  I'm getting Gmail spam.. that's really annoying, b/c I wasn't for a long time.  That Report Spam button doesn't work at all.)
3. Ratings, reviews, wishlists, even product inventories of things your friends bought, will be microformatted, permissioned, standardized, etc... so that, when I need new shoes, I'll be able to see what kind of shoes my friends are buying or what the most popular ones are among Directors of Consumer Products.   

Anyone else see the nature of advertising changing?  What will be different in the future?  Feel free to post your thoughts.

Marino's Chicken Fajita Panini

Link: A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania - Photography by Kathleen Connally.

Fantastic photos on this site... Apparently, this 41 year old mom takes all these pictures within 10 miles of her house.  Thanks to Jeff the Intern for the recommendation.

Zog Sports is a fun bunch that runs charity softball, dodgeball, kickball, football, soccer, etc. in the NYC area.  They need an operations manager.

Here's the job description.

E-mail a resume and a coverletter to Christie.

Link: woot_detail.

I love Woot!  They sell one item per day... well, lots of the same item each day.  The best part?  Their descriptions.  Like this one for a remote control car:

Three halves of a foot long, this wee remote control Mitsubishi Lancer Evo has two speeds, coil spring shocks, realistic rubber tires, a pistol grip remote control, and a low center of gravity to reduce rollovers. (You know what? Next time some jackass from our hometown tells us we’ve gotten a little porky since high school, we’re totally going to say we’re lowering our center of gravity to increase stability.)

Union Square is a sheet of ice this morning.

So the Mets lost again today, getting swept by the Reds and starting off the season 0-3.  Brian IM's me, because he has Danny Graves on his fantasy team, and asks me if I know how the hell its possible that, in a 6-1 game, where Graves throws two pitches to a single batter, he can pick up a save.   Enter Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia:

In baseball statistics the term save is used to indicate the successful maintenance of a lead by a relief pitcher, usually the closer, until the end of the game. A save is credited to a pitcher who fulfills the following three conditions:

1. The pitcher is the last pitcher in a game won by his team;
2. The pitcher is not the winning pitcher (for instance, if a starting pitcher throws a complete game win);
3. The pitcher fulfills at least one of the following three conditions:
   1. He comes into the game with a lead of no more than three runs, and pitches the remainder of the game, gaining at least one out.
   2. He comes into the game with the potential tying run being either on base, at bat, or on deck. In other words, the potential tying run is either already on base or is one of the first two batters he faces.
   3. He pitches at least three "effective" innings (this is the only subjective criterion and is judged by the official scorer).

No more than one save may be credited in each game, even if more than one of the previous conditions is fulfilled.

So basically, Graves enters with the bases loaded in a 6-1 game, making the tying run on deck.  (Even if he gives up a salami to the first batter, its still only 6-5.  Only the next guy could tie the game.)  There are two outs, but that doesn't matter.  According to criteria #2, he gets a save.  So, Danny Graves, by getting at least one out without giving up back to back home runs, gets a save.  If that isn't the cheapest fuckin' save I've ever heard of, I don't know what is.  Jeez... I could have done that.  Two pitches with a five run lead...  don't strain yourself Danny Boy.

I don't understand this guy at all.  Check out his four starts so far:

Date                     Opp.                     W     L      S      IP           H        R    BB   K            

04/09	@ATL	0	1	0	5.0	8	5	0	3
04/15	FLA	1	0	0	9.0	1	0	3	7
04/20	@FLA	0	1	0	4.0	11	7	1	3
04/25	ATL	1	0	0	7.0	2	1	1	5

First off all, I'm not on the Aaron Heilman bandwagon quite yet.  He's only thrown two good starts and he can't seem to get them in a row.  Last game, he couldn't get through five without giving up 11 hits and 7 runs.  Now, all of the sudden, he 2 hits the Braves over seven.  When he sucks, he really sucks, but when he's good, he's nearly unhittable.  And, when you hear the descriptions in the paper, he wins by "changing speeds and locating his fastball effectively."  Alright, fine that's the way you want someone to pitch, but that's not a 2 hitter type game.  It awfully hard to dominate when that's all you do, unless you're Greg Maddux.  So, which Aaron Heilman shows up next game?  Who knows.  This team doesn't make any sense to me.  Five losses, six wins, Pizza not batting his weight...  and where the heck was Victor Diaz all my life? 

Oh, and btw...  Julio Franco is obviously well into his sixties.  Forty-six?  Right.

Every now and then, the NYPD does these mass mobilizations to practice.  This was by Lincoln Center.  Good work!

This is my first moblog.  I got a Treo 650 today.  Dierg and I went out to dinner after work.  This was before she splattered ketchup all over herself.

My parents are in the process of moving...   We're all slowing locating closer to Gino's.  They've got a lot of work to do over the next month, though, because not only did the people who lived in their new house not do much work on it during the 30 years that they lived there, but they probably had the worlds most god-awful taste.  You just have to see it to believe it:

You had to see this coming...

Link: CNN.com - World's oldest man dies in New York - Nov 20, 2004.

*Hale retired 50 years ago as a railroad postal worker and beekeeper

*watched his lifelong favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, win the World Series again after 86 years.

*At age 95, Hale flew to Japan to visit a grandson who was in the Navy. While en route back to the United States, he stopped in Hawaii and even gave boogie-boarding a try.

*At 103, Hale was still living on his own and shoveling the snow off his rooftop.

*Guinness record-holder for the oldest driver. At age 108, he still found slow drivers annoying

*Hale outlived his wife, who died in 1979 (69 years of marriage)

Now that's a life.

Fred Hale.  113.  I may just have to live that long to see the Mets win another championship.

Tim O'Reilly posted this on Flickr. This is a good visual display of what's going on in the new web.

I'm at WeMedia at the moment...

So the other day I ran some things to clean up my laptop...   uninstalling random features I didn't think I needed.  Who would have thought that uninstalling speech recognition features would also uninstall handwriting recognition.  Tablet rended useless for the moment... very frustrating as I try to blog the WeMedia conference.

Listening to the first panel, it makes me wonder whether or not the changing media opens up new opportunities for young journalists who have cultivated WeMedia platforms and technology to create trust.  In other words, is it easier for CBS to put Andy Rooney on a podcast or to hire a true podcaster...  and if they hire a podcaster, what could they actually provide that person in terms of channel support? 

Larry Kramer brings up an interesting point that new forms of media are increasing utilization rates of the newsroom.  Whereas in the past, political staffs couldn't find their way on the air when the station was hyperfocused on one progam, they're now publishing stories and video on the web.

According to Farai Chideya, NPR has a job opening for a New Media Music Editor.  I'll make sure Fred doesn't apply. 

Here's another digital divide:    Political/news engagement and disengagement.   How many people are less interested in the news and politics than they were ten years ago because they have so much other content to consume or because they're more connected to work?  (iPods and Blackberries gaining commuter minutes versus the newspaper.)  How many are more hyperfocused on it because of blogging and access to more and better information?  I feel like there's more of the former than of the latter.