Fordham wins vs. St. Joe's in OT!
HUGE win for Fordham last night. Marcus Stout stepped up with 4 ticks left in OT. FAAANTASTIC!
A Quote About Loving Words
"Maybe you like the beach, maybe you don't. Maybe you're favorite color is blue and mine is black. Who cares. It's really all about approach. Love is about adjectives and adverbs, not nouns and not even verbs. Blue, black, red, green, quiet, loud, jazz, fishing, scuba... it all doesn't matter. In fact, sometimes, its better if it's different, just to make things interesting and expose the other person to new things. Run, bike, scuba, travel... all these things can change, too. Don't like me because I play sports, b/c if I get MS, will you no longer love me? But happy and happily, and lovingly and openminded and sweet, thoughtful, sexual, sarcastic and selflessly... these things are you... they're forever and they effect every moment of your life. I want to marry an adjective and an adverb."
People I won't care to see go...
Just a few random things.
This guy killed two cops and was put in a leadership position in a gang, "because he put enough work in." Now they're deciding whether or not to give him the needle. Let's hope he doesn't get the opportunity for overtime.
Note to self. Switch this guy's pack with a pack full of pots and pans Bugs Bunny style. Idiot.
This man kills puppies. Note to self: Organize pitbull and rotweiler puppy Meetup at his apartment.
Sort of reminds me of the line in U-turn...
""Forty thousand people die every day. Why can't you be one of them?"
Now Appearing at 24Hour Fitness Clubs Everywhere: Me
I got interviewed for the inaugural issue of You24, which is a magazine for 24Hour Fitness clubs. My article comes right before Lance Armstrong, on Page 36, and in an amazing coincidence, right next to a fullpage Jamba ad.
Barak: We hardly know you and that's why we like you
Although, as John Kerry proved, being "the devil you don't know" won't get you elected... so hopefully we get to know Barak better as this moves forward. Here's his first step at talking with us:
The PBWiki for my class DISAPPEARED
Its 2:24PM and I am freaking out... The PBWiki that I created for my class tonight COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED. I spent hours this weekend on it.
Support has been contacted, but I'm going to go LinkedIn my way to someone higher up.
2:50PM Update... David Weekly, the founder, who has all his contact info online, including his cellphone, just IMed me back and said there was no data lost and they're fixing it.
Can you imagine IMing Bill Gates when Windows crashes? I love startups. :)
Product Managing for Ourselves: My Parents Get It, Bloggers Don't
So the other night, my parents asked me what an iPhone was at Gino's...
...Clearly, that's some fantastic PR when new technology trickles its way into my parents' conversations just days after launch. I mean, my dad just got broadband last week. (Wooo!)
"It's a phone and an iPod in one, so you don't have to carry both things around."
"Wow, that's great."
They didn't care about iHandcuffs, third party apps or whether or not they are locking themselves into Apple.
The fact is... Apple's products are such a vast improvement in overall consumer experience that most users will be more than satisfied. All the technobloggers are bitching about the lack of openness.
I ask you: Open to what??
I have a $600 PocketPC Phone and you know what third party apps I have on it? Newsgator Mobile and Typepad, and Typepad I could just blog through an e-mail address anyway. A lot of good my open Windows Mobile platform is doing me. Two apps. Two goddamn apps. Plus, the stupid thing can't switch out of apps fast enough to answer the phone a lot of times anyway. Without apps that people really care about, no one gives a rat's ass about open.
I wouldn't switch, because I'm a business user that needs more robust e-mail and contact management, but I recognize that this product isn't for me.
Closed? Bleh. DRM? Boo. But, give Apple credit for singlehandedly carrying the whole digital download market on its back and putting music in our ears in the first place. Do I think it's stupid that I basically walk around with a small computer in my iPod that can run no apps at all? Yes. Do I hate their DRM? Yes. Is it a ridiculously better product than anything than came before it? Yes, absolutely.
Open is great when you have something to be open to...and, geekery aside, if I had to choose between open for open's sake and a great consumer experience, put me in handcuffs, baby.
Let Microsoft come out with a better product that has a development platform for it. Zune was a punchline... and until someone starts understanding what consumers want as job one, no amount of handwringing is going to bring about "open".
Its funny, because we bloggers say the same thing about carriers. My non-techie non-blogger friends bitch about carriers, too, but not because they can't get off-deck apps or don't have an open OS... because they pay too much per month and that's what my parents thought of the iPhone.. it costs too much.
People want value. Value means more or less money in their pocket. They can touch and feel money.
They also want real improvement in function. iPod+Phone... that's a real improvement. That's one less device that we need. Third party apps? Which apps? What do they look like? Who wants them?
There's a reason why people buy Apple's stuff and if there's no useable alternative that is open, can you blame them?
No good pocket knife wielding sons of bitches
So this morning, despite the fact that my alarm is set to 6:45, I don't wake up until 8:30. Fine, no gym. Oh, but now I have to rush a little because the car is on the wrong side of the street and I have to move it by 9:30. No prob. Comb my hair and grab my hat... out the door in seconds flat. (Its a Beatles line...I have neither hair nor a hat.)
Checking the car as I always do before getting in, I notice that the back left tire is really low. Strange..didn't notice that before. So I drove to the gas station to get some air. Pretty much right at the moment that I realize the tire wasn't really reinflating was when I noticed the stab wounds. Some fucker (or fuckers) put four half inch holes in my vinyl top, directly above the tire. Goddammit. Why you gotta mess with a man's ride? Oh, by the way, did I mention I jammed my thumb badly at last night's dodgeball game. (We swept all four games for those of you keeping score at home.) Do you know how hard it is to change a tire with no right thumb? Functioning opposable thumbs are a critical component of the tire changing process, particularly since the jack that Ford provides was ergonomically designed to be a cruel practical joke. Throw on top of that the ridiculous amount of softball equipment I usually keep in my trunk, making access to the donut quite the exercise in one thumbed unpacking. I got the tire, which on the Mustang, of course, is heavy and fat off, but not before playing wheel lock adapter scavenger hunt inside the car. An examination of the tire pinpointed the last and most devistating of the half inch stab wounds inflicted on my car.
Now its 10:42 and I'm on the Manhattan bring, transmitting this post from Typepad Mobile, finally on my way. Do you know how badly I would have liked to catch the assholes who did this? Note to self...store tire iron in winter coat. My thumb hurts from thumbing this, too.
I'll deal with the donut and new tire over the weekend. For now, its parked. Who stabs cars in Bay Ridge?
links for 2007-01-11
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Personally, I don't think I'll ever go wireless with my headphones, because the wire prevents me from loosing them.
2007 Digital Ad Trends on the Oddcast Blog
Hey folks, check out this post I wrote over on the Oddcast blog about what we might see in 2007.
Tomorrow: 70 AND snow. Friday: Locusts
I case you didn't notice, it snowed this morning in NYC.
Robocop the Historian?
So I turn on the history channel the other day and Robocop is talking about the Roman Empire.
So bizzare.
It turns out that, according to the Daily News, "
Weller, 58, who holds a master's degree in Roman and Renaissance art
and is working toward a Ph.D., has become one of Syracuse University's
most popular professors."
You know what he says at the end of each class?
"Thank you for your cooperation."
We have left the group "Facebook Newsfeed Sucks"
Because, in the end, it actually doesn't. The put in the privacy features that allow people to decide for themselves what gets broadcast, but a lot of people never even bothered changing them. I have to say that I find it to be one of the most engaging features on any social site.
In fact, yesterday, I was at a Fordham Young Alumni Committee meeting, and someone mentioned this girl that two of us knew. I couldn't help but add, "And it was her 25th birthday" and someone else said, "Yeah, I'm sorry I missed that...it looked like fun." Everyone else was a little confused, but what the two of us realized was that both of us had seen separate friends of ours tagged in photos from the part in our Facebook Newsfeeds that day.
What the Newsfeed does is to keep oiling the social gears in the machine. I have no doubt that it causes more comments, more messages, and more importantly, more offline interaction. That's something a lot of other networks are missing. I'm signed up to about a dozen other networks at least. Friendster I hear from once a week with similar updates on friends, but my friends just aren't that active anymore there. Once in a blue moon I get a Tagworld invite. And the flurry of Kaneva friend requests? They've dropped off the table...not sure why.
Keeping people engaged is so critical to a social network, and what Facebook does best is to put keepping people engaged with each other over keeping people engaged with the site. For example, they just sliced an extra (advertising supported) pageview off the poke. When you poke, you get a quick java popup, not a full page refresh or new page to confirm. Slick, easy, faster. Another good example is how they show me my friend data. They actually tell me who my friends just became friends with. Friendster, on the other hand, makes me click through to my friend's friends to discover that on my own, and see another ad.
The Newsfeed has also started to feature sponsored items and I really don't find them intrusive at all. If I'm not interested in them, unlike email, they disappear down the page.
So, despite the weeping of tears and beating of the breast, I think the Newsfeed turned out pretty well, actually. It's definatlely keeping me more engaged with my friends and the site, too.