• They are Internet Millionaires.
  (tags: socialnetworking funny commercials)

It was a sloppy game and the commercials were pretty much the worst of all time, except for the fan created Doritos one in the beginning...   but at least one good thing came out of this year's Superbowl: 

$550 in charity donations in the Charity Superbowl Wiki.

At the end of the first quarter, it seemed like we might have an upset in the making.  The first play of the game resulted in a Bears TD and Peyton was the first QB to throw a pick.   Six turnovers later, the Bears were up 14-6, making sexy commedianne blogger Heather Fink our first quarter winner.  That will send a $55 check over to RAINN.

Of course, the Bears hold on the game, and the football, didn't last, and the Colts came back with 10 unanswered second quarter points, taking a 16-14 lead into the half...   which...   wait a second...   makes Heather a winner AGAIN.   Tack on another $137.50 unto the check for RAINN, bringing her halftime total up to $192.50.

The third quarter was all about kicking...   and three fieldgoals later, the Colts extended their lead ever so slightly with two of their own to one from the Bears, making the third quarter score 22-17.  Score the third quarter for Matt McLaughlin of Thermodepot's sponsorship of the American Cancer Society.  They'll get a check for $82.50 on Matt's behalf.

Still, the Bears were in the game...  until Grossman tossed up a duck and the Colts returned it in the fourth, putting the game out of reach, and giving us a 29-17 final, eh...   I add the "eh" because our final score winner is Ken King and he has selected the Canadian Diabetes Association as his sponsored charity.  They'll receive 50% of our pool total: $275 American.  I wonder if Ken is as successful in his Grey Cup boxes.

Thanks to everyone who played our Charity Superbowl Wiki... see you next year!

Checks will go out tomorrow.

Thanks

  Puba in her bed 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

My dad just called.  We had to put our family dog, Puba, to sleep.  I'm going to go for a walk or something soon, but for now, I'll post.  I just put up a Flickr badge on the right with Puba photos as a little blog memorial.  Feel free to trackback or comment with your little pet stories or whatever if you'd like.

We had Puba for 14 1/2 years.  She was a bichon-frise (white fluffy ball of fluff) and she was the best dog ever... hands down.  I've never met another living thing that loved to be loved as much as this dog did.  She'd lay on her back and let you rub her tummy for an hour.

Originally, I wanted a rabbit.  Brian's dad raised rabbits and it seemed like rabbits would make cool pets.  Of course, I really wanted a dog, so by asking for something ridiculous like a rabbit, I got a dog.  We got Puba from a private owner in Staten Island named Bob Amato.  Maybe he'll Google himself or Google Puba and we'll find out, because we probably don't have their contact info and I'm sure they'd want to know.  Puba was about six weeks old when we got her, and she was the runt of the litter.  Her mother had abandoned her and the Amato's had to bottle feed the dog and she almost didn't make it on her own.  A few weeks after we got her, they called us up and offered us a new dog plus $1000, because they missed her.  My dad was ready to take the deal...   funny how yesterday, he was thinking about how different and sad his mornings will be now, because he spends so much time with the dog in the morning when my mom's at work.  Of course, it wasn't long after that he good hooked on her, too.  I think letting the dog lick his face was pretty much the turning point... plus the few grand he needed to put down to get the dog cataract surgery.

She had cataracts before she even turned six months old. In fact, she was kind of a lemon.  She had a small trachea, too...  they all do, so she'd choke sometimes.  She also had two ACL surgeries (you'd think she would be doing more than sleeping and eating to sustain such injuries), a skin allergy, and an overbite.  Three months ago, she fell down our basement steps.  She also fell down the front steps, too, when she was younger.  And stepped on?  Oh, I'm sure we've stepped on her a hundred times.  She didn't know any commands.  My mom swears she knew "stay" but I think it was just pure laziness.  Sometimes, she'd sit for a cookie... but only for a cookie.  She'd also require a cookie to do her business in the backyard.  I wish someone gave me a cookie every time I had to do my business.

She loved my grandmother, too... she'd wet herself as soon as she came in.  (The dog, not Nana, although Nana got pretty excited, too.)  Yeah... the bladder didn't work too well either.  One time, my parents were away and I was dog-sitting.  She wouldn't climb stairs... only fall down them, so she sat at the foot of the stairs and whined for me to come down.  I dragged my blanket down and went to bed on the couch with her so she wouldn't be lonely.  It wasn't too long before I felt warm and wet...   I suppose my blanket didn't have her scent, so she need to make it her own.  Some thanks.

I never fed her from the table, though, but I'd always give her unsolicited food at random times, so she wouldn't learn to beg rudely.  She liked grapes and she'd like a plate of leftover omelet for an hour.

My parents are pretty crushed... obviously they spend more time with her after I went to school and moved out.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they love the dog more than the love me, but then again, the dog probably has a better disposition than I do anyway.

So that's it.  Puba died...   I guess there isn't much more to say.

Oh wait... actually, there's one more thing.  When she was younger, she'd run around the house like a wild woman if you riled her up.  She'd run in circles and behind our couch (the day she got too big to do that she got stuck back there) and then through the fabric skirt and under our couch in the porch.  Then, we got a new couch that went all the way to the floor and that was a surprise to her as well, but a lesson learned quite quickly.  Its going to be really quiet in my parents house now.

So, it turns out I screwed up the roman numerals for this game....  its XLI not LXI...   eh...  Doesn't change the fact that we'll be giving away $550 (thanks to a few people for some extra donations to the pot) to charity today based on the scores of tonight's game.

So here's the number selection video.  Check out what numbers you got here.  (Everyone got an extra box, by the way).

I was working on a blog for a kayaking program on the other side of the Hudson, and trying to add neat little "add to Outlook" buttons.   They don't seem to work as well online as they do off, however.  I uploaded .vcs files to typepad, but when I try to open them in Firefox, they just open in the browser as text.  When I try in IE, the download window pops up just fine, but when I actually click "open" I get an Outlook message saying "The operation failed.  An object could not be found."  Do you have the same issues or any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong.  These files open up just fine when they're on my desktop.

Download kayaking08282005.vcs

Link: Nick Bradbury: NewsGator Acquires FeedDemon, TopStyle...and Me!.

First off, let me say that I'm an avid FeedDemon user and I like the software a lot.  It was well worth the $30 I spend on it.  Nick Bradbury built a great tool and I'm happy to see him doing well for himself.

That being said, I'm not really happy about this merger...  mostly because I don't believe in a subscription model for a piece of software that sits on my machine that I don't get any support for.  Newsgator is a subscription based tool and they've offered me a free two year subscription, but then I'll have to start paying for FeedDemon annually.  I'm sure the support forums and other efforts are great... but I don't use any of them.  If given the choice, I wouldn't sign up for support either.  FeedDemon shouldn't break.  Period.  Its a piece of software that does a relatively simple thing...  reads RSS feeds.  I don't pay for my browser on a subscription model...  how is this different?  Its a really nice piece of software that I really like, but, not enough to pay an annual fee for it when I already paid for it once.  I feel like I bought it, and basically now I have to pay again for it, just because the company merged.  This isn't what I thought I signed up for. 

We're posting a job here that includes the following line:

"An MBA is not only not required, it is frowned upon."

So, I'm a little bit disappointed we couldn't get a meme going out of the Charity Superbowl Wiki, but the momentum has slowed and I'm only up to 40 bloggers.  Right now, there's a CSS design post up at the top of the popular list.  I guess charity doesn't really get the blog world hot and bothered.

Maybe the combo of the wiki and paypal was a bit too technical for people?  I dunno.

So, I figured I could just push for 10, give everyone a free box, and call it a day.. but that would only give 500 bucks to charity.   

Instead, I'm going for broke and opening it up to anyone.  Still one box per person, but you can now sign up regardless if you have a blog or not.

So, seeing as how there are supposedly 970ish of you out there, I don't think its asking too much that 60 of you contribute a 10 spot to charity.

So, pick a charity, pick a box, and tell others!

A long time ago, I switched my Flickr account name to my Yahoo! screename.  Why?  Because they asked me to and because I basically use the same signin for everything anyway, so it really wasn't such a big deal.

And eventually, it will probably happen with MyBlogLog and del.icio.us, too.  Seriously... who cares?  It won't make me use any more Yahoo services.

And why don't I care?  I don't care, because, at the end of the day, I'm glad the little startup where I store all my precious photos got bought be a big profitable company.

Yahoo! has lots and lots of servers and they're unlikely to ever completely go out of business.   So, if I had a choice between signing in to Flickr with my Flickr vs. signing into Yahoo! and giving me a better shot I won't have to move any of those photos in the remaining 58+ years of my life, I'll take the Yahoo! ID and signin.

It's the same as when your bank gets bought by a bigger bank and they give you a new card with new numbers.  It's a little bit of a hassle, but your money is probably safer at Citibank than it is at  First Fifth Third Bank of Saskachawan.

I'm not pissed off.  I'm thankful that such a great service exists, no matter what I need to enter in the box to login.

Right now, after a day, we have 23 participants in the 100 Bloggers, 100 Boxes Charity Superbowl Wiki.

A good start, but we have a long way to go, so please, pass the word and consider participating.  It's for charity!   We'd love some tagging, digging, and reblogging to help get this out.

• January 2007 :: Do Email Silences Matter?
  (tags: email marketing communication)
• Gotham Gal: Japanese Dinner
  (tags: sushi recipes food)
• Unit Structures: The Network Effect Multiplier, or, Metcalfe's Flaw
  (tags: socialnetworking statistics economics value networks fordhamclass)

There's a Matrix-like movie called Equillibruim that stars Christian Bale where an omnipresent Big Brother character called "Father" appears on TV screens across the land.  We find out later that the real Father died years ago and the powers that be voted to continue to use his digital likeness to rule the masses. 

Lately, that's sort of how I feel about MySpace.

Of course, I know that MySpace founder Tom Anderson isn't really dead, but when his own profile got hacked and he never addressed the community about it, you couldn't help but wonder if he and his millions are largely checked out.

I mean, he doesn't even seem to really use the service, other than to be everyone's default friend and to accept comment worship.  No cool layout.  Same pic all the time.  No widgets.  Jeez, adopt a BunnyHero pet or something.  In fact, despite the fact that he gets 100's of comments a day, Tom has only addressed the community seven times in the last year through bulletins...oh..check that..six.  One of them was a spam bulletin sent when his profile got hacked.

Whenever my profile gets hacked or my widgets suddenly don't work, I look to hear from the voice of MySpace... and I get...silence.  As spammers and hackers run amuck on this site, the community is made to feel like they are fending for themselves. 

Contrast that with Facebook.

The other day, I was recruiting for a position through Facebook by targeting young marketing people.  I didn't get 30 emails out to people with public profiles about a real job from a real company before I tripped the spam alarm and was warned against it.  When I contacted the support email address they gave me about it, an actual human with a name answered my questions and politely asked me not to use Facebook for recruiting.  And when users were up in arms over the newsfeed, you couldn't login to the site without hearing directly from Mark Zuckerberg who, like seemingly all the other people who work at Facebook, actually use the site.  They even worked hard to get new privacy settings into the system. 

The same holds true for Craigslist, where Craig Newmark cares about the community so much that he has handed the day to day running of the business to someone else while he spends all of his time on customer service issues.  He trolls forums and chases down New York City real estate scams.  Talk about rolling up your sleeves!

Spam, scams, and other bad stuff are products of MySpace's relatively open architecture, which is part of what makes it great in the first place.  I understand that.  What I want is a voice, Tom's or anyone else from behind the curtain, to talk me through it all...an actual human who tries to explain what's going on and makes me feel like we're all in the same boat.  If Tom's kickin' it in Aruba with his millions, good for him, but then there should be another voice to anchor the site.  Wendy from Customer Service... we could all be her friend.   Or, maybe he's working hard fighting pedophiles or setting age policies or whatever...the point is, the average user's experience is that MySpace is a ship cast adrift.  Everyday, another one of my friends gets their profile hacked or sends a spam bulletin they didn't intend to.  Fake people try to add me left and right.  (Sidenote: There's going to be big market for average looking models in the spam profile world, because right now, the girls that try to add me are too hot to be believeable as actual humans using the service.  Get some average looking people to add me and maybe I'll fall for it.) 

Equally ignored is the development community that has both benefitted and benefitted from the site's open architecture.  The other day, aspects of the Flash embed code were changed completely without warning, wreeking a good deal of havoc, albeit temporarily, with the widgetosphere.  Would a public developer notice ahead of time been that much trouble?  I know we would have liked to be able to tell our customers that their avatars might experience some odd behavior and what to do about it.

The site is still growing.  Its only going to get more and more commercial.  It needs someone telling the users where that line is going to be... that there's someone out there who cares about the quality of their experience.

Tommy, can you hear me?

  Joshua and Peter 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

For the sake of posterity, I thought it would be neat to keep track of the progress of del.icio.us as a growing company.  Brad, Fred, and I, and everyone else associated with this deal are all very excited about it.  Its great to be around such a fast growing phenomenon at this early stage.  Joshua and Peter have been unpacking a lot of boxes in the last week or so and they now have their DSL up and running in the office.  You might not recognize Peter their in the background.  He used to look more Rasputin-like, but now he's a walking Gillete commercial.

• 100 Bloggers, 100 Boxes: The Charity Superbowl Wiki
  (tags: superbowl nfl football charity)

As an experiment in non-profit collaboration on the web and to give us reason to keep watching in case Rex Grossman throws 4 INTs, I've created The Charity Superbowl Wiki for 100 bloggers to participate in a charity game.

For a donation of $10 (plus PayPal transaction fees), you get to stake claim over a box on a 10 x 10 table whose row and column numbers will represent the last digit of the scores of the Colts and Bears at various points in this Sunday's Superbowl. 

The key is that you are playing for a charity... and all of the proceeds, net of PayPal fees, will be going to charity.  When you win, your charity will get money. 

Check it out here, and please help us run up the various meme lists by linking, digging, tagging, etc.  It's for a good cause.

Are you going to be one of the 100 bloggers to participate?

• UNC Fred's 2008 Campaign Blog News Tracker
  (tags: politics)

When you're a Finance major, there are two things that are absolutely required consumption--Wall Street and Liar's Poker.  If you haven't gone through both of them, well, no there's no point to even saying that because we all have.  Its not just a rite of passage, its scripture. 

But, what isn't required, particularly with Wall Street, is learning any kind of lesson.  Guys grow up idolizing Gordon Gekko with his slick back hair and fancy 15 pound cell phone (it was 1987) on the beach, but the morality lesson gets a bit dwarfed in the whole thing. 

When I was in college, I ran a retreat for business students in the spring of senior year.   A lot of people complained about how empty and exhausted they felt about recruiting.  Trying to figure out and play who you think these companies want you to be and sell yourself can get to you after a while.   And for what?  Do the people that "play the game" really actually wind up winning in the end?

I avoided the whole brokerage/investment banking side of Finance.  I never liked who I was dealing with there because it always seemed like it was either about being better than the next guy or being the closest fit to a mold--never about being the best self you can be.  I just wasn't willing to make that kind of sacrifice and I never felt I should have to.

I wasn't going to stay up nights like Bud Fox, charting companies to prove my worth to somebody.  I was going to live my balanced life and I bet on the fact that I would get appreciated and discovered by others who wanted the same kind of balance in their lives. 

Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) gets sucked in...  the money, the women.  A lot of people do.  But you know what?  That's not what really gets you to be that successful.  Success in this country is built on equity...  built on building things and owning the equity in things you built, not tearing things down.  That's why most leaveraged buyout returns never get high multiples--there's only so many ways you can improve a company, only so much leverage you can get.  Sure, it's also less risky, but in my life, if I'm going to be around an industry, I think its more fun to be in one that's shooting for the fences.

And when you're doing that, you've got to have your heart in it.  When Bud Fox sold out Blue Star, he knew it wasn't right at the moment he did it.  When we see entreprenuers, its easy to tell who is passionate about their business in a positive way.  It flows out of them and drives them upward. 

Ok, so I didn't talk so much about the movie and kind of went on a tangent.  Its a great movie, even outside of all this moral commentary.  Michael Douglass really is Gordon Gekko and Charlie Sheen is equally well cast.  Its great to see him play on screen with his dad, making the whole betrayal seem that much more real.  Go rerent it if you haven't seen it in a while... or rent it if you're boyfriend is a hungry, aspiring broker/banker and you want to know what all the fuss is about. 

Oh, and I'm not trying to be sexist...   plenty of women are obviously successful bankers, but I don't know too many of them who really like Wall Street.  Disagree?  Feel free to comment.

Right now, it's 6:37AM in New York.  The skies are party cloudy and it's nine degrees.

That's right. 

Nine.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...

Welcome to snot freezing on the inside of my nose weather.

• Capitalism 2.0: SecondLife: Revolutionary Virtual Market or Ponzi Scheme?
  (tags: secondlife economics)
• Conde Nast's Flip to Allow Users to Control Ads · MarketingVOX
  (tags: Advertising mevertising)

"There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need a pickax, a compass, and night goggles to find them."

I'm a romantic... hopefully, not hopeless, though.  I also think life is a little bit weird and a little bit surreal. 

I also think that, at certain times, my life could use a little Enya in the background for effect.

That's the essence of L.A. Story.  Its all about how emotional and grandiose we can make our own little efforts to find someone, and then how often we realize how silly the whole thing is.  Real.  Silly.  Both.  Our lives are really silly, but they're great sometimes, too.  Harris K. Telemacher's life is really silly, too.  He drives to work through other people's backyards and through public parks.  He makes amateur videos on roller skates in art museums.  Electronic traffic condition billboards talk to him. 

And, his life is great, too, because he finds someone that makes him show off--"the idiot's version of being interesting."  He finds someone that makes him want to change the polarity of the earth to keep her from flying home.

"Life is a tale told by an idiot--full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

We are the idiots telling the story, searching hard everyday to find something of substance to lend meaning to the sound and substance to the fury.  In the meantime, we watch Steve Martin to entertain ourselves.