Things I come across in my free time

100 (thousand) miles and runnin'

I accounted for 92k in 4 1/2 years. Wow, that's a lot of time in a car. Let's see how long it takes me to get to 200k. Starting with a roadtrip to Tahoe this weekend!

Wow. Barrel Monsters

Awe.sm - on a number of levels!

I have the pleasure of being a sounding board while jonathan thought through the ideas and approaches behind awe.sm. I have to admit that I was skeptical at first - not sure if it was more by the concept or the entrepreneur :) I also have to admit that I was only one of many sounding boards, and likely not the most valuable one. For those who haven't heard of it yet, Awe.sm is an "open sharing analytics platform -a way to instrument, track, and analyze how content and attention flow through the social web."

Having been in corporate development at Yahoo! for the past 4.5 years, I have heard seen more than enough companies attempt to aggregate the data behind socially distributed content across multiple channels, and I hadn't come across anything that addressed the needs of multiple constituents the way the totally.awe.sm does.  Its not just a URL shortener (or something that a creates a shortened link Web address ???). Its not trying to re-invent an analytics platform. Its an approach that leverages consumer behaviors and established and evolving technologies to help people make sense of social distribution. Take a look into it. Its worth it.

Evidenced by today's coverage, he deserves credit for Founding the Snowball Factory and releasing awe.sm. Congratulations Strauss!

A new gig

My blog has been more work than fun in the past, and I don't mean that I used it for work purposes. Being in Corporate Development at Yahoo!, I always felt like I had to curtail the amount of publicity I gave to products and concepts that were top of mind - even if they didn't have to do with work. Many guarded attempts to share my ideas = not fun.

Well - the times they are a changing. I will be able to talk about it more over the coming days. I am not leaving Yahoo!, but I will be in a role that allows a bit more freedom to post thoughts on technologies, products and companies that pop up on the radar screen.

Hopefully I can evolve this into a enjoyable hobby vs a chore. More to come...

ROTFL. Bravo Michael Lewis

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aNvAqh8kvSkI&refer=home

My favorite quote: "Of course, no major airline would ever consciously set out to kill you. But..."

How Open will Facebook be well all is said and done?

I am truly shocked to be saying this, but I am kind of in agreement with Valleywag on this one. It really was only a matter of time before Facebook replicated applications that (a) were seeing significant adoption and (b) were core to their user experience around communication utility. I don't fully agree with the premise that all application developers are doomed, but I am skeptical of investing in applications if their sole purpose is for use within a social network. There needs to be an out of network value proposition, whether it is in the digital world, mobile world or offline. More innovation is going on outside of Facebook than inside of it, which will continue, but it is interesting to see how the new regime at Facebook may be limiting the value of that innovation as it is showing signs of closing its highly touted open doors to recreate an AOL 1.0 like walled garden, albeit in the Web 2.0 era.

Hulu and Arrested Development

I saw Jason Killar, CEO of Hulu, speak at the Federated Media, Conversational Media Summit in NY last month. While the meat of the conference was the panel discussions, the company and product demos were pretty impressive. In addition to Hulu, I saw a short demo of the Spore Creature Generator. Not going to lie, I really want to play Spore, but am frightened by the amount of time I see myself spending playing, so may resist. We'll see

Anyway, Hulu is slick, and Jason was great. I liked the fact that he has a concise view of their value proposition, what he calls their "rallying cry" and their guiding design principles. I see all well represented in their product development, which i can't say for all companies. Here is a link to the video of his demo at the conference, as well as a Hulu embed of one of my favorite Arrested Development episodes. Love the search features in the embedded video player

Quick recap before i get back into my blog...

I got engaged. Yep. Wow. The anticipation of the wedding is more exciting than i ever expected. Can't really describe it, so I won't try. 

Approximately the same time I got engaged, MSFT made an unsolicited bid for YHOO. I think that most blogs and media outlets have done more than enough to cover that drama, so I wont go into it.

Since then, I have visited Philly, NYC (3 times), Hudson, Los Angeles and am about to head to Scranton. My wedding is less that 3 months away, my bachelor party is less than two months away and the YHOO shareholder vote is less than 1 month away. So why, you may ask, haven't i posted on any of the past or upcoming events? I can't explain it. Just didn't really have an interest. I was more focused on my engagement and traveling, and less on the web in general. The MSFT bid and subsequent drama that has consumed most media channels for the past 3 months has really left a bad taste in my mouth. It was refreshing to step back and not spend 24/7 online.

But as the summer starts to kick into high gear, i am feeling the urge to re-engage with my blog. Lots happening inside and outside of work, so more to come

Everything in New York is tougher, even the cream

I got to spend a couple days in New York this week. I really enjoy my trips to New York, not only because I am from the East Coast and like being back, but because they are generally exciting trips. On one hand, I am definitely more efficient, given that I have meetings spread throughout the day with great people on the East Coast and still work with people in my office on the West Coast until the end of their day, so I get a solid 12-13 hrs of quality work done. On the other hand, there is more to do outside of work so I end up wearing myself out by burning the candle at both ends, but have a great time doing. That is why New York is so exciting. The people have more endurance and there is just more to do. But what I didn't realize until this trip is that everything else in NY has more endurance too. I was at the office and opened up the refrigerator to get some half and half for my coffee, checked the Sell By date and it was...wait for it...here's the punchline...DECEMBER 17! Umm...its November 16th. Thats a month away! When I buy half and half in San Francisco, is has a shelf life of about a week. I guess there are some things that I have grown accustomed to on the West Coast and fresh natural food is one of them. I am not going to use half and half today...

Silversun Pickups at the Fillmore...Finally!

I have attempted to see the Silversun Pickups twice over the past year. The first time, they were the opening act for Ok Go and Snow Patrol at the Bill Graham Civic Center in San Francisco, and for some reason, they decided to go on stage at 7:30PM even though the show started at 8:30PM, so I missed them. I never really figured out why that happened, but needless to say, it was a bit frustrating. Ok Go made things whole, because they were incredible. Snow Patrol...what I expected. Really good show, but didn't blow me away.

The second time was at Live 105 BFD at the Shoreline Amphitheater. The whole reason for going was to see Silversun Pickups and Cold War Kids.  Alas. Had to work for most of that Saturday and missed both bands. I did get to see Social Distortion, which was very entertaining, and Bloc Party who had their show cut short because Social Distortion went over their time. Like I said. Pretty entertaining.

I will finally get to see them this Friday at the Fillmore, which is probably my favorite venue in San Francisco. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will be worth the wait, but fairly confident I won't be disappointed.