Things I come across in my free time

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