I just read this on CNN that Emeritus Airlines will allows people to talk on their cell phones throughout a flight. I think this is great although it would be pretty annoying when you’re trying to sleep and the person next to you is fighting with their mom.
Living in DC, we get our fair share of circles to drive around. On many of them there are statues of war heros. I rarely check out who they are and what they did, but ever since i read this little fact i’ve been much more interested:
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
The two guys near me are George McClellan on Connecticut Ave (photo to the left) who was a badass. He was a general in the Civil War and the Democratic presidential candidate opposite Lincoln (in 1864). He was injured in battle. I know because i see that the leg is up.
The other one near me on Mass Ave is Philip Sheridan. He took 5 years to graduate West Point (George McC finished 2nd in his class). His’s first combat command l
ed him to win the critical Battle of Chattanooga in 1863. Grant put him in charge of cavalry for the Army of the Potomac in 1864 and he led the raid on Richmond that ended in the death of Confederate general Jeb Stuart. He became commander of the Army of the Potomac in 1864. In this capacity he led the army to battle at Appomattox and, with Grant, compelled Gen. Robert E. Lee to surrender, ending the Civil War. In 1884, he succeeded Sherman as commander in chief of the Army. Not too shabby.
The statue was designed by the guy who did Mt. Rushmore and the horse (named Rienzi) is famous too and on display at American History Museum.
There is a site (here) that will tell you who is who on the horses in and round DC. If you have a home in DC, it’s worth checking out.
I loved the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought it was one of the more underrated films of the past 5 years. Michel Gondry, the director and co-writer (with Charlie Kaufman) has also done some fantastic music videos. Basically, i think he’s awesome. However, that did not prepare me for this video (below) where he solves a rubix cube. Oh, he doesn’t just solve it. Oh no, that would be too simple. He solves it with his feet! That’s right, check it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQXgmVVGNA&eurl=]
If you haven’t seen any of Michel’s other stuff, even his shorter stuff, you should head over to YouTube and check it out. Even his commercials are pretty cool. Here’s a Smirnoff ad:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1UeNGELFSc]
I was just travelling throughout the US and Europe over the past two weeks. I’ve been to the following airports in the past 3 weeks: Washignton DC, Boston, Chicago, Minnesota, London, Paris, Milan, Bucarest, and Cluj (Romania). Each time i hit a new airport, i’m amazed at the type of people and kids that are milling about. The airport is a perfect display of globalization. You have all different cultures and languages mashed-up and forced into one system. In a way it’s beautiful that we can all find this common ground.
The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour is 61,000, i have no idea how many are over Europe or Asia, but one thing is for sure – the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller
After visiting Romania, i attended the Le Web 3 conference in Paris. While i won’t get into what went on the second day (kinda lame), i wanted to post my notes on the first day of speakers. Here goes:
10-10:30: Real World and why it matters: Hans Rosling
This was a fantastic presentation of describing why we need to change our perspective from being Us vs. Them when describing the global social/economic nations to being a low-middle-high income view as almost all countries have exactly the same birth rate and life expectancy. Hans is a great speaker and his company gapminder.com is worth checking out. I wish i took more notes on this one. He did have a great visual view of how the countries of the world have progressed so that almost all of them today are 2 children homes with a life expectancy of 70 years. That’s right almost every country is there. There are no more large family, short life expectancy countries – the world will stabalize at 9 billion people.
11-11:40: Giants Outlook on Web 2.0 (Yahoo, Orange, Nokia, Windows Live)
While the first was amazing, this was quite the opposite. It was too generic of a presentation. Questions were posed like “does size matter?” and they all said, “well ‘yes’ and ‘no'” and expain why size might be good and the negatives of being big which the generalities were just useless. This was more a pitch of why these companies are awesome and less about what they’re working on. They all said that user-generated content is the key to their success. The questions were all soft-balls, like “do communities matter?” to which they all responded an obvious “yes” – the Nokia presenter was the worst. He would say blanket statements like “communities aren’t about technologies,” to which the moderater would ask, “what are they about?” and he would answer blankly, “they’re about people.” Worthless. I saw much more innovation and better presentations as the Startup place.
2-2:20: State of the Blogosphere (David Sifry, CEO of Technorati)
Some stats he showed (which is pretty much all he did):
– The blogosphere doubles in size every 150-200 days
– 60 million blogs, 7 million update once a week or more
– I was surprised to see that while english is the largest in the blogosphere, it’s not over 50% (i’m a dumb american). The US is at 39% and i was surprised to see japanese blogs at 33% (france was at 2%)
2:40-3: Future of Business (Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn)
This was a short but interesting talk. He believes all people will eventually have a public facing web page. He comments that MySpace won the wars over Geocities and others b/c your home page is a social page and customizable. LinkedIn will do the same. He sees the technology of resumes as migrating from a list of assertions of where you’ve been and what you’ve done to being much more accurate and informative. Current
resumes are “very 1.0, sometimes lack information, and they lack metadata.” They should be demonstration of expertise which they currently aren’t. LinkedIn is trying to become the next version of that resume. He also sees Business 2.0 right around the corner and what are the new set of business applications. So many professionals are online, there will be increased collaboration
3:20-3:30: Jamendo startup preso
Largest aggregator of indie music in Europe. Users can stream the music from the Jamendo site or download the entire album using bittorrent. Our service (Qloud) links into AmieStreet and i’d like to get Jamendo content in there too. Hopefully we can make that happen.
5:20-5:30: Viral Growth (Netvibes CEO)
This was one of my favorite talks. He spoke of when he first started with 4 guys and they had no idea what to do. Lukily they had Wiki and API’s which turned out to be a critical piece of their growth. They allowed others to translate the widgets and make useful plugins that the users wanted.
Continue reading “Le Web 3: Day 1”
Fo drizzle, yo
This is my annual Snoop post. Even since Dre’s The Chronic, i’ve been in love with Snoop’s rapping. I even wrote a paper in college for an English class where i translated The Scarlet Letter to the lyrics of Nuthin’ But A G-Thing, it was renamed Nuthin’ But an ‘A’ Thing. Luckily, i’m not the only one who loves The Dogg. Danielle (who has no internet identity) sent me the following two gems…
The first is a site called Gizoogle. This is a site that will translate the text of any other site into Snoop-speak. If you look at what it does to the post i put up a couple weeks ago (below), it’s fantastic. I don’t who has the time to make site’s like this. But god bless them.
Here’s what i originally wrote:
This is a good graph that was sent to me that can accurately diagram who the person next to you in bed is, or how they fit into your dating perspective. While some of my friends have set up camp in the Zone of Pain with their “go ugly early” strategy, others jump between the dreaded cycle of Friend – Awkwardness – F-Buddy – Awkwardness, while the rest meander around in the dating zone with occasional layovers in the Zone of Pain.
becomes this
This is a good grizzay tizzle was sent ta me thiznat can accurately diagram who tha person nizzy ta you in bed is, or how they fit into yo pimpin` perspective wit da big Bo$$ Dogg. While some of mah niggaz have set up camp in tha Zone of Pizzle wit they “go fugly early” strategy, otha jizzle between tha dreaded cycle of Friend – Awkwardness – F-Buddy – Awkwardness, while tha rizzay meanda around in tha pimpin` zone wit occasional pusha in tha Zone of Pizzy.
awesome.
The second is a free-style rap from a guy in LA. He’s able to perfectly imitate Snoop, Jay-Z and The Game. It’s an amazing video. I like how the DJ is at a complete loss for words at the end. All he can keep saying is “jesus christ!”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbivRkS9viE&mode=related]
Finally, my friend Adam sent in this clip of Snoop going into Rick Dees studio and hitting on Patricia, Adam’s girlfriend. It’s not every day that my buddy’s woman is flirting it up with Snoop. Pretty funny.
I saw the annoucement last week (and news stories) of the new AOL CEO, Randy Falco, and got to wondering, if I’m in charge of running AOL which is now in the business of monetizing traffic to AOL.com and other pages, how would i do it? A few thoughts came to mind….
First, i would buy the best, more user-friendly and one of hte most popular social networks around – Facebook. With facebook, you not only get a great social network, but you also get one of the best photo-sharing applications on the internet. Then i would merge it with AIM, change all AIM-pages to be facebook pages, and place the mini-feed on every users home AOL.com page. That would drive traffic. Granted, it would take a long time to get everything on the same platform (calendar, aim, mail, etc.) but facebook’s interface and features are much, much better than AOL’s. Everyone’s speculating about Yahoo buying facebook, why not AOL? AOL has just as much cash and just enough desire to monetize their traffic. It’s almost as if everyone assumes AOL is dying and isn’t going to invest in their future.
Buy Meebo
AIM is one of the most precious assets AOL has and it is being threatened by Meebo. I would buy it immediately and make all meebo-me widgets become AIM widgets and place them all over the web and inside the recently purchased AOL-facebook pages.
Streaming Music Locker
Subscription streaming. AOL should abandon the WMA format and go for only streaming. In an iPod world, the only way to play is to make your server compatible with iTunes and that means abandoning DRM and/or simply abandoning any local download. A service like last.fm + mp3tunes would go a long way.
Video
Go all-flash as DRM instead of Windows Media so mac users can play. Have it all hosted so you can access anywhere and watch anywhere.
Mail
Build, Buy or do whatever it takes to do a SERIOUS upgrade to your mail application. Mail is the largest driver of ad inventory and if you’re service is completely ad-based, this should be your #1 priority. It’s been over 2 years since Gmail launched, you would think someone at AOL would have noticed how to please mail users. Where is unlimited storage, where are ajax-features to reduce latency, where? AOL mail is by far the worst webmail application on the internet. It needs to be fixed.
Voice
AOL bought 3 voice companies between 2000 and 2003: eVoice, Quack, and another one from Canada (i’m forgetting the name). AOL made serious investment in voicemail, voice recognition and other voice services. From what i can tell, all that has been completely abandoned. I would restart this effort and do more click-to-talk services, similar to Google’s. However, all of AOL’s services are tied into mail and AIM making them more attractive. For instance, it would be easy to do click-to-talk and then save to mp3 which would be put into your music streaming locker.
These are just a few of the things i’d do. What do you all think? I think Randy’s in for a tough job and i’m not bullish on AOL’s chances. I think the most successful internet companies are run by those who understand the technology and can see the trends coming. Google embraces technology and let’s it unlock new opportunities and i don’t see somewhat who’s entire background is in TV and TV ad-sales pushing AOL into new models and opportunities. That’s just my initial reaction. Then again, Terry Semel’s done a good job at Yahoo, so who knows.
Unless you’ve been living under a stone you’ve heard of Second Life – the virtual world where real people in real places can make virtual people and virtual places. Real people and companies have been flocking to it over the past few months. Now i read that there’s the first homeless guy in there. However, this is not some guy in Second Life who’s out to just get in your way while you’re walking down the street asking for a quarter. No, this guy is the result of a non-profit in Spain who are trying to reach the young and digital.
I think it’s great when companies get creative and go to where the people are. Second Life is full of young, affluent and social conscious people. That’s where NGO’s should be.
There’s a good article of the potential of YouTube in Wired this month. From that article, they mention this video (below). it’s a great segment of a novice sportscaster giving us the news, sort of. He’s nervous, awkward and totally hilarious. The best part is in the middle of his debacle he pulls out a “boom goes the dynamite!” phrase completely out of nowhere.
I also love about 45 seconds in, when he’s completely bombing you can see him mouth “i’m so sorry” to the people off camera. Call me an ass, but it’s frickin’ great.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W45DRy7M1no]
In the 1400’s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb”
Seriously, that’s where it’s from – can you believe that!?