January 2008
27 posts
Happy New Year.
Observational humor is an interesting stylistic description. The ingenuity of the survival inventions that prisoners hand make is seriously impressive – animalistically instinctive almost. Writing + editing video is similar to drafting product specifications for engineers to code. Why are most of the big media companies’ websites unusable? In a world where “Web 2.0” has meaning, they still don’t...
December 2007
43 posts
Channels 20 – 25 on Zab’s TV are Spanish. We call it “The Barrio”. And “like all things Spanish, it is dangerous”. Ive never customized my MySpace page. Perhaps that why watching the process of implementing one of Bill Israel’s Tumblr layouts felt like CSS magic. I wonder if my computer has any type of consciousness. Is it actually lethargic and sluggish when there are too...
“Mr. Jermoluk compared today’s real estate market with the boom and bust in...”
– Masterful Web Entrepreneurs Hit a Snag in Miami’s Condo Market - New York Times The first thing that came to mind when I read the NY Times’ article about Jim Barksdale’s failing real estate venture was the Fortune article about Tom Barrack; definitively prescient.
“When it comes to judging markets, Tom Barrack is the ultimate pro. Arguably the...”
– I’m Tom Barrack* and I’m getting out - October 31, 2005 From a very interesting Fortune article published in 2005.
Hollywood Spin Doctor.
From Marc Andreessen’s Blog: The big macro story is that once upon a time, most Americans routinely went to the movies. Today, only a minority do. Hollywood can, and will continue to raise ticket prices to offset shrinking audiences. But that will presumably just cause the audiences to shrink faster. - Blog.pmarca.com The “magic” of going to the movies is lost on me. All the...
Mixed Martial Arts
Mix martial arts (MMA), and by extension the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), is going to be the second biggest sport worldwide (to soccer, or perhaps basketball) by 2013.
LowestPricesInOurLicensedOnlinePharmacyViagraViagra...
I flag a lot of shit as spam in Hotmail / MSN. Its 2007, and people have spent years focused on developing anti-spam technology. So, how come my spam / email quotient actually seems to be increasing over time? And, spam is just so aggresively obvious too.
IA(lexa)C
IAC (the holding company that owns CV along with about 60 others) features some pretty odd websites on it’s corporate homepage. Some are, shall we say, less notable than others. Check out the Alexa ranks: 216 - Ask 482 - Match.com 886 - CollegeHumor 1366 - Evite 1471 - Ticketmaster 1775 - Citysearch 3909 - HSN 3370 - Pronto 5455 - Gifts.com 9713 - Shoebuy.com 27239 - Chemistry.com 41775 -...
“In case you forgot, Pownce is a Twitter clone whose added value is the resale of...”
– uncov / Pownce Is Still Alive (pownce) I suspect that many Internet sites will be developed for the purpose of reselling Amazon Web Services. Its a clever arbitrage on web infrastructure. And, certainly a more grounded business strategy than hacking together a Facebook application.
Information Superhighway Thoughts.
Somehow, I always instinctively try to delete the ads in my Facebook newsfeed, only to realize that they are ads, and therefore not deletable. Duh. Valleywag used to be a guilty pleasure that I enjoyed 1x per week, kinda like US Weekly for girls. Over the past several self-employed weeks, it somehow became daily reading, and far less interesting. The most fun feature on the Internet used to be...
Christmas is a secular holiday
I’m sick of religious media commentators being up in arms about the perceived secularization of Christmas. I agree that materialism is out of control in our culture, but humans all over the world have been celebrating the winter solstice time since long before Jesus. Roland Martin recently said, “we should continue to remember that Jesus is the reason for the season.” Well,...
she cant think of a name for her tumblog
Alana is setting up her tumblog - partially as a response to my putting her name in one of her posts. Watching her set it up was very interesting. Alana is a relatively private person and it took a little coaxing to convince her to call her tumblog alanazinn.tumblr.com. Then it was fun wathcing her come up with a name for her blog. The choices she went through bitchblog my fiance is a loser...
HBO: Hard as Nails →
Utterly disturbing. Worth watching (at least 35 minutes).
“On the Subprime Crisis: I think the actual number of delinquencies next year...”
– http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/futureinvest/57853
Jeremy Siegel is one of best financial market analysts. His Outlook for 2008 is worth reading - its short and logical.
Some of my best friends are in Private Equity / Hedge Funds; the Subprime Crisis has definitely made their professional...
Some Things I Liked About This Year
moving to nyc, brooklyn, vimeo, the people i work with, my best friends ellen&zane, my family, jenn, biking around the city, the bakery by my apartment, baseball, japanther, defiance,ohio, north carolina (1yr removed), albany, lots of concerts, spontaneous weekend road trips, camping, thanksgiving, march 18th, the Q train, that first snowfall last february where I skipped work, quitting the...
a perspective on the news
i just watched my local news for the first time in ten years. it was something to do with it being the only new thing on television. who are they kidding with this shit? why would i care what celebrity is on drugs this week? what if i don’t like sports? why would i want to watch ten minutes of the weather when i could look it up online? what’s with the graphics and presentation...
“OpenSocial, which we’ve always maintained is a surprisingly elegant PR...”
– Joe Kraus: OpenSocial is real, swears Googler in charge
Terrell Owens Dropping Knowledge. →
— forearmshiver Not having an embed option is silly, particularly given the retarded 30-second pre-roll.
ESPN - Miami vs. Phoenix Recap, December 10, 2007 →
Miami’s road win against Phoenix on Monday was both surprising and impressive. Hopefully even pivotal. And so, tonight’s game vs. Washington (11-10) should be particularly interesting.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -... →
I saw this last week and have been thinking about it since. Make an effort to see it. — rickyv I saw a commercial for it last night, and wished that I could have purchased and started watching it instantly. Unfortunately, its not out until 12/21, which really fractures the experience for me as a consumer. The movie industry needs to embrace a new distribution model; there needs to be a perfect...
"Hillsbilly"
I’m convinced ‘The Hills’ is designed to knock a good 40 points off the collective IQ of women 15-25 years of age. — debauchette Ricky showed me an episode a few nights ago… I literally could not believe how stupid they all were. I guess the message of the show is, Your brain is not important. — jakoblodwick Perhaps. Thats one opinion. But, dont overlook the quality...
“Most CDN companies charge fixed bandwidth prices along with other services…In...”
– Money Continues to Pour into CDNs « NewTeeVee 100% false. BitGravity and Panther both offer usage-based pricing with decreasing unit prices as bandwidth usage increases, and even Limelight, which requires committ levels (fee floors), uses variable pricing (except for storage, which is...
Turntable
…but there was something very refreshing about waking up every morning in NYC, turning it on and placing the needle down on Talking Head’s True Stories. — gtmcknight
Music should not be a loss leader for other services and merchandise. It is a remarkeable creation, and should carry a cost. The problem is, the public’s demand for music grossly exceeds the current cost in relative purchasing power. And, some wonderful artists that Ive discovered recently on Hype Machine, whose music I have purchased from iTunes recently: 1. Peaches (esp. Hit It Hard) 2. Bloc...
Try navigating through MySpaceTV. I dare you ;) Not even mighty Zach Klein could save the day.
Watchvia Zab Knowledge. Good advice outside of the Gulch.
1. My mailman hates me. He says that I don’t pick up the mail often enough, which makes his job difficult. My only reply is that I am not in any rush to collect junk, as a matter of practice. 2. Doesn’t is seem as though Apple updates the iTunes software once per week these days? Annoying! 3. I watched two movies the other day: Die Hard IV and Gummo. How can the braindead to geniously perverse...
Better than a Law Degree, for Thinking.
The History Channel is surprisingly “Hot Right Now”: 1. Gangland 2. MonsterQuest 3. Lost Worlds
Elevated Perceptions.
I can feel a content onslaught coming. Be prepared. Very little of it will have any relation to “business”. No, I havent “lost my mind”. I continue to find its never ending dimensionality every day. Phew, according to dictionary.com, I didn’t invent the word dimensionality. I just tried to call Zab Judah while [ insert ]. Now, that’s multi-dimensional. I feel like I can...
“Vimeo exists to foster a positive environment around the making and sharing of...”
– dalas verdugo Thanks for quoting me on that, Céline! We are working on more ways to get the message out that this is what we are about.
“When I worked at Café Boulud, I hated making food for East Siders. I hate their...”
– YEAR OF THE PIG: GQ Features on men.style.com
Ruminations #123.
RE: Aaron Karo presents Ruminations #123
http: //www.aaronkaro.com/issue.php?id=123
From: Jonathan Marcus (jonathan_marcus@msn.com)
Sent:
Mon 12/03/07 12: 54 AM
To:
Aaron Karo (me@aaronkaro.com)
Fuck. I had only read 1 / 4 of the column when I sent this. Its even better than I anticipated.
From: jonathan_marcus@msn.com
To: me@aaronkaro.com
Subject: RE: Aaron Karo presents Ruminations #123
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 00:52:24 -0500
Absolutely. But, watch this first: http://vimeo.com/412897!
Call anytime.
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 21:46:40 -0800
Subject: Re: Aaron Karo presents Ruminations #123
From: me@aaronkaro.com
To: jonathan_marcus@msn.com
Big compliment coming from you! : )
Can we discuss your big move this week?
On 12/2/07 9: 45 PM, "Jonathan Marcus" wrote:
Your best column ever. No comments about my "strange" perspective.
Girl Scout Cookies
At what point are the Girl Scouts of America going to step it up and start selling cookies on the “world wide interstate”? Who cares about fostering young girls and helping them grow into mature and financially responsible women, it’s inevitable that the girls will all end up being CRAZY anyway… at least let me order some dang thin mint cookies online. They could even up...
“Like I’ve been pointing out - the real strategic problem is that Facebook...”
– Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab
WatchBrownies — jakeandamir My new favorite in the series.