November 2007
Will You Pay $3 to Get TiVo on Your Cable Box? «... →
I would pay a lot more than $3/month for TiVo on my cable box. The current DVR software is so lame.
WatchI was traveling this week during the CNN/YouTube Republican presidential debate. And truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have watched it anyway. But the folks at Veracifier put together this highlight reel. And it’s highly entertaining for my fellow non-republicans. Check it out.
Sad but true question from the local bookstore
I went to a local bookstore this week to buy a biography about one of the presidential candidates. It was a spontoneous decision to buy this book so I hadn’t done any research ahead of time or looked at any reviews. So I asked the bookstore owner which book would he recommend about this particular person. I told him that I really want to learn about this person and get a full pciture. He...
Why I love Apple
There are a lot of Apple critics out there these days. Including my good friend Fred & Robert Scoble (who I haven’t met but I enjoy his blog) Their complaints are perfectly reasonable and I totally get it. And I have a feature wish list a country mile long about my Mac/iPhone. But I gotta confession to make. Ready? I love Apple. 1. They deliever amazing products. We have four Macs in...
“It’s not an iPod. Kindle is the closest we’ve come to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to...”
– Andy Ihnatko in his Amazon Kindle review [via Cameron]
Give Facebook credit for Beacon's quick change
Many people were not happy with Facebook Beacon v1.0 MoveOn led the charge and many folks supported the issue by speaking up. Today Facebook decided to take a big step and are making the necessary changes to Beacon. Users will have more control about sharing their data. You have to hand it to Facebook. They listened to the community and made the change. And you gotta give credit to the...
I was thinking of some more songs that I fell in...
Location, location, location
I’ve been addicted to location based services (LBS) and GPS technologies for some time now. I’ve got them in my car, lauren’s car, on my wrist, my photos and on my phone Google’s new version of Google Maps for mobile is very cool. It ran just fine on my Blackberry. Check out Om’s review here. We need to figure out how to bring together user generated content with...
I thought I’d alternate my music posts from...
WatchMy friends over at Wallstrip are so freaking talented. Todays show was hilarious. I’m proud to be on their blogroll. Long Wallstrip.
Online Video: Hulu's four fatal flaws →
Verizon opening up, now it's Cable's turn
There is a lot of hope about Verizon’s announcement to open up their network to new applications and devices. No doubt this was a response to Google’s Android & the Open Handset Alliance. Probably a response to the iPhone as well. As an investor in a several mobile startup companies, I’m optimistic about all of this. It will take time and none of our portfolio companies are...
L.C. →
at dinner tonight, howard told me that lindsay has a tumblelog. very cool.
FollowOnTumblr
If you use Tumblr, please consider reblogging this post and updating it with the people you FollowOnTumblr. These are the people I FollowOnTumblr: david bill israel marco alex nickdouglas joelaz Prash andrew fred jakoblodwick daniel kevinrose john borthwick robgo anthony martin nabeel Francois HeavyFog tim shey Who do you FollowOnTumblr? joelaz asked me to do this and I did. now I am...
“I wake up in the morning to get people excited about music. I do this with a...”
– [via Anthony Volodkin’s tumblelog - FASCINATED] Anthony is the founder of HypeMachine. I use his service almost every day. And he has a cool tumblelog.
Why can't every store be as good as Amazon?
I’m doing a ton of online shopping for this holiday season. At this point I’m thinking that I’ll be able to (hopefully) buy all of the gifts on my list except for my wife’s and my mom’s. But it’ quite sad to see how bad many of these ecommerce sites are in 2007. And many of these stores are “high end” stores as well. Not clear there is any...
“Three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as...”
– Metric system - Wikipedia via Davidslog
Spark Capital page on Facebook →
Fred’s post today about Sequoia reminded me that Scott Borenstein created a Spark Capital page on Facebook a few weeks ago. Please take a look and join our page if you wish. Thanks!
I was thinking of my favorite songs from 2007. On...
AminPhoto: Losing the Digital Look →
My brother has a post on the look of digital photography and a review of a software app to change that.
Following Ted Dintersmith's worldwide adventure
Ted Dintersmith is a friend of ours at Spark Capital. Ted & Santo “sponsored” me when I joined CRV and I’ve always appreciated that. Ted is in the midst of a 10 month worldwide trip with his family and they are seeing some absolutely amazing places. I’m so jealous and I really admire what Ted is doing here. He is blogging his travels. Very cool. I especially enjoyed...
Dear Santa
The kids wrote letters to Santa tonight completely on their own. Here is Sophia’s letter (and here is Ellie’s letter and James’ letter) Here is my transcript if you can’t read her writing: “Dear Santa This year I do not want so many things! This year I am only having 4 or 5 presents. Instead of presents, I want you to give other children a lot of presents. Kids...
I made a mellow playlist for our Sonos today. The...
I’ve been in a Radiohead groove lately....
“There was one problem. It was not true,” McClellan writes, according to a...”
– Former aide blames Bush for leak deceit - Yahoo! News
Facebook Beacon
I’ve been thinking about Facebook’s Beacon a lot lately. And i’ve been playing with some services out there, like Lemonade, that let me share what I’ve purchased. Facebook Beacon actually has the right vision but it has two main drawbacks: 1. Default behavior is opt-in. It should be opt-out by default. No brainer 2. And Facebook Beacon only works with sites that have a...
NYT Correction re Steve Perlman and Beowulf
The NYT had a negative post on Beowulf and an incorrect reference on my friend Steve Perlman’s role in the visual effects . As a result of that article Valleywag had a post as well. Steve’s latest creation, Contour was covered by the NYT a year ago but that breakthrough innovation was not part of the making of Beowulf. Steve posted the real story in the NYT comments section. I hope...
Firefox 2 vs 3 - they are both too buggy
The Mozilla folks last week released v3 beta. There was a bunch of confusion about how buggy it would be when the final version ships. Readers of my blog know what a huge fan of Firefox I’ve been. I’ve been telling developers that are spending more time on Facebook these days not to forget about developing for Firefox. And practially everytime a startup presents at Spark running IE,...
Darts
We are at my parents house on Long Island today for Thanksgiving. I was playing with the kids magnetic dart board and my brother took this photo. You can just barely see the dart right under the doorway.
“I believe the person who first asked me, “do you have a blog?” was Bijan Sabet,...”
– Jon Radcliffe - GuildCafe Blog Jon is a very interesting guy. I’m glad he’s blogging.
“Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100% opt-in. Not because MoveOn is...”
– Facebook’s “Beacon” Infuriate Users, MoveOn - Silicon Alley Insider
Brad's post: Don't ask for a referral if I say no
Thanks Brad for a post on this subject. I’ve been amazed how often this actually happens.
I really like when indie bands do a cover of the...
My feed should be working better now
Some of you have told me that my feed hasn’t been working properly since I made the switch to Tumblr. I was at Tumblr today. Marco took a look and I believe fixed the issue. If you are still having problems with this feed than please let me know. And thanks for subscribing to my feed :)
Who's going to help online publishers?
I met with a large advertising agency yesterday afternoon. It was a nice validation of everything we have been seeing in the advertising space. All boats seem to be rising. The growth of ad networks has been tremendous. We are seeing new ad networks focused on vertical markets (hispanic, women, sports, auto, technology, games, etc). There are new ad networks focused on social media and video. New...
Messing with my tumblelog this morning
I’m messing a bit with this website this morning. So please excuse some random or duplicate posts. Thanks.
Need holiday card suggestions. Please.
Every year our family sends out holiday cards. I just checked out the latest holiday card designs offered on Shutterfly and Ofoto (i can’t stand the idea of calling it KodakGallery). And while they are pretty nice I was hoping for something a bit more unique this year. I know the most unique idea is to design one myself. Unfortunately I don’t have the creativity for that or the time....
Bug Labs Powers Up
Gizmodo gets the first public peak of Bug Labs live in action. Check out Peter Semmelhack’s (founder/ceo) video demonstration! This is so freaking cool. (disclosure: Bug Labs is a Spark portfolio company)
This weekend we went down to Connecticut for a...
